At some point every baseball fan has yelled, “How could he swing at that!” The batter was swinging at a pitch that was nowhere near home plate. This happens at every level of baseball every day. Depending on which side you are on, it is either a horrible decision by the batter to swing or a great pitch from the pitcher. In either case, that moment does not happen without a curveball. Every great pitcher needs a curveball. The curveball is an essential and important pitch in baseball, but what is it and how does it work?
What is a curveball and why does it curve? Major League Baseball defines a curveball as “a breaking pitch that has more movement than just about any other pitch. It is thrown slower and with more overall break than a slider,
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and it is used to keep hitters off-balance.” Simply, a curveball is a pitch that the pitcher puts a topspin on it which causes the ball to take a flight path that dives as it reaches home plate. The scientific principle behind the reason a curveball curves is the same as the principle that allows planes to fly. When a spinning ball moves through the air it creates a difference in the air pressure on the two sides of the ball. The spin causes air on one side of the ball to move faster than the other, causing an uneven pressure on the ball. The Magnus Effect forces the spinning ball to move in the direction of lower pressure. As a baseball player begins to learn how to pitch they are taught only to throw the baseball across home plate in the strike zone which is a fastball.
As they grow and develop, their fastball will become faster and they will be taught to throw different version of their fastball. It is not until around the age of thirteen that little league rules allow them to throw a curveball. What are the mechanics a pitcher uses to throw a curveball? To throw a curveball the pitcher holds the ball with the middle and index fingers on or near the stitching, with their thumb underneath forming a “C” with their hand on the ball. As they throw the ball, they snap their hand in a turning motion like pulling a chain that turns off a light bulb lamp. This makes the baseball spin in the direction of the throw. The stitching on the baseball gathers up air as the ball rotates which creates higher air pressure on one side of the ball which makes the ball …show more content…
curve. There are a number different curveballs; 12-6 curveball, the 11-5 Curveball, the Slurve, the Knuckle curveball and others.
The differences between the curveballs is mainly how the pitcher moves his arm. The 12-6 curveball is the pitcher starting his arm straight up at 12 o’clock and going downward to 6 o’clock, the 11-5 is similar in that the arms moves from 11 o’clock to 5 o’clock. The slurve is a combination of a curveballs combined with a slider. What does the hitter see or think the ball is doing? A curveball leaves the pitcher’s hand and follows an arc to the catcher’s mitt, to the hitter the ball appears to drop when it gets close to home plate. While the ball may have only curved a few inches, to the hitter the curveball will look as if it moved a foot. Researchers believe that the hitter’s perception that the ball drops is not due to the action of the ball but rather the ball moving from one part of the batter’s vision to
another. A Washington Post article gives us a quick story about from 1930, that “whenever skeptics told pitcher Dizzy Dean that his curveball was just an optical illusion, he shot back the same snarky reply: ‘Stand behind a tree 60 feet away, and I'll whomp you with an optical illusion.’" The curveball really curves. How much the curveball curves may perception but the strikeouts are real. A pitcher with a nasty curve is a batter’s worst nightmare.
A bat can bend in different ways. For example, if you were to place each end of a bat on a brick and stand on the bat in the middle, then the bat would bend in the middle. That bend in the middle hi where the ball should be hit.
...itchers who started out by only being allowed to throw under hand and now presently they are able to about five to ten different types of pitches overhand. Several records also have been broken like Mark McGwire breaking Roger Maris's thirty seven year old homerun record.
A curveball can be hard to hit, but it helps if you can throw one yourself. I have been playing baseball for the past eight years in many different leagues. The curveball was not the easi...
The big question for people who don’t play this question is really, what is softball? Softball is a little bit more modified version of baseball but softball is played on a smaller field,with a larger ball, played with 7 innings instead of 9 and with underarm pitch in a circular motion. Now that we know what the basic part of softball is let’s talk about the equipment. The equipment used to play softball is a bat about waist level give or
Many people might think that swinging the bat straight through the ball would be enough to hit the ball a decent distance off the bat. There's many more mechanics involved in the swinging process. Muscle has only a small part to play in the swinging a bat for power. There are two types of mechanics involved while swinging a bat, Linear and Rotational. Rotational mechanics are the dominant source of power in the swing. Out of the rotational mechanics come the two forces that help generate the speed and power of the swing, torque and the other comes from the energy of rotation. Speed from the energy of rotation comes from the path that your hands follow as you swing the bat. The speed generated by the circular rotation from your hands is like a ball at the end of a string, as long as your hands are moving in a circle then the ball continues to accelerate in a circle. So the bat will also move in at an increasing speed as long as your hands are following a circular path as you swing. Any foward movement of the hands or body in a straight line won't add to the overall bat speed.
