Tim Ellsworth

Nobody ever accused St. Louis Cardinals pitchers Dizzy Dean and his brother Paul of being the sharpest knives in the drawer. But oh, could they pitch.In 1934, Paul was pitching with the Cardinals for the first time in spring training. He had impressed scouts and baseball experts with his stuff, and many expected him to be a dominant big league pitcher. But Paul struggled during his first outing that spring. Mike Ryba, a catcher with the Cardinals, picks up the story, in “The Spirit of St. Louis,” by Peter Golenbock:

We used basically simple signs, one finger for the fastball, two fingers for the curve, and three fingers for the change of pace. The first inning was kind of long, but we got out of it all right. Paul didn’t have too much. In the middle of the second, he called me out to the mound.

“What’s the matter, Paul?”

“Mike,” he said, “call for that two-finger ball more. I can get more on it.”

Then I realized that Paul had been gripping the ball with the number of fingers I put down. On the one-finger grip, which called for a fastball, he had been throwing a one-finger pitch.