Pitcher
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

In baseball, the pitcher is the person who begins each play by pitching the baseball. Keeping a foot on the pitcher's rubber at the centre of the pitcher's mound, which is 60'6" from home plate, the pitcher throws the baseball to the catcher, who is positioned behind home plate and catches the ball. Meanwhile a batter stands in the batter's box and attempts to hit the ball into fair play. Commonly, the object of any pitch is to either pitch the ball into the strike zone without the batter swinging, or pitch the ball such that the batter swings and doesn't make contact, although this object may change given particular situations in the game or certain match-ups.

Although the object and mechanics of pitching remain the same for all pitchers, most pitchers are specialized depending on their effectiveness against certain types of hitters and the innings in which they commonly pitch. The names of some of these specialties include: starting pitcher, relief pitcher, closer and left-handed specialist.

Famous Major League Baseball pitchers include Cy Young, Nolan Ryan, Sandy Koufax, and Roger Clemens.

See Also: baseball, baseball fielding positions

---

Pitchers can also be medium-sized, usually glass containers for holding liquid, usually to pour for drinking.

The original article can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitcher.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.