The egg pitch looks like something that's right over the middle of the plate.

FORBES: The Yolk's On Him

"It wasn't over the middle of the plate, it just wasn't a great sequence for me, " Pettitte said.

WSJ: Cobb has strong start as Rays beat Yankees 3-0

The egg pitch looks like something over the middle of the plate.

FORBES: The Yolk's On Him

Instead of occurring at a plate boundary along an area called a subduction zone, where one tectonic plate is diving beneath another, this earthquake occurred in the middle of an oceanic plate, where the faults in the crust essentially moved from side to side instead of up and down.

MSN: Why this Indonesia quake didn't spark a monster tsunami

In the middle of the table is a plate with a dozen cookies on it.

FORBES: Jon Stewart Takes on the Fat Cat Teachers

His pitches either kept missing the plate or sailed right over the middle.

WSJ: Pettitte stumbles again as Yanks lose to A's 5-4

Talking today to Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, he feels that the answer both to the issue of alliance burden sharing, and maintaining influence in the Middle East, is for European members of Nato to "step up to the plate".

BBC: UN Syria failure shows declining power of the West

But Pentagon officials say their plate is full with the war in Afghanistan and with permanent military deployments in the Middle East and Asia to counter threats from Iran and North Korea.

WSJ: Militants, Chased From Mali, Pose New Threats