WebBall.com - The Freedom of Great Mechanics

The Freedom of Great Mechanics

John Bagonzi Know everywhere as the Pitching Professor, Dr. Bagonzi is a coach, instructor, and the author of one of the most complete instructional guides to pitching ever published: The Act of Pitching. He has given Webball permission to reprint a number of his most important essays, but we highly recommend the book and the blog on his own website. While his main success has been as a coach, he was a very successful high school player and propect. He turned down the Boston Braves for New Hampshire where he was a standout both in basketball and baseball. Many of the pitching records he set at UNH --including five no-hitters - still stand today. In 1953 Coach Bagonzi signed a bonus contract with the Red Sox, as a pitcher. However, an ROTC obligation waylaid his baseball career. During two years in the army, he pitched many games at Fort Jackson against professional and major league players. He had a curveball that many said was the best in baseball, and after serving he resumed his career with both Red Sox and Cubs organizations, but injuries and family obligations ended his playing days - though they have given everyone a great, great coach. (Click to close.)

By Dr. John Bagonzi (edited for WebBall by Richard Todd)

Great Mechanics....

allows you to get the maximum out of your body
prevents injuries, forestalls fatigue
puts you in safe and proper fielding position
rees you to be an artist on the mound

If you're a coach or a pitcher and you do not have an exceptionally strong understanding of mechanics, you will be left to fix problems by trial and error or even by way of superstition. But if you do have a deep respect for mechanics your day in the sun will be longer than most and rarely obscured by clouds; you will master your full potential.

Remember: Great mechanics is not about being robotic. Great mechanics allows for freedom.

Great mechanics is what allows the career pitcher to make adjustments in consideration of a forever changing body. It's what allows a pitcher to have faith enough to throw his third best pitch in a full count situation.

Great mechanics require an incredible consciousness of body without allowing self-consciousness to creep in. The body is the pitchers tool, the ball in motion its product. To a successful end, a pitcher must allow himself to be objective in scrutinizing mechanics; he must be an outside observer. Baseball has enough chance built into it already (that is why even great teams lose a third of their games) Great mechanics allow the pitcher to limit chance in his favor. With great mechanics the pitcher knows that he is going to do everything possible to deliver a good pitch. Once the ball is out of his hands chance will have its say, but through good mechanics, the pitcher can eliminate elements of chance to his favor.

The visual artist who has a depth of knowledge about his paints and has the fundamental ability to create various strokes strongly imbedded in his muscle memory is free to attack the canvas thinking only about what he desires to express. So too the pitcher who is a master of mechanics can concentrate on willing victory and dealing with the nuances of the game, if his fundamentals are solid and dependable. A writer can recognize a bad sentence by ear -- it just doesn't sound right, but unless that writer has a grasp of proper grammar, fixing the problem with be a matter of trial and error.

So too is it true of the pitcher; when something feels like it's wrong, a sense of mechanics will allow one to see the problem with clarity and the solution will become obvious.

FEEDBACK