How to Throw a Baseball Daniel Kapica Introduction Baseball has been America’s past time since it first began in the late 1890’s. Like any other sport it requires its athletes to be at the top of their game both physically and mentally. They need to have skill, perseverance and above all determination to succeed. Professional baseball players make the game look easy. And being a player myself I can tell you that it isn’t. And it all starts with the main element of the game and that is the baseball. Throwing a baseball is more then just taking it in your hand and hurling it towards something. The entire body is involved. From your mind all the way to your toes, when a player throws a ball everything must work in unison or else it will not be a successful throw. Every position on the field requires the ball to be thrown accurately and precisely. Good mechanics are the key to throwing the ball correctly and with this procedure anyone can when they are done reading. Throwing a baseball begins when most players are youngsters. The only problem is many steps are left out to make the game more fun for the children. This can lead to problems when the child gets older because they were not taught the correct way to throw a ball from the beginning. This procedure will teach you, the thrower, how to correctly throw the baseball accurately and precisely. Photos of the proper mechanics as well as step by step written instructions will be provided for anyone who reads them to be able to throw a baseball like the pros. Topics include: Griping the Baseball. Upperbody Mechanics. Lowerbody Mechanics. Outcome of the ball thrown.
*If the thrower wishes be sure to have all the equipment necessary before trying. That would include a baseball, a baseball glove, a partner or if a partner is not available a solid surface like a wall will be fine.* Griping the Baseball Before a ball can be thrown it has to be griped properly. There are many ways in which to grip a baseball but the way that I will show you is the one used most often. A baseball has what we call stitches and seams. The little threads make up the stitches and the curve of the stitches make up the seams. When using your fingers to grip the ball three of them are used. The thumb, the index and the middle finger. You start off by making a “peace sign” with your fingers. The index and the middle finger are spread apart with the thumb underneath. Then you take the baseball and put your two fingers spread apart going across the seams and the thumb goes underneath as illustrated in the picture below. Do not hold the ball tightly. Coaches tell players to picture the baseball
as an egg. Holding it to tightly will force the egg to break. Hold it loosely but with enough tension that it doesn’t fall out of your hands.
Image1 - Both fingers go across the seams with the thumb underneath. Upperbody Mechanics Now that the thrower has the grip down its time to learn what our arm does to throw the ball. There are several parts of our body that are involved when throwing the ball. Our fingers, wrist, elbow and shoulder are all involved in throwing the baseball. There is a popular saying in teaching youngsters or those who haven’t thrown a baseball before and it goes “Thumb to thigh, reach for the sky.” It refers to the motion of the arm to throw a baseball. First with your fingers holding the ball as you learned in griping a baseball you want to bring your arm down to your side and let your thumb hit your thigh. That is where the thumb to thigh portion of the saying comes from. From there you start to bring your arm behind you in a circular motion. As you start to bring your arm further back you will notice that your fingers and wrist have changed direction. When you started bringing your hands down your fingers and your wrist are now facing behind you. As this is going on whatever your catching hand is (if you throw right handed it will be your left, if you throw with your left it will be your right) is stretched out in front of you pointing towards where you want to throw it. This forces you to throw in that direction. The baseball is now facing away from you as well. From here you want to bring your arm to a 90 degree angle with your shoulder and at this point your wrist turns inward and the ball is facing the target in front of you. Then you want to bend your back and as you bend your back your glove hand is brought into your chest and that forces your throwing arm to move down and then your wrist snaps down and the ball rolls off of your fingers towards your target. You have just thrown your first baseball. The image I provided explains it all. Now the person is in the kneeling position and that is ok. But follow the circle with his arm and everything I said before will make sense.
Image2 – The circular motion refers to the quote I mentioned before and the thrower’s arm follows the circle to release it. Lowerbody Mechanics The thrower has learned how to grip the ball and hopefully how to throw it with their arm. There is just one problem, most of the time a thrower is not sitting on the ground with one knee bent when he has to throw the ball. So the legs play an important role in throwing a baseball too. Many people have the wrong assumption that to throw you need only your arms well that’s false. Baseball requires I would say 80% legs and 20% arm to throw it accurately. First we need to establish which foot will be the push off foot and which one will be the landing foot. If the thrower throws right handed his push off foot would be his right and his landing foot would be his left. For a left handed thrower it is reversed, the push off foot would be their left foot and the landing foot would be their right. The thrower wants to have his feet pointed in front of them shoulder width apart but not facing who they are throwing to, they should be facing to the right if they are right handed and to the left if they are left handed. Their side is facing the target they want to throw to. As our arm starts to go down our thigh in a circular motion behind us, our landing leg is brought up in the air. We basically look like a flamingo on one foot. As our arm makes the 90 degree angle with our shoulder we want to stride out our landing leg towards who we are throwing to. Then our hips rotate and as we bend our back and release the ball, our arm comes across our front leg and our push off foot gets whipped around and we are left standing facing our target hunched over. And we repeat the process every time we throw. This image illustrates a professional pitcher throwing the ball. It is more advanced then a regular person throwing it, but it illustrates my points beautifully.
Image3 – He is a right handed pitcher his feet are facing to his right and his leg comes up and he looks like a flamingo. As his arm goes back, he strides out towards his target. His hips rotate and he is now facing his target ready to throw the ball. He releases the ball with his arm coming over his front leg which forces his push off leg to whip around and land. Outcome The outcome of the ball thrown should look something like this.
Image4 – Rotation of the ball after it is thrown. Picture the ball rotating towards the target. Follow the arrows and that is how it will travel to your target. Now depending on how hard a person pushes off with their push off foot and how hard they throw with their shoulder determines how hard the ball will travel towards its target. The distance between you and your target is important as well. The closer you are to your target the less force you have to exert to get your ball there. The further away you are the more force you have to exert to get it there. Every time the ball will usually go where you want it to but baseball is a game of inches. If your release point, which is where you release the ball is off by a fracture of an inch it can make the ball go up, down, left or right and not where you want it to. Conclusion Throwing a baseball looks a lot easier then it seems. It is one of the most difficult sports activities to master. It takes the entire body doing everything correct for a ball to be thrown accurately. It requires the thrower to really focus on what they want to
accomplish in order for them to be successful. It may seem like there are a lot of things going on to throw a baseball and that may be true. But when it is done at real speed, the things needed to throw the ball accurately are done second nature like breathing. I just wrote them out and elaborated more to get my points across. After reading and following these instructions and practicing a lot, you will be able to throw a baseball like the pros.