The purpose of this paper is to describe the softball swing anatomically, mechanically, and analytically. By analyzing each move one makes when...
Every baseball fan knows of the term spitball. A spitball is when the pitcher spits his tobacco juices onto the b...
“Batter up!” the umpire yelled from behind home plate on the diamond-shaped field for the inning to begin. Adrenaline rushed through the players’ veins as the crowd cheering echoed from the bleachers to the outfield. Softball and baseball are team sports which both require an umpire and a diamond shaped field. All players are important. Most aspects of the games are the same. Each team has only nine players on the field at nine different positions. Each inning ends when there are three outs. Baseball generally consists of nine innings, whereas softball usually is played in seven innings. People think that softball is not as tough as baseball because they think that softball is a soft sport. I have been playing softball for about ten years, but prior to that I played baseball. However, the game of softball is on a whole different level. Softball plays require much more speed, and there is a greater possibility of getting injured. The game of softball is more hazardous and fast-paced than baseball.
It’s a Sunday afternoon and the whole family is over at grandmother’s house playing a fun game of pickup baseball until they realize they do not know how to hit a baseball. Luckily it is a rather simple process that can easily be taught and learned.
Throwing is a fairly natural activity for a person. Everyone at some point in time has thrown some object at a person. In baseball throwing becomes an art. Throwing a baseball is a relatively easy task, but throwing it accurately and with a high speed is difficult. People who play this sport spend a very long time perfecting their throw.
Texas Tech has proven that hitting a softball is way harder to hit than a baseball. A softball pitcher is very close to you at the pitcher's mound. If you are in the batter's box it feels like they are right on top of you especially since most softball pitchers can be up to about 6 feet in height. It is scientifically proven that a softball player has less time to react to the ball because of the distance and speed of the pitch. Also, softball pitchers not only throw hard, but they also throw tricky pitches to hit. The pitch that rises upwards is called a rise ball. When this pitch comes in, most coaches will say just let it go instead of risking this pitch. Baseball players throw breaking balls, but unlike in softball they don't suddenly leap up right as you're going to swing at it. Pitchers in softball can also throw a curve ball that curves away from the batter but still in the strike zone. A screw ball moves closer to the batter. Same as a curve ball it is still in the strike zone just right on the edge of it. Softball players throw many more change ups than in baseball. Change ups catch the player off guard causing them to swing and become frustrated with themselves. As you can tell softball pitchers don't mess around using every inch of the plate to pitch the ball and strike the batter
The most common off speed pitch is a curve ball because it has a lot of movement if it is thrown correctly. To throw this pitch you use the same wind up but when you get to the point of throwing the ball, instead of throwing it regularly you snap your wrist to make the ball spin. In order to get a lot of movement you have to throw the ball with a little bit less velocity. It is important to be able to throw a curve ball while pitching.
Throwing a baseball is a lot like throwing any other object. Children grow up throwing things around the house, and it very similar to how you throw a baseball. From a young age, I grew up throwing objects around the house. My father was smart enough to recognize this trend and sign me up for baseball later on when I was much older. To throw a baseball you first need to understand the shape of the object. The baseball has seams around the circumference which are placed around the outer edges of the baseball for added grip. Before we get into the types of pitches and grips, we need to understand the arm and body movement. The movement of your body and arms happens in many steps that follow a fluid form to increase accuracy
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Major League Baseball, much like the majority of other American institutions, was racially segregated. A color barrier was implemented during baseball’s infancy in order to separate people of different race to cater to the white American players. The color barrier was an unofficial “rule” that hindered those with dark skin from playing baseball for Major League teams. The color barrier was enforced by preventing any teams with a colored player from competing at the professional level. Many team owners, umpires, and players justified their opposition to allowing blacks to play by declaring that only whites could uphold the "gentlemanly character" of professional baseball. Others argued that excluding blacks would prevent future racial resentment between the ethnicities, as players of different races would be competing for the same job opportunities.
First off, the knuckle ball. It is called the hardest pitch to hit. A pitch that seemingly floats like a butterfly and then magically drops into the strike zone, dumbfounding the batter and almost always resulting in a strike out. But how is this pitch actually thrown? The name of the pitch essentially entails how the pitch is thrown, the pitcher curls his fingers into his hand, placing the knuckles of his fingers on the ball, and releasing the ball in this manner and fashion. But why does this work? It comes down to the position of the laces. By throwing the ball off the pitcher’s knuckles, the ball exhibits no spin throughout the entire duration of the pitch. This allows different lift forces within the air is passes to exert themselves upon the ball. By doing this, the ball is subject to different planar movements as a result of different lift forces manifesting themselves upon the baseball that is thrown. In a simplistic explanation, this is why a knuckle ball “knuckles” as it is thrown.