by Jeffrey Jason Hill

Created on: July 19, 2008   Last Updated: July 22, 2008

In 1907 the curveball king, Mordecai Brown of the Chicago Cubs, a farm boy from Terre Haute with a mutilated hand, pitched and won the decisive game in the World Series by hurling a shutout against the Detroit Tigers. He who had lost parts of two fingers on his right hand in a farm accident and is credited with mastering the curveball better than anyone said: "That old paw served me pretty well in its time. It gave me a firmer grip on the ball, so I could spin it over the hump. It gave me a greater dip."

You don't have to suffer an unfortunate farm accident to learn how to throw a curveball. All you have is know the proper technique. Different from a fastball, the topspin of a curveball makes it difficult for a batter to connect squarely. In essence, the pitch "breaks" on its way to the plate. Also, it's traveling somewhere around 15 mph slower than a fastball. This is the pitch that results in many "ground balls."

The first step is to place your first two fingers where the seams of the ball face down like a horseshoe with the open side facing you. Your thumb is positioned on the bottom, making your hand look like a "C." The thumb is also making contact with the horseshoe seam on the underside of the ball. In throwing and releasing the ball, the pitcher's top finger rolls the seam forward to give the ball its downspin.

When throwing a curve, the pitcher creates a downspin by snapping his wrist down upon release of the ball and rolling the stitching forward. On its way to the plate it frustrates the batter because it drops down or sweeps horizontally at a sudden point, or "breaks." The batter will normally swing above it.

The curveball creates tremendous stress on the elbow and wrist even when it is executed correctly. It is still an accepted axiom that the hardest thing to do in professional sport is to hit a major league pitch. A main reason for this is the curveball. By smartly snapping his wrist to make the pitch go forward in direction, the pitcher is letting the laws of physics take over. As the ball moves toward the plate on a sideways axis, the stitching on the ball rubs against the air to create a high-pressure zone of air on its side which causes it to have a downward or sideways spin.

The pitcher brings his elbow above his shoulder as he hurls the ball forward prior to snapping his wrist. A "12-6" breaking ball will have a downward spin as the raised seams on the ball interact with the air above it to force it down as it approaches the plate. A so-called "1-7" would travel just as you would imagine it would, starting at the 1 on release and ending up at the 7 when it suddenly breaks at some unknown point.

That some unknown point is what makes the curveball so deceptive. And effective.

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