A great question was posed to me at last year’s SABR convention. It came from renowned baseball historian John Thorn, and it was as profound as it was simple. It was a baseball question, yet it transcended the game itself.

Why is it so much fun to play catch?

I recently revisited John’s question — his philosophical musing on the simple act of tossing a baseball back and forth — and decided to ask some of baseball’s most-contemplative minds for their opinions. Here’s what they said:

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Andrew Bailey [Oakland A’s]: “The love you have for the game really starts with playing catch. Being out there in the back yard playing catch with your father or friends is kind of the first step to falling in love with the game of baseball. It takes you back to those days every single time you get on a big-league field and do it.

“Growing up, it’s ‘Let’s go out and play catch,’ and now the game has obviously evolved to more than that. There are days when you stop and think about it — how far you’ve come from riding your bike to the park and playing catch with your buddies. Playing catch is a learning process. Growing up, you’re throwing stuff into the ground, or over someone’s head, or you’re missing the ball. Now it‘s just a routine.”

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Communication between battery mates is crucial to a team‘s success, and that extends to the relationship between a catcher and a pitching coach. It is especially true with the Angels, where manager Mike Scioscia is as demanding as any when it comes to his backstops and pitching staff.

Mike Butcher is in his fifth season tutoring Halos hurlers. Hank Conger is the club’s catcher of the future — and sometimes present — having seen action behind the plate in 51 games this season. The duo talked about how their jobs intertwine earlier this summer.

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David Laurila: How important is the relationship between a catcher and a pitching coach?

Hank Conger: It’s huge. They teach us that as soon as we sign. It’s important for Butch [Mike Butcher] and me to be on the same page, as well as all of the starters and relievers. It makes everything more functional and I definitely pick his brain as much as possible.

DL: How similar are your jobs when it comes to communication?

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Charlie Haeger is a practitioner of an increasingly-rare baseball art form. The 27-year-old right-hander is a knuckleball pitcher, meaning he lives and dies with the game’s most unpredictable — and often maddening — delivery. Few have mastered it, but when a knuckleball is thrown correctly and does its butterfly dance toward home plate, it is a thing of beauty. Haeger, who has made 34 big-league appearances, with four teams, was recently signed by the Red Sox and assigned to Double-A Portland.

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David Laurila: What is the key to throwing a knuckleball?

Charlie Haeger: First and foremost is being able to take the spin off the ball. Being able to throw a knuckleball isn’t something that a lot of people are able to do, just because you’re not familiar with it growing up. Basically, you have to make the ball rotate as little as possible.

Ideally, for me, would be half a turn, maybe three quarters of a rotation. With that, I can generate the best movement while still being able to command it. You can get away with ones that spin twice, but with anything over that you’re starting to mess with fire.

DL: How do you throw a baseball with little or no rotation?

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Low strikeout and ground-ball rates — not to mention a propensity to give up the long ball — spells disaster for most pitchers. But Josh Tomlin isn‘t most pitchers. The Indians’ right-hander succeeds despite those characteristics, in large part because no one does a better job limiting walks. Tomlin, who is 11-5 with a 4.08 ERA this season, has a major-league best 1.16 BB/9 and recently went 20 consecutive games in which he walked one batter or fewer.

Whether he can continue his current success is debatable — his .249 BABiP probably isn’t sustainable — but that’s OK with the 26-year-old former 19th-round pick. Tomlin is used to people telling him he isn’t good enough to pitch at this level. And he enjoys proving them wrong.

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David Laurila: Is pitching fun?

Josh Tomlin: Yes, it’s very fun. It’s almost like a chess game, especially when you’re out there with stuff like I have. I can’t just power through guys, or anything like that. I have to mix and match, and try to keep hitters off balance.

I don’t have any one pitch that’s outstanding, but I feel that I have five quality pitches that I can throw for strikes. I have two variations of a fastball — a four-seam and a two-seam — a cutter, a changeup and a curveball.

I mainly throw a lot of cutters and fastballs. Over the course of a game, if you count the cutter as a third variation of my fastball, I’ll typically throw more than 80 percent fastballs.

DL: Is that a high percentage for someone who doesn’t throw especially hard?

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Jason Kipnis has had a memorable start to his big-league career. Called up on July 21, Cleveland’s top prospect delivered a bases-loaded walk-off single for his first hit — and he’s been making history ever since. The 24-year-old second baseman hit home runs in four consecutive games, a feat never before achieved in a rookie’s first two weeks.

Kipnis talked on Wednesday about his never-to-be-forgotten 14 days just hours before hitting home run No. 4, at Fenway Park.

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Kipnis, on his first two weeks in the big leagues: “It’s been hectic and it’s been crazy. At the same time it hasn’t been anything out of the ordinary. I think I’ve done a good job of slowing the game down as fast as I could, to the point where it’s just baseball. I haven’t over-hyped anything. I haven’t been overwhelmed by the fact that I’m in Fenway Park. That said, with the ballparks I’m playing in — and the fans — it’s unbelievable.

