Until today, I had never heard of a pull-down, a baseball drill in which one crow hops towards a target and then unleashes a fastball from about 30 feet away. It looks like a hell of a lot of fun, though.
The guy throwing a baseball nearly 108 mph in the video up there is Casey Weathers, a 2007 first-round pick who almost washed out of baseball after suffering a few serious arm injuries. Weathers is 30 now, but he got a minor league contract from the Indians in January after demonstrating that he can throw a ball really dang hard. From MLB.com:
“I got really fortunate in the last year,” says Weathers, 30, who battled bad luck and injuries for the better part of five seasons. “I basically got signed by the Indians off a pull-down video.”
I’m happy Casey Weathers is still in baseball, but I’m even happier to know what a pull-down is. All I want to do now is go chuck some baseballs with my friends. We’ll be hootin’ and hollerin’ whenever someone uncorks a real heater.
[MLB]