Off Speed: Baseball, Pitching, and the Art of Deception

Longlisted for the
PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing.

The lively and fascinating story of baseball’s 150-year hunt for the
perfect pitch.

In August 2012, Felix Hernandez of the Seattle Mariners pitched a perfect
game against the Tampa Bay Rays in what Terry McDermott calls one of the
greatest exhibitions of off-speed pitches ever put on. For McDermott, a
lifelong fan and student of baseball, the extraordinary events of that
afternoon inspired this incisive meditation on the art of pitching.

Within the framework of Hernandez’s historic achievement, Off Speed
provides a vibrant narrative of the history and evolution of pitching,
combining baseball’s rich tradition of folklore with the wealth of new metrics
from a growing legion of statisticians who are transforming the way we think
about the game. Off Speed is also the personal story of a fan’s steadfast
devotion, first kindled in McDermott by his father at the local diamond in
small-town Iowa and now carried forward with the same passion by his own
daughters.

Approaching his subject with the love every fan brings to the park and the
expertise of a probing journalist, McDermott explores with irrepressible
curiosity the science and the romance of baseball.