Posted on 05/26/2017 3:09:00 PM PDT by TBP
Growing up, Dylan Rosnick just wanted to play baseball, a simple enough request for a child growing up in the Loudoun County exurbs.
He wanted to tie his shoes, too, and hold a pencil the right way and button his shirt and brush his teeth. There’s not a lot of guidance, though, for a child with Proteus syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects fewer than one in 1 million births worldwide, according to the National Institutes of Health.
It causes overgrowth in bones, skin and other tissues. Those organs grow out of proportion with other tissues in the body.
For Rosnick, the most obvious features impacted by the condition are his fingers. Three on each hand are overgrown, maybe six inches long and the width of an extra-wide thumb. Great pitchers are often defined by one dominant pitch developed over years of trial and error. Take Mariano Rivera’s cutter, Randy Johnson’s fastball, Roger Clemens’s splitter.
Rosnick has that, just not by choice. His fastball tops out at 65 mph, well below what high school hitters are used to seeing, because his fingers spend more time wrapped around the ball, reducing his velocity. But when Rosnick uses those larger fingers to apply a little pressure to either side of the baseball, it causes it to dance across the plate.
“When we saw that, it jumped out at us,” Champe Coach Joe McDonald said. “And not in a bad way. We thought, what could we do with that?”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
He might make a great situation relief pitcher in MLB.
However, those guys would figure out the pitch and take him yard.
“When we saw that, it jumped out at us,” Champe Coach Joe McDonald said. “And not in a bad way. We thought, what could we do with that?”
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Somewhere a liberal is screaming .... “How dare he exploit a poor handicapped child like that??”
Archive here: http://archive.is/2PGH1 (For those who want to avoid giving traffic to WaPo.)
That’s because they don’t want anyone overcoming a handicap. it undercuts the culture of victimization.
Eventually. But he might get a bit of a career. And who knows what else he could develop. Maybe a slider?
It’s been a while since we’ve had junkballers in the majors.
Aw, horse-puckey.
A 3.70 ERA in second-rate HS competition is hardly “nearly unhittable”
I wish the young man well but, c’mon WaPo, get real.
Nobody ever figured out Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown, one of the greatest pitchers ever.
His right hand was mangled in a childhood farm accident. He lost an index finger and part of the next digit.
Rosnick’s curveball flutters out of his hand, then breaks late toward the plate like a lunging cobra. His splitter runs in on a lefty’s back foot and seemingly vanishes about 10 feet from the plate.
Total gibberish!
Junkballers?? Even being a longtime Giants fan, I have to wonder if that’s the right term for our bullpen this year. :=)
Note to Chris Ilitch . . . the Tigers are looking for a pitcher than can actually pitch.
>>>A 3.70 ERA<<<
It’s better than Justin Verlander’s right now.
A “junkballer” isn’t a fastball guy, but he uses “junk” to get people out.
Good point — The Giants bullpen is having a hard time getting anybody out this year.
If his pitch is so great, why did WaPo post a video that shows everything EXCEPT the pitch?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RddJ8zLV5Fs
Make him transgender, that will solve the problem.
In football, there is Tom Dempsey, born with a deformed right foot and one of the last great straight on field goal kickers who I believe STILL has the longest field goal record at 63 yards (shared with someone who tied it later).
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It’s a lot easier to hit a fastball out of the park than a slowball.
I don’t remember...is the distance from the mound to home plate 60’ 6” in high school? Is the mound the same height?
I’m thinking the constraint is that the ball, if thrown too slowly, will be below the knees by the time it reaches the plate.
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