Majorleague baseball is one of the most difficult and precise of all games, but you would
never know it unless you went down on the field and got close to it and tried it yourself. For instance, the distance between pitcher and catcher is a matter of twenty paces, but it
doesn't seem like enough when you have a catcher's mitt and try to hold a pitcher with the
speed of Dizzy Dean or Dazzy Vance. Not even the sponge that catchers wear in the palm
of the hand when working with fastball pitchers and the bulky mitt are sufficient to rob
the ball of shock and sting that lames your hand unless you know to ride with the throw and kill some of its speed. The pitcher, standing on his little elevated mound, looms up enormously over you at that short distance, and when he ties himself into a coiled spring
preparatory to letting fly, it requires all your selfcontrol not to break and run for safety.
And as for the things they can do with a baseball, those majorleague pitchers...! One way
of finding out is to wander down on the field an hour or so before gametime when there is no pressure on them, pull on the catcher's glove, and try to hold them.