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Good morning! Clinch a playoff spot today.

If you focus too long on the actual mechanics of a major-league pitch, the physics start to feel fuzzy. Unnerving. A slight flick of the wrist while hurling a leather orb through the air makes the orb spin different directions? At nearly 100 mph? Sure, normal.  Yet even in this realm of widely accepted physics, no matter how fuzzy my brain, was a pitch of legend: the rising fastball. We’ve known about...

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