The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1913-07-05
WHY PITCHER CAN CURVE BALL
FACE GUNB0AT SMITH And JESS WILLARD
CAN DEFEAT THESE HUSKES HE'S SURE ENOUGH CHAMPION "
Wind Catches Against Rough Surface
and Gives 1t the Twist.

derful curves during its progress
through the air is that very such
ball has a surface made UP of noun
tains. valleys. craters, canyons. gorges,
plains and other irregularities of the
surface that, when the difference in
size is taken into consideration, makes
the surface of the earth seem like
plate glass.
If it were possible to make perfect
sphere-if it were possible to make
baseball with an absolutely smooth sur
face and an exact sphere-no pitcher In
the world could make 1t curve. The
very best pitchers baseball has ever
known or probably ever will know
could not make the ball deviate hairs
breath in it's fight.
And so while it is partly in the art
OF knack the professional pitcher has
in holding and releasing the baseball
as he throws it, it is also due to the
fact that a baseball has a wonderfully
rough surface against which the air
catches and turns it, that gives it the
curve.
If you pass your hand over a plate
glass it moves smoothly with nothing to
retard it. If you pass your hand over
an unplaned board you can feel the
roughness. Splinters. call them.
You cannot move your hand as easily
over the board. This is the same prin-
ciple with the baseball. There is a
roughness to it's surface that catches
in the air and forces one side about.
or retards that side. This has but one
result, to make the baseball leave its
straight course and in doing this it de-
scribes a curve.
This does not detract in the least
from the cleverness of the pitcher who
can so accurately judge his muscular
control as to make a baseball curve
up or down, right or left, or, in the
parlance of the fan, he throws a
drop or an 'inshoot" or "outshoot.
D. hot ie, no
roughness of the baseball that makes
all his pitching cleverness possible.
Take brand-new league ball in your
hand. 1t looks to be perfect sphere,
that is, absolutely even, and uniformly
round, and as smooth as glass; And
| it has a rough surface.
Put a baseball under the most pow
| erful of microscopes, enlarge it micro
scopically 10000 diameters and what do
| you see? The very thing mentioned
| in the first paragraph Of this article.
! The surface is rough. 1t looks like the
| landscape in the Alps or Yellowstone
| Park, or the Bad Lands or the Grand
Canyon, or the Andes, OF any other
rough section of the earth. 1t has
| peaks, ranges, ridges, valleys, planes
| and poles, guches and all sorts of I'M
| even places, and if the earth could be
made as small as a baseball it would be
| practically a perfect sphere and abso-
| lutely smooth. This is because the
highest mountain of the earth and the
deepest valleys would be millions upon
millions of times smaller in COMPARE
son with the rough, uneven places on
a baseball If either the earth were re-
duced to the size of a baseball or a
baseball enlarged to the size of the
| earth.
| If this were not true the earth would
not revolve SO regularly uron its axis.
| 1t would perform an 'inshoot" or out
| shoot and curve off through space.
In our drawing of a bit of the sur
| face of baseball, magnif1ed 10000
| diameters, it shows rugged mountain
| peaks and deep valleys and craters such
as has never been duplicated on our
earth's surface. The tiniest of germs,
a billion of which might easily inhabtt
/ a drop of blood, would find it SO Ia
| borious climbing the surface of a dry
| baseball that he would succumb OF
| exhaustion.
The air strikes the rough edges like
/ that marked (B) in the illustration.
! This will force it out of its straight
! course.
Of course, everyone knows the
! pitcher controls the ball. giving it the
| sort of curve he desires by his grip of
the ball, his peculiar muscle action In
| holding, throwing and releasing, as
| in E.
! Even the billiard ball has a surface
| much rougher in comparison to its
/ size than the surface of the earth,
and we refer to billiard ball as about
! the smoothest thing known. LAS
smooth as a billiard ball" is a we'll
known smile. For the same reason
that a perfectly smooth baseball
could not be curved, perfectly
smooth and perfectly round billiard
ball could not be made to curve on
the table. 1t would not take Eng
lish,'' as billiard players call it when
they make a ball go forward and then
roll backward, or in any direction just
by the manner in which they strike 1t
with n cha1ked cue.
! This fact of roughness causing 1t to
spin becomes all too evident when
player forgets to chalk his cue and
plays several shots thereafter. If the
! leather tip of the cue becomes shiny,
/ it will slip on the ball. There is no
! purchase with which it can take hold.
But chalk is sticky stuff, and the gran
/ ules are large, so that well chalked
| cue has very rough surface, and this
rough surface of the tip of the cue fits
into the rough projections on the ball
and thereby a ball can be given
! lot of twist. In order to accomplish
! this successfully, moreover, the bill
/ lard cloth nap must be new and
/ therefore rough.
During recent experimentation with
( regard to the kinetic theory of gases,
! a Belgian scientist desired to find out
how perfect a sphere could be made
in order that by the clashing of these
together an idea might be secured of
the effect of the collisions of the
| spherical atoms that make up a gas.
| The project had to be abandoned at
last because no machinery could be
constructed that would turn out a per-
feet sphere artificially, and nature has
no perfect spheres of large size in all
her many forms of matter. Perfect
disks could be made, but a round ball
was beyond the limits of human ac-
! complishme York American.
| Ea OFFICIAL