“The first game was a blur. It went by really fast and it didn’t feel like a real baseball game to me. Now things have slowed down and I’m starting to get my swing back a little bit. Things are starting to get better.”

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Ron Fairly was a better player than you probably realize. In 21 major-league seasons he hit .266/.360/.408, with 215 home runs, while spending the prime of his career in an extreme pitcher’s park, in an extreme pitcher’s era. Overshadowed by big-name teammates, he quietly helped the Dodgers to World Series titles in 1959, 1963 and 1965.

Fairly is also a good storyteller  — especially when the stories pertain to the Dodger-Giants rivalry. When Juan Marichal attacked John Roseboro with a bat, Fairly was there. Ditto when Sandy Koufax was dominating hitters, and Don Drysdale was knocking them down. What did it feel like to get drilled in the back by Bob Gibson? What hitting advice did he get from Ted Williams? What did Duke Snider say about Roy Campanella? Well, now you’ll know.

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David Laurila: You had a productive a career that looks even better after accounting for era and park factors. Were you underrated?

Ron Fairly: “I think everybody feels that maybe they weren’t appreciated as much as they should have been for the contributions they made to ball clubs. I think it goes without saying. A lot of players feel that way.

“I think my numbers would certainly be better today. I played in an era — the 1960s — that might have been the most difficult in which to make your living, as a hitter, of any in the history of the game of baseball. I played in Dodger Stadium, which was a big ballpark where the ball didn’t carry very well. It doesn’t take many [lost] hits during the course of a season for your average to drop a little bit, and you weren’t going to have as many home runs or RBIs there.”

Laurila: Sandy Koufax put up his numbers in that same environment. While he was obviously a great pitcher, was he maybe a little overrated? Read the rest of this entry »

Mitch Maier is no belly itcher, but when someone hasn’t been on a mound since Little League, it’s hard to call him a pitcher just because he toed the rubber in a big-league game. But that’s what the 29-year-old outfielder did earlier this week, throwing a garbage-time inning — a scoreless one in Fenway Park, no less — one night after a 14-inning marathon left the Royals’ bullpen shorthanded. Regardless of how you label him, Maier — with his 81-mph fastball — did himself proud. He gave up a double to David Ortiz but retired Dustin Pedroia, Carl Crawford and Jason Varitek. The next day he recounted the experience.

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Maier, on the last time he pitched: “I think it was when I was about 10 or 12 years old. It was in Little League, in Novi, Michigan. I played a little shortstop and a little pitcher then, but most of my life I’ve been a catcher. That’s what I enjoyed the most — catching — so I never really ventured out to the mound.”

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When the Tigers acquired Austin Jackson from the Yankees prior to the 2010 season, they did more than simply replace the popular Curtis Granderson in center field. They brought to Motown one of the few players who can match Granderson’s charisma. The 24-year-old Jackson isn’t a star — at least not yet — but he possesses an enviable mix of thoughtfulness and amiability. He can be serious, he can be fun-loving, he can even be baseball’s black Bugs Bunny.

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David Laurila: Why do you play baseball?

Austin Jackson: I play baseball, basically, because I’ve always played baseball. I had an older brother that played and I think that’s a big part of why I started playing. Growing up, I mostly played it for fun; it was something I enjoyed as a kid. I started getting a little more serious when I was in high school, because I realized I actually had a chance to make a profession out of this.

I had another sport and kind of swam my decision of whether to enter pro baseball or go to college and play both basketball and baseball. That was a tough decision coming out of high school — as an 18-year-old — to choose to make a little money and do something you love, or go to college and see which way that takes you.

DL: Does being African American impact that type of decision?

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Whether he’s offering a strong opinion or he’s waxing philosophical, Chili Davis is always engaging. The former slugger can hold court on any number of subjects — he was born in Jamaica and coached in Australia — but when the topic is his 19-year big-league career (1981 to 1999), thought-provoking pearls are a given. That is especially true when a conversation about hitting morphs into an examination of doctored baseballs — Nolan Ryan cheated? — and bias in hall-of-fame and MVP voting.

Davis, a career .274/.360.451 hitter with 350 home runs, is coaching in the Red Sox system. This interview was excerpted from a conversation about hitting philosophy.

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David Laurila: Who did you least like to face? For instance, Ryne Sandberg told me that the pitcher who gave him the most trouble was Larry Andersen.

Chili Davis: Well, Larry cheated. Ryno probably wouldn’t say that, but later in Larry’s career, he cut the ball up. He taught Mike Scott how to cut the ball up, and then they taught Nolan Ryan how to cut the ball up. Larry Andersen was a good pitcher before that, but as a hitter, I know he did. The ball moved too dang much.

DL: Another former player told me that Mike Scott cheated better than anybody he ever saw.

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Professional baseball players come from an interesting array of backgrounds, and with some notable exceptions their stories remain a mystery to most fans. That is especially true down on the farm, which is littered with Stromsmoes.

A 27-year-old utility man currently playing with the Double-A Richmond Flying Squirrels, Skyler Emerson Stromsmoe is a long shot to make it to The Show, but his story reads like it came straight out of a sitcom.

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