In my opinion, the knuckleball is the most beautiful pitch in baseball. Some may argue the fast ball or maybe a curve, but I would disagree. I love the way a good knuckleball pitch erratically flops and flies slowly over home plate. The woosh of a hitter desperately trying to hit a knuckleball is similar in sound to the swoosh of a perfect three point, nothing but net, shot.
No one is quite certain who invented the knuckleball pitch. There has always been a variety of deceptive deliveries and slow pitches in baseball, but where did the knuckleball originate? According to The International Knuckleball Academy (yes there really is one) “even though the origins are a bit hazy, baseball historians generally credit either Toad Ramsey of the Louisville Colonels or Eddie Cicotte of the Chicago White Sox for inventing the pitch somewhere around the turn of the twentieth century. Cicotte literally gripped the ball with his knuckles; most knuckleballers use their fingertips or, in some cases, dig into the ball’s leather with their fingernails.”
So, what makes knuckleballs so difficult to hit? In an article published by the Smithsonian, it was reported physicists from École Polytechnique and ESPCI ParisTech built a special robot designed to give soccer balls that knuckleball motion. By firing knuckleballs into a wind tunnel and tracking the movement with a high-speed camera, the scientists figured out that the throw comes from a basic aerodynamic phenomenon called “unsteady lift forces.”
When an object flies through the air, it exerts a downward force, allowing it to fly. Some shapes, like airplane wings, are designed to take advantage of this by generating stable, controllable lift. By putting spin on the ball, a pitcher or kicker can exert some control over its lift. But since a knuckleball has very little spin, it behaves more erratically. This erratic movement is what makes it so difficult to hit.
Did we really need science to clear this up for us? Any batter, from amateur to professional can tell us a knuckleball moves erratically. I can attest to this when my podcast partner Jenn throws knuckleballs with a whiffle ball at me and I create quite a breeze with my swing. Do I still think the knuckleball is the most beautiful pitch when this happens?
The answer is a resounding yes. There is great beauty to be found in the erratic movement of a knuckleball, just as there is great beauty in the erratic movement of a thunderstorm rolling over the landscape or the unpredictable forces of a raging river.
Currently, there are four knuckleballers in the Baseball Hall of Fame: Hoyt Wilhelm, Phil Niekro, Jesse Haines, and Ted Lyons. Sadly, I do not know if there will be anymore as I feel the knuckleball has been replaced by the one hundred mile per hour fastball. It seems as if power has replaced beauty in major league pitching. Even though throwing a knuckleball has become a dying art, I do know it still exists in backyards and parks around the world. I will be frantically swinging at an erratically moving whiffle ball in my backyard this summer and loving every minute of it.
Time Out With Jenn & Lisa 