I've often been asked how I became a baseball pitcher, and more specifically, how I came to throw straight overhand. Only a very few pitchers I saw in the big leagues threw straight overhand. Warren Spahn and Sandy Koufax were two Hall of Famers who did.

Well, I was the youngest of three boys, so when my dad (who loved to throw) and my two older brothers, Lloyd and Donald, would play catch at the side of our house, I was the one who would get the heat. We played a game called "burnout." You start tossing nice and easy, then each throw gets a little harder. When they finally pinned me back against the barn, I would grit my teeth and reach as high as I could to throw harder. I threw the hardest straight overhead.

Another question I often get asked is how I learned to throw the overhand curve. (Old-timers called it a "drop.")

My dad had a baseball book, and one evening in our living room he got the book and a baseball and was showing me how to put curveball rotation on a pitch. As he stood in the middle of the room, book in his left hand and ball in his right, he was demonstrating the delivery. Suddenly, he made a full arm motion and accidentally released the ball. It bounced once, then went through the open doorway into the dining room.

We then heard this huge crash when it hit the glass of my mother's china cupboard. Glass seemed to fall for five minutes. My mother screamed, "Matt Erskine! What have you done?" My dad, with a smirk on his face, said to me, "Son, that's the biggest break I ever got on a curveball."

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