Two of my favorite stories from Ken Burns' marathon BASEBALL series are the following, from Mickey Mantle and Bill Lee.
Mantle was talking about sitting next to Ted Williams at an all-star game, "and he started talkin' to me about hitting... and he's wantin' to know if I used my bottom hand when I'm hittin' lefthanded... do I pull the bat with this hand or guide it with this one... which is your strong hand... and he's tellin' me all this stuff about hittin'... and after I left the all-star game I went 0-for-30 or something like that, because I was trying to think of things that he told me to do."
And when asked "What is your best pitch?" Lee's response was as follows:
"My best pitch is a strike... a sinking fastball, which you grip like this (grips ball with first two fingers between seams) so you get only two seams into it, and then if you turn your hand a little bit like this (turns his wrist out slightly) the wind pushes here (points to seam on front of ball) and forces it down and away from a righthanded hitter. Thereby he thinks it's a good pitch, but at the last minute it sinks, he hits the top half of the ball and hits a grounder to Burleson, Burleson picks it up, throws it to Yastrzemski, one away.
"You do that 27 times in a ballgame and make perfect sinkers, you'll get 27 outs... unless the hitters are smart, and then what they do... they know it's a sinker, so they get up and they drive the ball to right-centerfield, between Lynn and Evans, and that's called a double... and then the pitcher has to run behind third base and back it up... and hopefully they get the guy out at third, or it's a triple... and then you've got a runner at third and less than two outs... so they bring the infield in, and you don't want them to hit a sinker now... you gotta strike 'em out... so then you go to a cross-seam fastball.
"Which I don't have."
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