Origin stories behind unique MLB pitchers

But there’s a small group of pitchers who don’t rely on velo at all. They play baseball like it was first designed to be played.

In 1845, the New York Knickerbocker Base Ball Club spelled out the first surviving rules of baseball. They noted that “the ball must be pitched, not thrown, for the bat.”

That’s right. Everyone threw underhanded, a mandate that required the pitcher to throw with a…