Lower seams on the baseball have forced Tanaka, at age 30, to go back to the drawing board on his signature pitch. By James Wagner It was the split-finger fastball that helped Masahiro Tanaka become a ...

GOODYEAR, Ariz. — A decade ago, on a dusty baseball diamond in Puerto Rico, a veteran pitcher shared with Fernando Cruz the secrets of throwing a splitter, a pitch treated like a black-market product, ...