The other eyes in the ballpark were on him, Brad Ziegler felt, and that might have been true. Or, he might have simply been a little self-conscious about standing on a left-field foul line at the Athletics' facility in Phoenix's Papago Park, miming a pitcher's delivery without a baseball. And it wasn't even his delivery.
His first assignment in converting his delivery from overhand to submarine, in the fall of 2006, was to pretend he was throwing a baseball over and over, and if that wouldn't make you feel a little weird the first time out in a ballpark full of ballplayers who were throwing real baseballs, well, then maybe you have never failed at anything. Ziegler used the foul line for guidance, to help him keep his mechanics properly aligned. As Ziegler tried to burn the muscle memory of the delivery into his body,
Ron Romanick, then the Oakland pitching coordinator and now the team's bullpen coach, felt it was important to first try the delivery empty-handed, because the added torque created by a held baseball might lead to additional soreness.
"It was awkward," said Ziegler, 28. "I felt like a lot of people were looking at me like, 'What is this guy doing?'"
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Buster Olney
