by Sam Brean

Created on: March 21, 2009

Baseball vernacular is an aggregation of hardy words and phrases suitable for the gritty nature of the game and its players; ball talk does not include the word "gyroball." "Gyroball" sounds more fitting of physics laboratory banter, or a nickname for an aging astronaut than a Baseball Tonight sound bite.

A suggestion to a hitter that he is about to face a pitcher in the batter's box who's out pitch is a gyroball, may induce a clamoring response: "Come on, meathead, throw that slop up here." If the intimidation of a high-inside fastball or ninety-mile an hour slider is missing from our hurler's repertoire, his gyroball likely will be hammered all over, and out of, the yard.

The mechanics of throwing a gyroball and effectiveness of the pitch are enigmatic and ambiguous. Two Japanese chaps claim founding fatherhood of the pitch: Kazushi Tezuka and Dr. Ryutaro Himeno. Tezuka is a performance coach who has worked with pitchers in Japan and major leaguers in the United States. The good doctor is a scientist; he applied the physics of a gyroscope to Tezuka's theory of throwing a baseball with gyro-sideways-spin.

Follow closely baseball fans: "The best way to throw the gyroball is sidearm," Jeff Passan (Yahoo! Sports) reports Tezuka telling him, "because the mechanic's-pulling down on the ball's side, like throwing a football, to create a sideway's spin-are more natural." A gyroball can be thrown as a two-seam or four-seam pitch.

"The theory of the gyroball is this: When a baseball spins sideways, like a bullet, it should cut down on the amount of resistance on its path to the plate. Without the same amount of air resistance as a regular fastball, which rotates backward, the four-seam gyroball should not experience the same slowdown and look as if its exploding toward the plate," according to Jeff. "A perfect gyroball should be straighter than the crease on a pair of slacks."

Got that, all you pitchers out there? Boston Red Sox Japanese pitcher extraordinaire, Daisuke Matsuzaka, has intimated, but will not admit to, throwing a gyroball now and then. There isn't one pitcher who has gone public acknowledging a gyroball as part of his on-the-mound success. Testimony of hitters' inability to hit such a pitch also is absent from public forum.

Perhaps the gyroball pitch is a kept baseball secret. Perhaps, as Robert Adair wrote in his book "The Physics of Baseball": "It's part of the fun of baseball. These hooey things and stuff like that." My advice to mound men is "pitchers beware;" heed the words of the guy who started the gyroball hoopla, Kazushi Tezuka: "It doesn't move. It doesn't move at all." DUCK!

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