For Baseball Fans

The pitcher is considered the key player on a baseball team. His value is based on his ability to balance the supposed three variables governing the tossing of a baseball across the 60-foot gap separating his release point from home plate — velocity, location, and “stuff”. Velocity and location are today easily measured (and nowadays magically displayed after each pitch on a TV screen). “Stuff” is immortalized in the tales of legendary pitchers, long-suffering broken-fingered catchers, sharp-eyed umpires, and bewildered batters. There is an extensive lexicon to describe what the ball appears to be doing during that brief flight (about four tenths of a second). It “breaks at the last minute”, “tails away”, “drops off the table”, “hops”, “sinks”, “cuts” and performs many more bewildering maneuvers. They may all be included under the general heading, “curves”, to describe any deviation from a straight line. Curveballs are supposedly created by the spin the pitcher imparts to the ball as he releases it, similar to the “topspin” and the “drop” in tennis and the “hook” or “slice” in golf. Its rotation as it moves through the air is said to subject it to unequal lateral or vertical pressures according to Bernouilli’s principle. (He discovered that pressure on a surface varies with the speed of the fluid flow over it, thus the pressure on the side of the ball spinning in the same direction as its trajectory will be lower and cause the ball to move in the opposite direction). Conversation about the varieties of curves made possible by this phenomenon have fascinated fans, filled the columns of sportswriters, and the pockets of professional pitchers since the game was invented.

The question of whether the curveball actually exists was debated as early as 1877, when a three-man expert commission appointed by the Cincinnati Inquirer was unable to agree about it. In those days the only available evidence was anecdotal, gathered from people with an obvious interest in keeping the topic alive. In 1941, with the development of stroboscopic photography (making possible split-second images of rapidly moving objects on photographic film by using brief flashes of light instead of a shutter) LIFE magazine conceived the idea of assigning Gjon Mili, a pioneer of that art, to settle the controversy. Mr Mili set up two cameras, one above, and one to the side of, the path between the pitcher’s rubber and home plate, and LIFE engaged two of the foremost curveballers of that era — Cy Blanton of the Philadelphia Phillies and Carl Hubbell of the New York Giants — to demonstrate their skills. The results were unequivocal : no matter what the pitchers themselves or the eyewitnesses “saw” the cameras detected no deviation from a straight line in any pitch except for that seen (in the side view camera) by the unvarying 32-feet per second per second descent caused by gravity. Not content with photographic evidence alone, the experimenters built a wind tunnel and a baseball impaled on the shaft of a variable-speed electric motor, to show that no human being could possess enough power in his arm or wrist to create the amount of spin that would be required to cause Mr Bernouilli’s principle to come into play. The ball was just too heavy and the velocity too low for it to happen. Furthermore, there is no theory in Physics that would allow a thrown ball to behave any differently as it neared the plate than it had been behaving all along the way there.

So what was, and still is, going on? Our 12-year-olds continue to practice “upshoots” and “inshoots” and our 20-million-dollar-a-year professional pitchers continue to talk of the differences between “two-seamers” and “four-seamers” and “cutters” and our professional hitters continue to recount how pitches “dove for the corner”, or “broke just as it reached the plate”, or “really had some hop”. Go stand in a batter’s box yourself and let your buddy throw you his best screwball and you will very likely in fact “see” it curve or dive or hop according to prediction, if not as markedly as Mr Blanton’s or Mr Hubble’s professional versions might. What to make of that?

Call an ophthalmologist. He will explain to you that the “seeing-est” part of the eye is the fovea, an extremely small area in the very center of the retina where the sharpest image is formed. It is this part of the batter’s eye that first focuses on the ball as it leaves the pitcher’s hand. The ball seems to him to be coming very nearly straight-on at that point and therefore remains centered in the fovea as it gets closer until (unless it is destined to hit him squarely between the eyes) it suddenly seems to swerve as its image leaves the exact center of the fovea. There is a tiny time lag as this takes place, and it is this time lag that is interpreted by the brain as a change in behavior — a “drop”, a curve, or a “break”. The ball appears to change direction as its image fails to continue directly toward the batter, but reports that it will be somewhere out over the plate. Especially if the interpreting brain “wants” to see it that way. Any policeman who has ever participated in an identification line-up will tell you that what the brain wants to see it will see, regardless of reality.

What though, you may interject at this point, of the non-rotating knuckle ball, which, owing to its lack of spin, is said to make totally unforeseeable dives and darts as it nears the plate? First, it is firmly subject to the rules of Physics. There are no variable forces acting on it that can vary once the ball has left the pitcher’s hand. It will travel in a simple straight line. The difference is then in the beholder’s expectations. If his expectations are that there will be unpredictable movement, then it will be perceived as unpredictable movement. In the ballpark this may make it an even more intimidating weapon than spin. Real quibblers may wonder why baseball’s experts have failed to ask themselves why, if spin is what makes baseballs curve, a spinless pitch can be expected to be especially unpredictable.

So now that that’s all settled we can accept the reality that the pitcher’s third weapon after velocity and location is not “stuff’ but his skill at the guessing game that constitutes every at bat, and we can teach our 12-year-olds to work on that skill instead of destroying the tendons in their arms by forcing them to perform unnatural motions that will likely deform their developing anatomies, yes?

Well, no. All that experimenting and explaining has historically had exactly zero effect on the real world of baseball. Not “approximately zero”; “exactly zero”. There is too much history, legend, and fame invested on the old beliefs. (Not to speak of too many dollars in the salaries of pitchers and their agents and the cost to the careers of politicians whose voting-booth support from fans can be jeopardized if they try to resist the blackmail of local cheerleaders for new taxpayer subsidized stadiums, and the ever-ballooning price of tickets.) We perpetuate the myths because they match our desire to be entertained. Don’t ask the magician how he appeared to have sawed the girl in half; just sit back and enjoy the show.

