Thorn: Who were the fastest pitchers, from the batter’s perspective?
From SABR member John Thorn at Our Game on February 18, 2014:
I sort of fell into this subject on Facebook earlier today in response to a woodcut I posted of Amos Rusie’s drop ball. With his legendary fastball, I suggested, why would he ever need to throw a drop? Walter Johnson pitched almost his entire career throwing one pitch. When Walter Johnson came along in 1907, writers seeking to compliment the young fireballer called him “another Rusie.”
As Mike Gershman wrote in Total Baseball, “Baseball paid Rusie the ultimate compliment in 1893 when it changed the rules because of him. The mound was moved back from 50 feet to 60 feet, 6 inches, and several authorities claim the change was intended to make Rusie’s heat less intimidating. (Rusie’s first catcher, Dick Buckley, padded his glove with a thin sheet of lead to help absorb the impact of Rusie’s hummer.) The Indianan led the league in strikeouts five years out of six and won 30 games or more four years in a row.”
In 1892 the pitching distance was truly only five feet shorter than that of today, because before the introduction of the slab, from which the 60’6″ distance is taken, the pitcher threw from a box, the front of which was 50 feet from the plate but the back line was five and a half feet further, creating an effective distance of 55’6″. In that last year of the old distance, which had been in force since 1880, the Hoosier Thunderbolt may have been, from the batter’s perspective, the fastest pitcher ever.
Read the full article here: http://ourgame.mlblogs.com/2014/02/18/who-were-the-fastest-pitchers/
Originally published: February 18, 2014. Last Updated: February 18, 2014.