Each chapter highlights a different pitch, from the blazing fastball to the fluttering knuckleball to the slippery spitball. In K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches, Tyler Kepner traces the colorful stories and fascinating folklore behind the ten major pitches. From the earliest days of the game, when Candy Cummings dreamed up the curveball while flinging clamshells on a Brooklyn beach, pitchers have never stopped innovating. Each pitch has its own history, evolving through the decades as the masters pass it down to the next generation. We can grip it and hold it so many different ways, and even the slightest calibration can turn an ordinary pitch into a weapon to thwart the greatest hitters in the world. From The New York Times baseball columnist, an enchanting, enthralling history of the national pastime as told through the craft of pitching, based on years of archival research and interviews with more than three hundred people from Hall of Famers to the stars of today.Media Sponsor for the event is GOOD Morning Wilton. Books will be available for purchase and signing courtesy of Elm Street Books, New Canaan. See the library’s online registration link for more details. There is no charge to attend, but registration is highly recommended.

He joined The New York Times in 2000, covering the Mets for two seasons, the Yankees for eight, and serving as the national baseball writer since 2010.

He attended Vanderbilt University on the Grantland Rice/Fred Russell sportswriting scholarship, then covered the Angels and the Mariners. Kepner, who lives in Wilton, started covering baseball as a teenager, interviewing players for a homemade magazine that was featured in The New York Times in 1989. Kepner has found that pitchers almost always love to talk about their craft: 18 of the 25 pitchers with the most strikeouts in the history of the sport have shared their perspectives with him, including Nolan Ryan, Steve Carlton, Bob Gibson, Randy Johnson, and Pedro Martinez. From New York Timesnational baseball writer Tyler Kepner comes K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches – a deep dive into the stories, stats, folklore, and nostalgia behind America’s pastime told through vivid anecdotes and insights, examining the fastball, the curveball, the changeup, the slider, the cutter, the sinker, the splitter, the knuckleball, the screwball, and the spitball.

K by Tyler Kepner