Word: pitching
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...week later, another box of ribs arrived--this time a real pitch. Nobody touched them...
...Botterill, a psychologist who works with the Chicago Blackhawks, "the very best athletes can use their emotions -- and anger is one of them -- to push their performance up." In fact, a baseball adage has it that managers prefer players who get mad. Anger steps up the body's pitch: blood pressure rises, heart and respiration rates quicken, and adrenaline surges. That may sharpen performance by heightening alertness, boosting energy and speeding up reactions...
Some athletes use hostile emotions to catapult themselves into fiercer play. Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Dave Stieb is one. "It might allow me to throw my next pitch harder or concentrate harder," he says. Others cultivate anger as part of their game preparation. Sports psychologist Bruce Ogilvie of Los Gatos, Calif., recalls that one great football defensive end, now retired, worked himself up for Sunday competition by starting to fantasize on Thursday that his opponent had raped his wife...
...says Ashley Petrus, 12, of Columbia, S.C., who liked the sport the first time she picked up a mitt. "You really get into it. The best part is the feeling of pride when you catch." And as her brother Brad, 9, pointed out after he neatly snared Ashley's pitch, "you don't have to be exact. If the ball hits on the mitt's side, it sticks...
...mountaintop, where the life-giving star is worshiped, no one slept a wink. There in the cold, thin air of Hawaii's Mauna Kea, home to the world's greatest concentration of high-powered telescopes, the scientists paced, fretted and nervously tuned their instruments. Night is darker than pitch at the crest of the 4,300-meter (14,000-ft.) dead volcano. In that utter blackness, the ultimate sun worshipers waited for the day that would dawn not once but twice...