Mizzou Baseball in the Majors

■ How to talk to a pitcher (royals.kansascity.com)

Aaron Crow was walking through the clubhouse flipping a ball up and down so I took the opportunity to ask him to show me his grips. This is a sure-fire conversation starter with any pitcher. You could be having dinner with the queen of England, the president of the United States and Jesus, and if a pitcher was there and you asked to see his grips, he’d forget the other dinner guests, grab a dinner roll and start to demonstrate.
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Then Aaron showed me his change-up and went through three different grips. I asked, why so many? “Because none of them work.”
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■ Scherzer eyes better results, consistency (Columbia Tribune)

When Max Scherzer found out early in the season that the Detroit Tigers were planning on handing out bobblehead dolls with his likeness, he had just one request.

Make that more of a demand.

“I talked to our media guy,” Scherzer said in a phone interview yesterday. “I said, ‘That thing better have two different-colored eyes. Otherwise, I will not endorse it. I won’t use it. I’ll come out and bash it.’ ”

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