Word: battering
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Atlanta Braves is like flipping to PBS. His fastball isn't fast (nearly 90 m.p.h. on his best day, vs. around 100 for a Nolan Ryan). His curveball barely curves. He has never pitched a no-hitter. All he does is win games. How? He finds a batter's weak spot and throws right at it nearly every time, which is why he will probably win an unprecedented fifth Cy Young pitching award this year. Still, the folks in Major League Baseball's promotion department must dread him. He doesn't even look like an athlete...
...then it's gone again. We go back and forth in an essential gesture of sports. A ball travels between two people, each seeking a moment of understanding from the other, across the yard and the years. To play a game of catch is not like pitching to a batter. You do not throw to trick, confuse or evade; you want to be understood...
...Pitchers who appear to try to hypnotize the batter into striking out and who cannot get the ball over the plate, thus encouraging batters to wait for a walk...
...Managers who apparently have confused themselves with chess masters, replacing pitchers after almost every batter in the late innings...
...anything be done? Robinson is determined to try. At a visit to Chicago's Wrigley Field, Robinson lobbied everyone from managers to the organist and public-address announcer: Get those batters moving out of the on-deck circle as soon as possible; have bat boys ready in order to bring the batter a new bat if he breaks...