Fastball Fastball The fastball is the most common type of pitch thrown by pitchers in baseball and softball. "Power pitchers," such as former American major leaguers Nolan Ryan and Roger Clemens, rely on speed to prevent the ball from being hit, and have thrown fastballs at speeds of (officially) and up to (unofficially). Pitchers who throw more slowly can put movement on the ball, or throw it on the outside of home plate where batters can't easily reach it. The appearance of a faster pitch can sometimes be achieved by minimizing the batter's vision of the ball before its release. The
Kilometres per hour had scales in leagues and myriametres, but not in kilometres. The Dutch on the other hand adopted the kilometre in 1817 but gave it the local name of the "mijl". Several representations of "kilometres per hour" have been used since the term was introduced and many are still in use today; for example, dictionaries list "km/h", "kmph" and "km/hr" as English abbreviations. The SI representations, classified as symbols, are "km/h", "" and "". Abbreviations for "kilometres per hour" did not appear in the English language until the late nineteenth century. The kilometre, a unit of length, first appeared in English