DURHAM, N.C. — Daniel Clark sat in a dugout, his head in his hands, recalling the lowest moments in his effort to recast his identity as a pitcher. Seven months had passed since he switched to throwing submarine style, and the transition had been more difficult than he anticipated.

“You remember the bad days more than the good days,” Clark, 20, said after describing an inning in which he walked three batters. “It’s hard to get over it.”

He was surrounded by people who understood — about two dozen pitchers who had come to a camp at Durham’s Jordan High School field in late December to refine their idiosyncratic craft. They were fellow sidearm and submarine pitchers, apostates in a sport that reveres the overhand throw.

Fewer than a dozen sidearm pitchers consistently worked in the majors last year, and only a handful who threw submarine style. The camp here in Durham was run by Sidearm Nation, a seven-year-old organization dedicated to improving those numbers. It strives not only to help unconventional pitchers develop a skill that is often dismissed, but also to let a group of misfits know they are not alone.