An excerpt from STILL PITCHING, by Jim Kaat, available at Amazon.com

I went to spring training with the Washington Senators in 1960 with no guarantee I would make the team, but I had a pretty good spring and I was considered one of the Senators' top prospects. The team wasn't going anywhere. We had won only 63 games and finished last in 1959, so I figured because I could get some major league experience and they could get a good look at me, I might make the team, and I did.

I remember Opening Day of the 1960 season, the only time I ever was in Washington on Opening Day. President Eisenhower was there to throw out the first ball from the presidential box alongside our dugout. The protocol was for players from both teams to gather near first base. The president threw the ball up in the air. There was a big scrum, and Clyde McCullough, our bullpen coach, came up with the ball. It was a big thing to get that ball and then get the president to autograph it.

I started the second or third game of the season against the Red Sox, pitched well, and came out with a one-run lead in the eighth inning. The Red Sox came back and won the game, so I didn't get the win.

About a week later, on April 27, I started against Whitey Ford at Yankee Stadium. In those days, the starting pitchers warmed up in the on-deck circles just to the left and right of home plate. One of my fondest memories is warming up and looking over and seeing Whitey warming up on the first base side. I was only 21, and I looked over and thought, "Man, here I am getting ready to pitch against Whitey Ford."

Moose Skowron hit a three-run homer off me. I gave up four runs in seven innings, but three of the runs were unearned. In the top of the eighth, Jim Lemon hit a three-run home run off Ford to put us up, 5-4. In those days, you didn't sit in the dugout or ice your arm when you were finished pitching. You just went in and took a shower because they didn't want you to stiffen up. I took my shower, and then I sneaked out and watched the rest of the game from the stands. Pedro Ramos pitched the rest of the game and held them, and that was my first major league win — in Yankee Stadium, against Whitey Ford and the Yankees.

I was flattered when somebody told me that the legendary Yankees manager Casey Stengel was talking about me after the game and said, "That young feller throws harder than anybody since Herb Score."

They were talking about how many strikeouts I had in Class C at Missoula, and Stengel said, "I don't care if it's in the Epworth League, that's a lot of strikeouts."

A year later, I hooked up with Ford again, this time in Minnesota, where the bullpens were side by side, separated by a chain-link fence. You were so close, you could practically reach across and shake hands with the guy you were pitching against. We're warming up and I could hear Whitey's fastball — …"whirr…" — it had that spin on it.

I said to Ford, "Out of curiosity, how are you holding that pitch?"

He was very nice to me. He came over and showed me his grip. It was halfway between the two-seamer and the four-seamer. It was sort of a side-angle, or off-center grip. It just fit my hand perfectly. So I tried a couple and the ball went sinking down and away. I threw my fastball like that for 15 years, thanks to Whitey Ford.