the fabled gyroball pitch

[octothorp]

I heard someone talking about this pitch a couple years ago over drinks. There's a great story on ESPN that basically takes the form of the email dispatches of a journalist as he writes to his editor about his experiences trying to track down the truth about this pitch.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=gyroballsearch&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab1pos1

[bluejays]

I'll read the article over later, but personally, I think it's a fable. He probably has some curveball with extra movement that comes around once every 100 pitches and all of a sudden, it's a gamebreaking pitch. Excuse the pessimism, but you would really think that more than 1 person in the world can do the reverse curveball or some scientist would be able to do bluescreen tests on this guy's pitch. Something just doesn't add up.

[kipperfan]

Very good story...took me about a good 30 minutes to read the darn thing though.

[CrusaderPi]

I'm pretty sure it's like the knuckle curve I use to impress people I play slo-pitch with (ahhh faded dreams). Think of a ball that sort of floats along the arc of a curve-ball's path.

Now if only I had a fastball to go along with it that didn't top out in the low 80's....

[JiriHrdina]

Sid Finch had a helluva gyroball, or so I hear.