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COPYRIGHT 2008 Natural History Magazine, Inc.
On fields of dreams, the duel between the batter and the pitcher at times assumes aspects of humiliation and farce. And never more so than when a batter misses a pitch, swinging so forcefully as to nearly sprain something. The culprit in such cases is usually either a rising fastball or a so-called drop curveball.
From the batter's perspective, a rising fastball follows a normal trajectory until it is quite close to home plate, at which point it seems to jump several inches, as if lifted by some mysterious force. A drop curveball, on the other hand, appears to drop straight down right in front of the plate, from twelve o'clock to six o'clock--hence its other name, "12-to-6 curveball." Any well-thrown baseball (except a knuckleball, but that's another story) does have substantial spin that can bend its trajectory one way or another--depending on how it's thrown--because the ball's uneven surface creates more drag, or air friction, on one side of the ball than the other. A ninety-mile-an-hour fastball, for example, should...
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