There’s an old video of the pitcher Daniel Bard that still surfaces from time to time. It’s a scorching Monday afternoon in August, 2010. The Red Sox are facing the Yankees, in the Bronx, and need a win to stay in the playoff chase. Bard, a right-handed reliever for Boston, has come into the game to replace the Red Sox ace, Jon Lester. The Sox are clinging to a 2–0 lead, but the Yankees have the bases loaded, with one out, and the superstar shortstop Derek Jeter is at bat.
Trouble is a reliever’s common condition. Bard seems undaunted. His first pitch to Jeter is a fastball inside. Strike one. He hurls another, hitting the upper nineties again. Strike two. The third pitch, captured on the video, is just shy of a hundred miles per hour, high and away. As he releases the ball, his right leg twirls behind him. Jeter swings through it, and sheepishly returns to the dugout. Next up, Nick Swisher, another All-Star.
Bard is six-four and broad-shouldered. When he stands very still, as he does between pitches, it’s difficult to see where the strength to throw a ball so hard comes from. Not from his arms or his chest: despite his height, he is not imposing. Instead, his power comes from his looseness, from the mobility of his hips and his shoulders. When he begins his motion, his right arm curls so far behind him that, from the batter’s point of view, it seems to touch second base before unfurling toward third as his legs drive his body toward home. Then the ball snaps off his fingers and his right arm whips toward first base; his tongue sticks out the whole time.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 19, 2023-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 19, 2023-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
LIFE ADVICE WITH ANIMAL ANALOGIES
Go with the flow like a dead fish.
CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS
The masterly musical as mblages of Charles Ives
BEAUTIFUL DREAMERS
How the Brothers Grimm sought to awaken a nation.
THE ARTIFICIAL STATE
A different kind of machine politics.
THE HONEST ISLAND GREG JACKSON
Craint did not know when he had come to the island or why he had come.
THE SHIPWRECK DETECTIVE
Nigel Pickford has spent a lifetime searching for sunken treasure-without leaving dry land.
THE HOME FRONT
Some Americans are preparing for a second civil war.
SYRIA'S EMPIRE OF SPEED
Bashar al-Assad's regime is now a narco-state reliant on sales of amphetamines.
TUCKER EVERLASTING
Trump's favorite pundit takes his show on the road.