If you went through the previous lesson on dragline, you might be tempted to stop there, accept the current wisdom, and - if not teach dragline - at least use it as a 'tell'. After all, it seems like an easy way to determine if a young pitcher was doing it right or not.


This is we're we get into dangerous waters. As we mentioned, one of the most influential voices in dragline instruction is said to be Tom House.

However, in one of his most famous video clips he is using veteran Nolan Ryan to show a young Randy Johnson how to pitch effectively.

Remarkably, even though Ryan has a definite dragline in that video, House does not even mention it in passing - it just didn't seem all that important at the time. In other words, it was absolutely a "non-teach". Even odder, the Ryan dragline is at a definite angle to the glove side (a mirror image of what we show in the previous lesson). So we have no idea where this notion of direct-to-plate drag comes from.



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