Pitched Battle

Book excerpt: Pitching duels are the essence of baseball competition--they require great measures of patience and fundamentals, and take the best one pitcher has to offer and give him a loss he does not deserve. They do not happen often, but when two good pitchers alternately take the mound and remove the game from the batters hands, spectators are on the edges of their seats. Those rare games and pitchers get all the attention in this work, as the author provides commentary on the greatest pitching duels of all time. It covers 35 of them, beginning with that of May 5, 1904, between Rube Waddell and Cy Young and ending with the May 28, 2000, opposition of Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens. Other highlighted games include those pitting Christy Matthewson against Chief Bender, Sherry Smith against Babe Ruth, Bill Wright against Satchel Paige, Warren Spahn against Juan Marichal, Bob Gibson against Don Drysdale, Steve Carlton against Phil Niekro, and Greg Maddux against Pedro Martinez, just to name a few.