Tyler Kepner sees, starts to believe, NY Times, 3/4/07

• Kepner mentions tinkering of Scott Proctor, Andy Pettitte, Ron Guidry, Mike Mussina, and finally:

"Few pitchers can be Mariano Rivera, the sublime closer often hailed for succeeding with only one pitch: his cut fastball. Rivera has more traditional fastballs, too, and this year he is working on a changeup.

But the cutter is still otherworldly, carving lefties’ bat handles and scurrying away from a right-hander’s barrel. It is a pitch teammates envy but concede they cannot match.

• Mussina once asked Rivera how to throw it, but it was a lost cause. They use different arm angles, and at 94 miles an hour, Rivera throws at a speed Mussina cannot reach.

Rivera can demonstrate how he holds the cutter, with a stiff wrist and his index and middle fingers on the right side of the seams. But he cannot teach it, because he cannot explain how it works.

“It just happened,” Rivera said, repeating those words for emphasis. “I threw the ball and the ball was moving. Just a gift.”

• It is a gift that has kept on giving, a toy that still works after all these years."

(Kepner might want to pass the smelling salts to his BBWAA pals who've written for years Mo was history. How can they always be wrong and not get fired?)

• From Tyler Kepner's NY Times article, 3/4/07, "Tinkering Never Stops for Top Pitchers." Takes cookies.

Tweet Stumbleupon StumbleUpon