Club Coops. CO- FOUNDER . He was ranked the World No. Lance Tingay. Cooper played his best year in 1. Grand Slam events in the same year. He won singles at the Australian, British, and American championships and was a semi- finalist at the French championship, losing to Luis Ayala 1. Cooper played on the Australian Davis Cup team that won the cup in . In 1. 95. 9, he married Helen Wood, Miss Australia 1. Upon retiring as a player, Cooper has served as a tennis player development administrator with Tennis Queensland, where he has been based for nearly 5. He presently also sits on the Board of Directors for Tennis Australia. Cooper was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1. International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1. Baseball's 1. 00 Miles Per Hour Club. It's one of those brilliant Florida mornings that baseball fans jones for during the last days of February's brutal slog. And what better fix for seasonal affective disorder than a dose of pure heat being doled out daily at the New York Yankees training complex in Tampa? Three of the game's most electric throwers — Aroldis Chapman, Dellin Betances, and Andrew Miller — are lined up on bullpen mounds, delivering fastballs that you hear rather than see. Boom . At 1. 00 miles per hour, the untrained eye can't track a fastball from the pitcher's hand to the plate. You pick it up halfway there, and in the last five feet it vanishes into a vapor trail. Ten years ago, the only metric people cared about was how far a home run traveled. Now the baseball world is tuned expectantly to the exploits of the otherworldly arms in the Yankees back- end bullpen. All in this unholy trinity can throw 1. For the first time, a team has a trio of relievers that could blow away the side at will, and when the Yankees carry a lead into the seventh inning, something that's almost unheard of in the history of the game threatens to happen on any given day: A team's seventh- , eighth- , and ninth- inning specialists will strike out all nine batters they face to close out a Yankee win. RELATED: The Training Secrets of Baseball's Fittest Players. But it's not just the Yankees who are relying on heat to blaze them into the postseason. Across town, the New York Mets have a starting rotation with the potential to be one of the best ever. Their most potent flamethrower, Noah Syndergaard, who looks like a Norse god and is nicknamed . Clubs all over baseball now have an arsenal of arms that's shifting the balance of power in the sport. Just a decade removed from baseball's nuclear age, when anabolic hitters terrorized pitchers with bombs to the seats in dead center, the pendulum of fear has swung emphatically in favor of the behemoths on the mound. Everyone's throwing harder now, and there's more of that to come. This is the Age of Gas. Preston Jamison is on a mound in Southern California, pitching to save his life, or at least his career. The 6- 6 lefty, who threw in the low 9. Detroit Tigers, was sabotaged first by two blown discs and then by bacterial meningitis that came a few hours from paralyzing him. I couldn't pick my head up off the pillow. I was freezing cold even though it was 1. He's come to Tom House. The stands at USC's Dedeaux Field are empty, and there's no game in progress, just that distinctive pop of electric fastballs pounding catchers' gloves. This is House's laboratory — five pitching mounds — in which young hurlers like Jamison are being taught to channel legends like Nolan Ryan and Sandy Koufax. House is their conduit to the pre- steroids past, when pitchers ruled the game through fear and force. His company, the National Pitching Association, is also the footbridge to a near future when every team will be in possession of massive firepower. House takes his eyes off Jamison to tell me that D- Day is coming, when the average Major League fastball zooms into triple digits. He's quietly become the go- to guru for dozens of frontline stars, household names he can't divulge, because some of them don't want their teams to know. And so they come, in the midwinter weeks, paying him tens of thousands of dollars out of their own pockets to hone their deliveries before training camp begins. Not that House minds the clandestine arrangements. At 6. 9, soft- spoken and with slightly oversize glasses, he looks and talks more like a physics professor than a former big- league starter. 24 Hour Fitness 2-year ALL-CLUB SPORT Membership eCertificate More Than 300 ClubsValid For New Members OnlyDelivered via email. Investment Banking Fitness: How to Keep Off the First-Year 15, Lose Fat, and Stay in Shape When You Work in a Cubicle 80 Hours Per Week. At the moment, he's sitting behind his row of catchers, reading off a radar gun that tells him how close his pupils are to the magic number. There are a dozen of them today, ranging from a high school kid who flew in from New Jersey to men in their mid- twenties. Some will head back to college after a few days; others will report to their minor league camps or baseball's independent leagues. They're all well over 6 feet and long- limbed, with the yogic flexibility to generate torque and arm speed. He loves them all, but has special affection for Jamison, who . His delivery is a combustible mix of power and fury. Because of his height, the ball travels on a downward trajectory — living hell for any hitter trying to track it. Jamison is throwing in the mid- 9. The sandlots are full of flameouts who, despite their talent, were never able to restart their careers. House believes he has the final piece of the puzzle to bump Jamison's velocity from 9. That he's rebounded from the hardship proves he has the fortitude to win, House believes. Consequently, he's cut him a huge break in his day rate and makes calls on his behalf to major league teams. Jamison is dripping with sweat after his session. The kid is close enough that he can practically hear the crowd roar. Another tweak or two, and he's touching 1. The golden age of pitching was from the mid- to late 1. Koufax and Don Drysdale, Bob Gibson, and Tom Seaver, among others, practically owned the sport. They threw relatively hard for their time. In 1. 96. 8, baseball's collective ERA was 2.
