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Pitching’s Outsiders: ‘No One Wants to Play Catch With Us’

Jeremy M. Lange for The New York Times

DURHAM, N.C. — Daniel Clark sat in a dugout, his head in his hands, recalling the lowest moments in his effort to recast his identity as a pitcher. Seven months had passed since he switched to throwing submarine style, and the transition had been more difficult than he anticipated.

“You remember the bad days more than the good days,” Clark, 20, said after describing an inning in which he walked three batters. “It’s hard to get over it.”

He was surrounded by people who understood — about two dozen pitchers who had come to a camp at Durham’s Jordan High School field in late December to refine their idiosyncratic craft.