Off Speed
Baseball, Pitching, and the Art of Deception
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group · Print & ebook · March 13, 2018
Longlisted for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing.
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- Who it’s for
- A journalist’s curiosity brings baseball’s pitching history, new metrics, and old romance into the same conversation.
- Themes
- Baseball pitching, Evolution of pitching, Science and romance of baseball
- Genres
- Baseball Essays, Baseball History, Baseball Statistics
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Start with this bookAbout this book
Longlisted for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing. The lively and fascinating story of baseball’s 150-year hunt for the perfect pitch. In August 2012, Felix Hernandez of the Seattle Mariners pitched a perfect game against the Tampa Bay Rays in what Terry McDermott calls “one of the greatest exhibitions of off-speed pitches ever put on.”
Continue reading
For McDermott, a lifelong fan and student of baseball, the extraordinary events of that afternoon inspired this incisive meditation on the art of pitching. Within the framework of Hernandez’s historic achievement, Off Speed provides a vibrant narrative of the history and evolution of pitching, combining baseball's rich tradition of folklore with the wealth of new metrics from a growing legion of statisticians who are transforming the way we think about the game. Off Speed is also the personal story of a fan’s steadfast devotion, first kindled in McDermott by his father at the local diamond in small-town Iowa and now carried forward with the same passion by his own daughters. Approaching his subject with the love every fan brings to the park and the expertise of a probing journalist, McDermott explores with irrepressible curiosity the science and the romance of baseball.
The Pitching Puzzle
A journalist’s curiosity brings baseball’s pitching history, new metrics, and old romance into the same conversation.
Come here for
- The craft and deception behind a perfect pitch
- Baseball folklore alongside the numbers reshaping the game
Expect
- A lively, layered meditation on pitching
- A fan’s devotion threaded through a probing journalist’s view
Where it sits
| Baseball Essays | 59% |
|---|---|
| Baseball Statistics | 39% |
| Baseball History | 34% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Baseball Coaching
- Baseball History
- Sports History
- Authors
- Terry McDermott
- Publisher
- Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- Published
- March 13, 2018
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Baseball pitching · Evolution of pitching · Science and romance of baseball
- Reading lane
- Baseball Coaching