How To Throw A Changeup

Do you love baseball but feel that your opponent hitter is too well versed with the trick of the trade and can overpower your weak point in an instant? Baseball is a beautiful sport that is preferred by many schoolboys. Some even feel more passionate towards the game than conventional popular sports like soccer, basketball, tennis or hockey. Those who interpret this sport as unchallenging are widely mistaken. Perch yourself on a seat of a baseball field during any match and watch the players brimming with inexorable zeal in their stance. The adrenaline rush it arouses is indeed paranormal. However, nothing good comes easy. It takes a commendable amount of skill and effort to be a good baseball player. It certainly isn’t a piece of cake for every baseball fanatic to qualify for the school’s baseball league. That is the principle of life. While a few individuals steal the spotlight, the rest of us have to sit back, be the audience and hurl biased comments from our seats. Nevertheless, if you feel strongly about your proficiency in the game, master the art of throwing change-ups. Since good hitters will catch up to a fastball sooner or later, changeup is the next best technique to employ. Follow this article to learn how to throw a changeup.

Throwing A Changeup

Three-Fingered Changeup

• Practice your grip before putting on the gloves.
• Grasp the ball against your palm. Ensure that your index, middle and ring finger clasp the widest portion of the ball. These fingers should be placed on top while your little finger and thumb are essentially underneath. This is very similar to the technique of holding a four-seam fastball.
• Join the tips of your pinkie finger and thumb together as you rest the ball on your palm with the remaining three fingers gripping the ball tight.
• It is important that the circle formation between the index finger and thumb is comfortable.
• With all your five fingers, exert equal pressure on the ball and constrict your wrist.
• When you put on your gloves and repeat the above steps, keep this strong grip concealed in your glove. Be discreet so as to not reveal the pitch that the hitter is about to be confronted with.
• Get into the groove as you gear up for the windup. Do not forget to calmly spin around and shift the body weight borne by your back foot forward toward home plate.
• Imitate the gesture of scratching a blackboard as you release the pitch and throw the ball straight down. Ensure that the ball spins around at a decent speed and hits the brakes as it lands on the bat of the hitter.
• At the end of the pitch, stand with your feet parallel to one another while the throwing arm should come across the front of your body.

• Repeat the same grip employed for the three-fingered changeup. Except this time, the index finger and thumb should be joined together in a circle on the side of the ball.
• Tuck the nail of the index finger under the lower joint of the thumb.
• Make sure the little finger is not touching the thumb.
• Wind up, pivot, release and follow through.
• Throw it just like a fastball, with the same arm speed and release point.