Like all normal redblooded American males coming of age in the 1970s and early 80s, I was a huge fan of The Six Million Dollar Man.

"We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first Bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better . . . stronger . . . faster."

I, like my other male compatriots, loved the Bionic Man in part because we REALLY loved the Bionic Woman. But that's not important right now.

Wired reports that baseball teams are figuring out how to, in a way, rebuild their pitchers to make them more effective.

Fleisig is the research director at the American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, Alabama, dedicated to improving athletic performance and preventing sports-related injuries. He is also fast becoming the biomechanist to the stars. Every winter, major-league pitchers head to ASMI in droves to be picked apart by the unblinking eyes of the lab's 500-frames-per-second high-speed cameras and infrared, 3-D optical motion-capture system. It's all about finding that little something extra that could mean the difference between playing in the next World Series and watching it on TV.

Pitching, it's often said, is 90 percent of the game. By identifying a mechanically unsound motion in his delivery, a pitcher can add several miles an hour to his fastball or put more snap on his slider - and increase his team's chances of winning more games. So, why trust something so important to the human eye? "My motto is, 'In God we trust; all others must have data,'" says Rick Peterson, the pitching coach for the New York Mets. In February, he brought all of the Mets pitching prospects to Birmingham for a preseason tune-up.

Sounds like the Moneyball revolution: "In God we trust; all others must have data." When watching PGA events on TV the commentators always discuss how players -- typically Tiger Woods -- spend time breaking down and then rebuilding their swings. I'm not sure if golfers spend time at ASMI, but if it works for a pitcher's delivery, one would imagine it would work for a golf swing, a tennis serve, a slapshot...

On a side note, doesn't the Six Million Dollar Man sounds like something Dr. Evil would come up with in "Austin Powers"? One meeeeeelion dollars. Six large is chump change in professional sports these days.