TORONTO -- In Game 6 of the World Series on Friday, two of the foremost practitioners of the pitch that has defined October will duel at Rogers Centre. Los Angeles Dodgers right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto is trying to save his team's season, and Toronto Blue Jays right-hander Kevin Gausman is trying to win his franchise's first championship in more than 30 years, and both will rely heavily on the split-fingered fastball, an offering that for almost 20 years teetered on the brink of extinction in Major League Baseball.

The rise of the splitter over the past half a decade -- fueled by the emergence of elite pitching from Japan, where the the offering is a standard part of nearly every pitcher's arsenal, and the softening on its use by MLB teams that at one point had forbid the pitch,

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