Erin Hooley/AP Photos
When the Cubs’ Dansby Swanson was 8, his dad brought a portable pitching machine home, dragged it into the backyard and rigged it to fire baseballs high and deep into the Kennesaw, Georgia, sky. What better way, Cooter thought, to get the boy to stop demanding pop-ups be thrown to him at all hours of the day?
Swanson, already dreaming of playing shortstop in the big leagues, learned to position and feed the machine himself and became so good at tracking balls for over-the-shoulder catches, his confidence skyrocketed.