www.fastpitch-mechanics.org

"Because it's there..."

Why www.fp-m.org??

A Quote From George Leigh Mallory

"In March 1923, in an interview with The New York Times, the British mountaineer George Leigh Mallory was asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, and replied, 'Because it's there'. The answer became famous, not least because Mallory himself was lost on Everest in the following year. It was sometimes suggested that he and his fellow-climber Andrew Irvine, who were last seen 'going strong for the summit', might in fact have reached it before their deaths, but there was no proof."

George Leigh Mallory's "because it's there" is, in my opinion, another way of saying that we all need challenges to feel "alive". Which pretty much sums up why www.fp-m.org and her sister sites www.hitting-mechanics.org and www.pitching-mechanics.org. The challenge is to do what no one else has done i.e. understand and explain how the body optimally swings and throws.

"In May 1999, 75 years later, the body of George Mallory was found on Everest, and the press coverage surrounding the
discovery focused again on Mallory's 'Because it's there' as a statement summarizing the mountaineer's reasons for
climbing. One such report quoted from Robert William Service's `Dauntless Quest', which was inspired by Mallory's
words:

Why seek to scale Mount Everest,
Queen of the Air,
Why strive to crown that cruel crest
And deathward dare?
Said Mallory of dauntless quest
`Because it's there.'"

Over these past 10 place years I've been involved with the baseball "community" learned that 99.9% of what is believed to be good "mechanics" is in reality opinion, folklore, tradition, hand me downs, with a little bit of science mixed in. It's also called "culture". And as many of you know culture is almost impossible to change (at least in the short-term). In essence it is this "culture" that is the "Mount Everest" of swing and throwing instruction. It is my hope that softball fast pitch mechanics is more like "Pikes Peak" as opposed to Mount Everest with respect to the difficulties associated with those involved with fast pitch softball understanding and accepting something "new" (good factual information).

"The finding of Mallory's body reignited the question of whether or not he or Irvine had reached the summit. If they had, this would have predated Edmund Hillary's achievement by 29 years - although Mallory's son John Mallory took an objective view of the implications:

'To me the only way you achieve a summit is to come back alive. The job is half done if you don't get down again.'"

Only time will tell whether the job here is half done or "we come back alive...."

Paul Nyman