Pitch (baseball)
in baseball, the act of throwing the ball toward the home plate to start play
In baseball, a pitch is the throwing of a baseball from the pitcher to a batter at home plate. The term comes from the Knickerbocker Rules. Originally, the ball had to be thrown underhand, much like pitching in horseshoes. Overhand pitching was not allowed in baseball until 1884.
The biomechanics of pitching have been studied extensively. The phases of pitching include the windup, early cocking, late cocking, early acceleration, late acceleration, deceleration, and follow-through.
Pitchers throw a variety of pitches, the easiest and most common pitch being the four-seam fastball. Each type has a slightly different velocity, trajectory, movement, hand position, wrist position and/or arm angle. These variations are intended to confuse the batter and ultimately aid the defensive team in getting the batter or baserunners out. To obtain variety and enhance defensive strategy, the pitcher manipulates the grip on the ball at the point of release.
“Pitch (baseball)” enters the record as in baseball, the act of throwing the ball toward the home plate to start play. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Pitch, baseball and throwing can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1063937. The Library of Congress control number is sh85102497. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1884.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pitch (baseball)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.