Verducci: The curveball’s resurgence is changing starting pitching
From Tom Verducci at Sports Illustrated on May 23, 2017:
The break of a well-thrown curveball holds illusory power. All pitches pass from a hitter’s central vision—two eyes tracking its path—to his peripheral vision as the ball gets closer to the plate. (Pitches move too fast and too near for central vision to track it all the way to the bat.) The curve moves the most just as it passes from a hitter’s central vision to his peripheral vision, which means the hitter swings at where he thinks the pitch is headed, not where it actually is.
The derivation of Uncle Charlie is unclear, but more easily understood nicknames for the curve are “bender,” “hook,” “unfair one,” and “deuce” (in honor of the universal two-finger signal from the catcher). Less obvious are two nicknames derived from the Northern flicker (Colaptes auratus), a woodpecker with a curveball-like swooping path to its prey: yellowhammer (the bird’s nickname) and yakker (derived from yawker, another term for the bird).
Legendary baseball announcer Vin Scully added to the curveball lexicon on March 9, 2008, when the Dodgers brought a 19-year-old minor league pitcher into a spring training game in Vero Beach, Fla. The pitcher caught Boston first baseman Sean Casey looking at such a rainbow of a pitch for strike three that Scully gushed, “Oh, what a curveball! Holy mackerel. He just broke off Public Enemy No. 1.” It was most viewers’ first introduction to the frightful plunge of the Clayton Kershaw curve, a classic 12-to-6.
Read the full article here: https://www.si.com/mlb/2017/05/23/curveball-clayton-kershaw-lance-mccullers
Originally published: May 23, 2017. Last Updated: May 23, 2017.