And what has all that got to do with real-world concerns anyway? Why do I write about it instead of about more “critical” issues? What has it got to do with Mexicans stealing our jobs, immigrants sponging on our wealth, welfare mothers frantically producing babies to fatten their child allowances, Muslim ladies hiding bomb six-packs inside their chadors, black helicopters guarding the secrets of Roswell, and global warming conspirators trying to bring down the capitalist system by inventing a boogey man called “climate change”?

Or for the questions of whether Hillary Clinton has really signed a blood pact with Satan to take away all male prerogatives in the United States or whether Donald Trump is just a rich man’s spoiled son with more libido than brains?

I leave those questions for you to meditate. I’m going to be busy with post mortems on the World Series.

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I have noticed something I find unsettling about our current crop of national leaders : they don’t seem to be interested in the future. You would think that after their struggles to achieve the powerful positions they have finally won they would now want to exercise their authority to change the future direction of their countries in pursuit of their new visions. Having taken advantage of dissatisfaction among their followers to upend the status quo, you would think that they would then be full-throated advocates for change. Instead they mostly seem to want to turn the clock back to some previous mythical Golden Age. That golden age usually seems to be one where challenges to authority — especially their own newfound authority — are effectively suppressed, and where anyone who questions authority is severely dealt with. “Make America Great Again” and put crooked Hillary in jail.”

Vladimir Putin wants to recreate the Soviet Union and make Russia a great power again, if not engineer a complete reversion to the time of the tsars. Benyamin Netanyahu in Israel wants to restore the Kingdom of God, where a four thousand year old promise is all that is needed to ensure his legitimacy. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey seems to want to re-establish the old Ottoman Empire, with Islamic law and hatred of the Infidel as the revived standard. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Iraq thinks the plan of the former Sunni domination of the pan Arabic world should be re-instituted. General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt is determined to get back as fast as he can to the good old authoritative days of Hosni Mubarak or Anwar Sadat, or even King Farouk. François Hollande in France insists that his own flirtations with socialism are in no way to be considered a weakening of his belief that France is the only really civilized country in Europe, entitled forever on that account to a seat for its elite at the table where major European decisions are made. Theresa May in England has taken the first step in washing Britain’s hands of the great unwashed and disrespectful EU rabble (especially southern and eastern branches) and reconstituting the old British Empire as Churchill and the Iron Lady once ran it. Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang sees all of Korea as his private fief, to be unified as it used to be under his leadership. Kinzō Abe in Japan shows signs of flexing Japan’s old-time muscles to keep China from gaining too much Pacific rim influence, and some say Xi Jinping may be toying with reforms in China’s rotating politburo chief executives in order to prolong his own position as top man.

Of more immediate concern for us Americans, of course, is Donald Trump, who wants to go back to the time when the white man’s onerous burden was made bearable by the rewards of unquestioned elite authority, and a free hand (unfortunate expression in his case, perhaps) with women. And our Republican Party, that does everything in its (inexorably waning) power to exclude Blacks, immigrants, any young person who has ever thought of revising the inequitable tax laws, immigrants, and minorities from their ranks; preferring instead (apparently) to let their dwindling legions go down to defeat with the Confederate flag proudly flying.

Against this list of statesmen whose vision seems to be firmly fixed on the rear-view mirror, we can still gratefully point to a few who seem interested in exploring the possibilities of a more adventurous future — Bernie Sanders here in our own country, Angela Merkel in Germany, Justin Trudeau in Canada, Youssef Chahed in Tunisia — but except for Merkel they don’t appear to be having much success.

Do these retreat-fixated people have no vision? Is all modern politics, like all old politics, just about who is going to be the next Big Man? Are all the thousands of books written by the economists and philosophers and political theorists of recent generations just ineffective academic scribblings, to be cast aside the moment the possibility of a Swiss bank account shows up on a new leader’s horizon?

The exceptions to this trend appear to be in Scandinavia, where experiments with new approaches to government are welcomed, or at least tolerated, by a better educated and more interested public. Sweden, for instance, is exploring the elimination of cash. All three countries are debating how a new world economy might be organized if there aren’t (and probably never again will be) enough jobs for all the people who want them. The right to a basic income is under consideration. Denmark is starting to question whether old people who feel their usefulness has come to an end should be allowed to choose their own times and methods for a dignified departure. (Interestingly, all three countries have preserved their anachronistic monarchies as useful symbols of national unity, while divesting them of any real influence. A better choice than relying on the unifying power of the Internet perhaps?) They have shrunk their militaries to the minimum (although, regrettably, they have not so far shown any signs of forgoing the profits from selling their unwanted arms to their more bellicose neighbors). They have long since recognized health care and social security and education as basic rights, and have defined driving and firearm possession as privileges to be earned, limited, and regulated. They are, in short, looking at innovation. They have recognized that keeping a tight lid on pressure for reform is a way to ensure that change, when it inevitably does come, will be explosive and disruptive instead of carefully considered.

Are we paying enough attention? How many of the leaders of those three countries can you even name? What do you know about the possible reasons for their electoral successes?

Looking backward for lessons to be learned is one thing; a desire to retreat into the past as Utopia is quite another.

I am reminded of a 1923 New Yorker profile of Henry Luce, co-founder of TIME magazine, by Wolcott Gibbs, one of its more irreverent writers in those freewheeling days when the magazine reflected the personality of the snobbish lepidopterist Eustace Tilley on its cover : “Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind,” he wrote, parodying that publication’s overwrought style. “Where it all will end, knows God.”

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