The Head Game Baseball Seen from the Pitcher's Mound [Paperback]

Beyond the techniques and training, baseball begins with one player facing another and the psychological battle that they wage-the head game. In his critically acclaimed and bestselling new book, Roger Kahn presents the story of this supreme war of wits and the people who changed the course of baseball by playing, what he calls, chess at 90 miles an hour. InThe Head Game, Kahn investigates not only grips, tactics, and physics, but also the intelligence, maturity, and competitive fire that has inspired some of the greatest hurlers in history.
By covering renowned pitchers and pitching minds-from Christy Mathewson, Cy Young, Don Drysdale, Bob Gibson, and Bruce Sutter to today's reigning pitching coach, Leo Mazzone-Roger Kahn sheds new light on baseball's most pivotal contest. A delightful and edifying tour of America's favorite pastime seen through the pitcher's eyes,The Head Game is as lively and familiar and old-shoe as the game itself, even today (Los Angeles Times).

Baseball's most celebrated chronicler on the history and evolution of the greatest mental and physical duel in sports-between the picture and the batter.

THE HEAD GAME
Baseball Seen From the Pitcher's Mound
By Roger Kahn

THE HELL IT DON'T CURVE


Ask them hitters about the curve. They'll tell you.
It's Public Enemy Number One.
-CHARLIE DRESSEN


Before considering pitching as history, and pitching as combat and indeed, pitching as life, it makes some sense to review a controversy that has spilled into baseball's modern times. On September 15, 1941 Life magazine, then the most popular weekly in the United States, published a dramatic photo essay which suggested that a baseball could not be made to curve. That year Lefty Gomez, a droll Californian who pitched for the New York Yankees, was fighting back from arm trouble and hooking his way across a season in which he would lead all American League pitchers wil+