Tyler Kepner, _K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches_

WHAT ARE THEY, you will want to know. They are: slider, fastball, curveball, knuckleball, splitter (a.k.a. split finger fastball), screwball, sinker, changeup, spitball, cutter (a.k.a. cut fastball).

Why this sequence? Unfortunately, it's not clear. The word "history" in the subtitle suggests the book has a kind of narrative or at least a chronological tendency, but it does not. It makes sense to end with the cutter, which came to its flourishing relatively recently with shoo-in Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera, but why begin with the slider, which did not have its heyday until after W W II? Why is the penultimate chapter about a pitch that has been illegal since the 1920s? Why does the chapter on the splitter, most associated with Bruce Sutter, who pitched in the 70s and 80s, precede that on the screwball, most associated with Carl Hubbell, who pitched in the 30s?

The individual chapters likewise seem to have no particular structure. They have similar elements: an explanation of how the pitch is thrown and what it does when it is working; discussions of the careers of some of the pitchers who were famous for the pitch; interviews with living pitchers who were particularly successful with it. However, it is hard to get a sense of why Kepner presents the elements in the sequence he does. The juxtapositions and transitions often seem random.

However--if you are not really looking for a narrative arc, and if you do not particularly mind that the chapters have a patched-together quality, this is a dandy book. Kepner does a great job of describing the pitches, a very difficult thing to do--even Roger Angell sometimes wobbled in this area--and he is a talented interviewer, getting every subject to open up about his art. Even the pitchers who are not famous for having a lot of personality, like Sutter and Rivera, take on depth and dimension as Kepner talks with them. He brings in material from the longer-ago eras knowledgeably as well.

A great book for dipping into--but not a classic, methinks.