Some pitchers would have huffed and puffed and tried to blow Carter's house down - you know, fight power with power.
Not Moyer.
The change-up had brought him from the mound at St. Joseph's University to the big leagues in just two years. He would fight power with a powder-puff pitch.
He threw a first-pitch change-up for a strike. He threw his second pitch, another change-up, and Carter belted it 500 feet foul, into the upper deck at Shea Stadium. Pitch three was a change-up for a ball. Carter fouled off the fourth pitch, another change-up, before swinging and missing at the fifth, yet another change-up.
Moyer caught the ball from his catcher, briefly thought Wow, I just struck out Gary Carter, and got ready to face the next hitter. His concentration, though, was interrupted by an eruption in the Mets dugout. Carter was so frustrated after going down on strikes that he spiked his bat in the bat rack and began screaming over the rookie pitcher's reluctance to throw the fastball he'd been looking for.
It was at that moment that Moyer knew he had a special friend in the change-up. He's been killing at-bats softly ever since.
Two decades earlier, a young pitcher named Jim Palmer had his epiphany with the pitch. He was facing a hard-hitting Detroit Tigers team, and Dick McAuliffe, a dangerous lefthanded hitter, was at the plate. With a two-balls, no-strike count, Palmer knew McAuliffe would look for a fastball. Palmer floated a change-up and McAuliffe bounced it weakly back to the mound.
"That started a love affair with the change-up," said Palmer, who, despite being known more for his fastball and overhand curve, used the pitch effectively during his Hall of Fame career.
As a sporting society, we are obsessed with speed and power. We love big fastballs, hard slap shots, rafter-shaking dunks and bone-crushing hits.
