The Head Game: Baseball Seen from the Pitcher's Mound

Ron Fimrite

The title refers to the battle of wits between pitcher and batter, which is the essence of baseball. Kahn sides with pitching, and in a narrative that is both analytical and anecdotal, he rewards the reader with what amounts to a scholarly treatise on the craft. He does so through engrossing portraits of pitching masters, from Candy Cummings, the reputed inventor of the curveball, to Bruce Sutter, the popularizer of the split-finger fastball. Kahn also presents us with Christy Mathewson on the fadeaway, Warren Spahn on the changeup and Don Drysdale on the duster.

This book is Kahn at his best, which is pretty damn good.
— Sports Illustrated

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Meticulous research about baseball's early days combined with interviews of prominent modern-day hurlers form this lively look at the evolution of pitching. Kahn (The Boys of Summer, etc.) follows the development of such pitches as the curve ball, the slider and the split-finger fastball, and he profiles several successful pitchers, beginning with Hoss Radbourn, who started 68 games in 1883, completed 66 and posted a win-loss record of 49 and 25. Those are amazing numbers compared to pitching standards in 2000 when most pitchers don't start more than 30 games and 20 wins combined with four or five complete games is considered an outstanding season. Kahn devotes the largest section to Christy Mathewson, who pitched for the New York Giants at the turn of the century, won 373 games and threw 80 shutouts. His most impressive feat, however, came early in his career, when, in the 1905 World Series, Mathewson pitched three shutouts in six days. Mathewson is clearly Kahn's favorite pitcher: he ranks him as the best pitcher of all time. Kahn also allots a considerable amount of space to the debate about the effectiveness and morality of the brush-back or knockdown pitch, a particularly relevant topic in light of Yankee pitcher Roger Clemens's beaning of Mets catcher Mike Piazza this summer. Kahn's love and knowledge of baseball is evident throughout this latest work in his baseball oeuvre, and his many fans will be especially pleased by his examination of the head game. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal

Bigger hitters, smaller parks, league expansion, and some plain bad pitching have contributed to the booming epidemic of major-league home runs. Kahn (The Boys of Summer; A Flame of Pure Fire) pleads that the great spectacle of baseball is not, in fact, the crowd-pleasing trajectory but the psychological battle between pitcher and batter, what Brooklyn hurler Clem Labine once called "the head game." Kahn elegantly traces the art of throwing across the years and through its many evolving grips--the curve ball from the Civil War days of Arthur "Candy" Cummings; Whitlow Wyatt's hitter-taming hard slider in the early 1940s; the Reagan-era advances in the split-fingered fastball and the circle change; up to the modern age, visiting with pitching coach Leo Mazzone's peerless staff of arms on the Atlanta Braves. There is enough memoir here (of Kahn's father teaching him his wrinkle pitch and of old Dodger days) to please readers who believe in Golden Ages and enough clear-eyed observation of the current game to satisfy fans who still believe that baseball can be beautiful, no matter how its owners tinker with it. Highly recommended for lovers of literate sports history and for bruised pitchers needing inspiration.--Nathan Ward,"Library Journal" Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Nonbaseball fans must wonder what it is about this game that can support such a large industry: 30 major league teams, each one playing 162 regular season games, followed by an extensive postseason, not to mention the exhibition season. From March to October, year after year, that's a lot of baseball. Kahn has seen his fair share. He wrote his first baseball story for the New York Herald Tribune in 1952, played the game for years before that, and has written about it off and on ever since. He likens the sport to a chess game at 90 miles per hour. Beyond winners and losers, beyond statistics, beyond the hoopla and hype, there is the "essential core of the game"-the pitcher-hitter duel. The author delves into the long and storied history of those battles, examining along the way the development of various pitches, the metaphysics of pitching, the enduring controversy of the brushback or knockdown pitch, and the role of the pitching coach, and gives an assessment of the great hurlers, past and present. Christy Mathewson gets Kahn's vote as the best of all time. Like most baseball books, this one is for the lover of the game, whether young or old. And the nonfan might turn to The Head Game for an answer to the question: What's all the fuss about?-Robert Saunderson, Berkeley Public Library, CA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Alan Schwartz

...unquestionably valuable as a tour of some of baseball's greatest pitchers.
—The New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

A hot-stove league ramble, well lubricated with fine wines, on the subject of pitching, by a baseball writer who has seen it all.