Reese Kaplan -- Deliveries from Down Under

As a somewhat taller than average young man I was coopted into working a church carnival at the behest of my mother who was trying to curry favor with the local parish.  I wasn’t all that enthusiastic about it being the sullen teenager (wait, isn’t that redundant?) I’d become.  However, it was kind of like a job, I’d be handling money, prizes and have some responsibility so it was indeed going to break up the ho-hum existence of my early summer.

Things took a dramatic turn for the better when I arrived and was told I could work my choice of the carnival games.  While most young boys would gravitate to the shooting activities, I made a beeline to the booth where they had the cat dolls propped up awaiting contestants to hurl baseballs at them to knock them down.  After all, I was a pure baseball geek and this was a way to combine what my mother wanted me to do with something I would enjoy.

All throughout the day during the rather slow carnival I had lots of time on my hands to practice.  Initially I was simply aiming to try to knock down the cats but as the day progressed my game became more of one of velocity, seeing how fast I could throw the ball and still maintain some semblance of accuracy.  I did that for the duration of my shift which was probably about 4-6 hours.

Needless to say, when I awakened the next morning I could barely lift my arm.  I had not stretched nor otherwise prepared for the abuse I would heap upon my bicep.  I knew it was muscular pain from overuse and it would subside in a couple of days but I had a Little League baseball game to play the next day and I was fretting over how I would participate given the fact I couldn’t really throw the ball.

It was then that I discovered the beauty of the sidearm or submarine delivery which used an entirely different set of muscles and put way less stress on my arm.  Furthermore I found out that I was getting some natural movement on the throws that my overhand and ¾ slot pitches never enjoyed.  I even deluded myself into thinking I had a curveball.  That would have been a great thing had I been a pitcher, but at the time I was the team’s starting third baseman.

As I grew up I often wondered why more pitchers didn’t embrace this delivery both for the far less stress it placed on the arm and for the quirkiness of it that could confound batters.  Sure, there were successful knuckleball pitchers like Hoyt Wilhelm, the Neikro brothers, Charlie Hough and later R.A. Dickey, but that particular pitch was unpredictable and often resulted in alarmingly high walk totals.

However, when the Mets found Jeff Innis to work from their bullpen, I was enthralled.  Here was a major league pitcher (on my favorite team, no less) able to deliver 7 years of quality relief pitching, appearing in as many as 76 games per season, and ending his career with a 3.05 ERA.  He never racked up a lot of strikeouts and did walk a few more than would have been desirable, but what he was able to do was keep hitters off-stride resulting in a very low BAA and a WHIP most years in the 1.100 range.  He said, “My favorite part was watching righties swing and miss my side arm curve...They usually didn't come close to hitting it. I also enjoyed it when the hitter would ask the ump to check the ball on my sinker because he thought I was doctoring it... ultimate compliment...”

Another Mets hurler who had great success with the drop-down delivery was Terry Leach.  About his favorite part of pitching that way, he said, “I enjoyed being able to get big hitters out, MVP and Hall of Fame players out pretty easily. Enjoyed how good that felt! When things were going good everything just felt so effortless.”

Later I remember the Mets bringing in a little-known pitcher by the name of Chad Bradford whose submarine delivery was even more extreme.  During his single season in New York he delivered a 2.90 ERA with a 4-2 record and a WHIP of 1.161.  Once again we saw success from a sidewinder.

The last true sidearm hurler I recall seeing in orange and blue was Joe Smith.  He came up as a rookie and had two successful years in which he appeared in 136 games and delivering a 3.50 ERA, though he was a bit wilder than his contemporaries when he was first starting his career.  He improved and now sports a 3.02 ERA for his thus far 12-year career.

One of the best-known sidearmers during the 1970s and 1980s was the Pirates’ reliever Kent Tekulve.   Like many funky-delivery pitchers, he started somewhat late as a rookie at age 27 but managed to pitch in the majors until age 42, amassing 184 saves and a career ERA of 2.85.  In an interview he was asked how he came using this style of pitching:

“I was always tall and skinny, when I was younger it just felt natural to throw sidearm. With my long arms and long legs, it was just natural to use that leverage. In AA, there was a scout for Pirates who came up to me and said you need to get good movement that's in the strike zone. Was getting good movement but was going out of the strike zone. I actually tried raising my arm angle and it was terrible. I was 81mph and flat. I remembered watching Ted Abernathy who was a submarine pitcher in the Majors at the time and got my thinking. I started fooling around in the outfield with it. It took a couple of years to figure it out, especially the breaking ball.”

Studies have shown that the sidearm pitcher is much less prone to rotator cuff problems than the more traditional hurler due to the reduced incidents of hyperabduction.  Furthermore traditional pitchers who through with their arm above shoulder height tend to create the illusion of a rising fastball which is created by the backward rotation of the ball.  Sidearmers, by contrast, have a forward rotation which lends to a natural sink.  That is one primary reason sidewinders are often cast as relievers during late game situations in which a home run could be devastating. 

It kind of makes you wonder why they are the exception rather than the norm.  In Japan the majority of pitchers use a sidearm delivery at least part of the time.  Perhaps it’s the old macho thing about wanting to blow a fastball by someone.  Or maybe it’s the fact that the seeming underhand delivery is associated more with softball than with baseball and it’s not considered “manly”.  Hey, I’m for whatever works.