Sport: The Whole Story of Pitching

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Even an intentional walk is alien to Robin Roberts' kind of pitching. He plays the percentages, counts on his control to put the ball where the batter can hit it, but not safely. "Take a .333 hitter," says the Phillies' Coach Wally Moses. "Well, he's only going to get a hit once out of three times. Take Willie Mays: he comes up about 500 times a season, and he hits 50 homers. Hell, that's only one in ten. It'd be silly to walk him. Well, Roberts figures those are pretty good odds."

The odds would be even better if Roberts were willing to throw a few close ones to keep hitters loose. But his opponents know that he won't, so they occasionally scrounge off him. They step into the batter's box with complete confidence that he will put the ball near the plate ("The inclination is just to say 'Strike! Strike! Strike!" says Umpire Jocko Conlon. "He's so close you gotta watch him like an eagle.") If the hitters happen to be hot, they can dig in and hammer him unmercifully. This refusal to throw anywhere but over the plate has earned him at least one unenviable record: last year he allowed 41 home runs, a major-league mark.

Dainty Switch. A calm man, Roberts recovers quickly from even the most awesome shellfire. This season, after winning his first three games, he was beaten in the next three, knocked out of the box twice. Another pitcher might have wondered whether that inevitable slide down had begun. Not Roberts. One night last week, with his cool and easy motion on the mound and his reckless behavior on the base paths, he beat the league-leading Milwaukee Braves almost singlehanded, 2-1. He struck out ten men, allowed only eight hits, tore home from second on an eighth-inning infield single, slid head first into big Del Crandall at the plate, jarred the catcher loose from the ball and scored the run that tied up the game. When Roberts took his turn again, four days later, the red-hot sluggers of the Cincinnati Redlegs sighted in on his polite pitching and beat him handily, 5-1. There was never a sign of wildness; it was just one of the days when the percentages ran against him.

Such hell-bent base running—something of a rarity among pampered pitchers who figure that their only work waits for them on the mound—is typical of Roberts' attitude toward baseball. He loves every minute of the game. He is a better-than-average fielder, can knock down the line drives that whistle back from the batter's box, moves fast and surely to field bunts. Despite his dainty, mincing style at the plate, he is a competent (.250) switch-hitter. "I'm happy as can be out there," he says. "I enjoy all of it—fielding and swinging at bat and all that stuff. If you enjoy baseball and are out there playing when you're a kid, you can become all-round."

He Could've Done Worse. Robin Roberts began the rounding-off process early. By the time he was seven he was nourishing a well-developed dislike for his allotted chores on the Roberts farm near Springfield, Ill.; everything came second to learning how to play games—basketball, baseball, anything at all. "He never had a ball out of his hand," his mother Sarah Roberts remembers. "Ah well," says his proud Welsh father Tom. "He could've done a lot worse."