The first game of the MLB season was tonight against the powerhouse Phillies and the Braves. Lowe was pitching for the Braves, a known sinkerball pitcher. John Miller and Joe Morgan, long time ESPN sports announcers, could not agree on Lowe's breaking ball- whether it was a slider or a curveball. According to Lowe, he doesn't throw a slider, and yet through nearly 6 innings of baseball tonight John Miller kept calling his breaking ball a "slider". Finally in the seventh I believe, Joe Morgan tried to set him straight. The debate insued throughout the rest of the game on the difference between a slider and a curveball.
In the end, Joe just ended up calling it the "breaking ball". I thought the discussion was interesting- here you have two well informed baseball announcers on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball who can't decide on what pitch a pitcher is throwing! One thing was for sure though, no one on the Phillies could hit the darned thing!
I have noticed something though watching baseball with the breaking ball. Let the pitcher decide what pitch he is throwing and let him call it that. If a pitcher says it is the curve- then certainly it must be the curve. Don't you find it strange that everyone debates on what a pitcher actually throws except for the pitcher himself, of coarse- just ask him, he knows exactly what he throws!
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