The Red Sox' Carl Yastrzemski won the American League batting title with a paltry . The sport had become lopsided and less watchable, so baseball's owners decided it was time for a reset. They lowered the mound from 1. Empowering the hitters, however, was like setting an ocean liner off course by a single degree. Twenty years later the sport was in a different hemisphere. Hitters now had the arms advantage, sporting 2. Anabolic steroids make you bigger and faster and amp your reflexes. Even Punch- and- Judy hitters were creating new bat speed and lift. One such steroidal hitter told me: . Even my eyesight improved. The spin out of the pitcher's hand was so clear that I knew right away whether I was looking at a fastball or breaking pitch. It was so easy, I almost felt guilty about it.? From the mid- 1. 98. Run production rose by a ridiculous 2. Gate attendance spiked accordingly and revenue went through the roof. In 1. 98. 2, the average salary was $2. Home runs had become baseball's sexiest currency. In 1. 98. 7, a record 4,4. By 2. 00. 0, the number rose to 5,6. Six players went deep 5. They were able to use heavier bats and stay on the ball a little longer and obviously hit the ball farther. One- bouncers over the wall became home runs. Ground balls that get caught today would get through because they were hit harder. It trickled down to every part of the game. People say, 'Steroids don't make you a better hitter.' Of course they do. Fans were suddenly tipped to a power stat previously known only to advance scouts. Miles per hour became a stat lover's latest obsession, the new he- man metric. The next steps, depriving hitters of the juice and improving pitchers' fastballs, would save baseball from its death march to beer- league softball. When mandatory drug testing was enacted in 2. Last year 2. 4 pitchers topped 1. Aroldis Chapman. The Cuban is the physical archetype of the modern pitcher, with shoulders as wide as an NFL linebacker's and an explosive delivery. Chapman holds the record for fastball velocity, hitting 1. He pitched for the Reds not long after coming to the U. S., then obliterated the Padres' Tony Gwynn Jr. Gwynn struck out looking; he flat- out froze. Afterward, he confessed how helpless he was. Of the 1,1. 58 pitches he threw last season, 3. Opponents batted . Chapman in at- bats that ended with a fastball reaching 1. I asked if that meant seeing the spin of the seams, and Mc. Cann shook his head. He was talking about the way Chapman's ball literally disappears. You anticipate where he's going to put it and hope you meet it. Ken Fuld, a visual psychophysicist at the University of New Hampshire, told the website livescience. Starters would save their best, hardest pitches for key situations, maybe the five or six moments in a game when they absolutely needed a swing and a miss. Now it's two hours of fury. Not that it matters to the kids who flock to him. He gathers a group of them each morning for a half- hour seminar before the workouts begin. On this day House counsels the players about the true value of weightlifting. The pitchers work on flexibility and core exercises; the resistance work targets the scapula and muscles around the rotator cuff. Pumped- up pectorals and useless, oversize biceps are out . The idea is to be as loose and long as a swimmer from the waist up. Turning the arm into a whip is the first building block for real heat. House's pitchers toss footballs to warm up, and he's convinced that throwing a downward progression of weighted balls — from two pounds to one pound, from six ounces to five to four and then to two — will quicken the arm, as well. The formula is currently shared by most teams, but it was House who first put it to use. And now he's added two more components that separate him from the late adopters: torque and ground- force production, or more plainly, generating power with the back leg. Considering the importance House places on harnessing the power of the lower body, it's not surprising to see a life- size poster of Randy Johnson on the wall in the NPA office. The 6- foot- 1. 0 Big Unit was all legs, and his mastery of the 1. Therein lies the other major factor contributing to the fastball's rapid gain: The athletes are far more powerful, especially in the quads and glutes, than their predecessors. In 1. 96. 0, the average major league pitcher stood 6 feet, 1. A half- century later, the mean is up to 6- 2 and 2. More beef generally signals more velocity, but House emphasizes the synchronicity of the entire body mass, including proper torque (shoulder rotation) and ground force to produce the magic. The thing that has shaken baseball to its core is the notion that these things can be measured and taught. You can affect your gene pool. A big one involves the pitcher's stride as he delivers the ball. The average stride- length for a pitcher is 7. Liverpool Phoenix Cycling Club. Club Run Schedule & Reports*NOTE* Change ** Tunnel meeting place is now LIVERPOOL side.*****Trains to Birkenhead will NOT be available after Jan 3rd 2. For our spring/summer runs please check to find alternative route / ride. Groups. Group A (8. Group B (6. 0- 7. Destination can change on the day subject to weather and numbers out etc. Both groups meet at the locations listed above. See full runs list for destinations of B group. Please contact Arthur or Keith, details on this page. Available online today at Boots.!
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