The Camden chronicle. (Camden, Tenn.) 1890-current, 1904-10-07
THE BASEBALLS CURVE.
JUST THlRTY-THREE YEARS
~ SINCE 1T WAS FIRST USED.

1t is now 80 years since the question
arose at Yale university as to whether
or not baseball thrown from the
hand could be made to deviate hori-
zontally from a straight line. The ex-
pertinent was then and there tried,
proving that the flight of ball could
be made to curve to the right or to the
left by skillful pitching. This was ac-
complished by the simple expedient
OF placing plank upright on the
ground and, from a point at right an
giles to the middle of one of it's broao
sides, twirling ball to a point back
of the centre of the plank. Since then
1t is accepted as fact by all baseball
players that the flight of ball can
also, under fine handling, be made to
incurve abnormally downward or up
ward with reference to it's landing
place; that is, either in the direction
ot, or contrary to, the attraction OF
igravitation.
The period mentioned was in the in
fancy of skilled baseball playing.
Since then generation Of players OF
the game has grown up, and the con-
!Stant repetition of the phenomenon
mentioned has become so engrafted
with common experience that few per-
sons conversant with the game ever
think that it needs explanation. The
character of the PITCH whatever 1t
may be, seems just as natural to them
as that of the slight vertical curve OF
Thn hall whom Onr rn11ndnH Gin1nlU Of
the forces of it's projection and the at
traction of gravitation. To so feel
about the abnormal curved courses OF
the ball is, however, only a habit OF
mind, habitual experience of any kind
of action mostly assuming, without
approaching, the reason for things.
The average baseball player accounts
for the phenomenon by saying that 1t
is caused by the pitchers giving the
ball twist as it leaves his hand. But
that statement does not account for its
being thereby compelled to move in
an eccentric orbit.
If, in calm one let's fall feather,
One sees that it descends slowly and
with deviation from the vertical. But
let him cause feather to fall from the
top of the inside of the exhausted glass
receiver of an air pump and he will
see that it falls plumb, like a shot A
I body projected in space would proceed
forever at the same rate, and in a
straight line, were not space fall OF
bodies that would attract it. This is
one of Sir Isaac NeWton's laws of mo-
ton. Resistance of some kind is, in
word, indispensable to making NOV
ing body deviate from the particular
speed and course impressed upon it by
it's original projectile force and by the
attraction of gravitation.
It is, therefore, the resistance of the
atmosphere, as we'll as the forces of
projection and rotation of the baseball,
which makes the ball describe curve
to the right, to the left, upward or
downward. The right-handed pitcher
deliver his "outshoot" with much
greater effort of incurve at the plate
than he can accomplish with his "in'
shoot" The left-handed pitcher, in
reversed position, but correspondingly,
delivers his "outshoot" more effective
Nv than his "inshoot" The reason is
that although, in each case, the speed
of the ball for "outshoot" and Gin,
shoot" is the same the speed Of it's
rotation is very different. The CEN
trifugal rotary force impressed by the
pitcher upon the ball, opposed by the
friction of the atmosphere, packed by
the balls rapid duplex movement,
being weaker in the ''inshoot" than in
the "outshoot," permits of less curva-
ture there in the balls fight than is
possible in the "outshoot." In all
cases the ball makes its incurve at the
plate. whether horizontally, from right
or left, or vertically, from above or
below, because friction Of the atmos-
phere compressed by the balls COM
bined velocity and speed of rotation,
retards and finally exhausts its move
ment of rotation at the end of it's
flight. The two movements of the ball
and the resistance of the atmosphere,
forming together three compounded
forces compel the flight of the ball to
assume the form of curve. AS the
ball leaves the hand of the pitcher it
whirls onward until, the qWckness of
it's rotation being diminished by fric-
ton on it's surface from the atmos'
phere, and thereby weakened, it curves
either upward, inward or from right
or left with reference to the plate" of
the baseball field.
Any one should be able to realize
the truth of this demonstration of the