The Bronx Stop: A Yankees Blog

He's just one man, one man with just one pitch. The ball comes at hitters on a flat plane, thigh-high, at somewhere between 90 and 95 mph, then it takes a sudden plunge, some seven to eight inches toward the dirt.

It's a pitch that's won him more games over the last two years than any other hurler in major league baseball, a pitch that's turned him into the ace of the most famous sports franchise in the world. It's a pitch, his countrymen insist, that influences the stock market in the world's 19th-largest economy, a pitch that has made him the biggest sports star to come out of Asia since Yao Ming, a pitch that, on this sultry January afternoon in Tainan, Taiwan, is the reason why he can't have a piece of cake...