Oh, I say!

While I was preparing the previous post, I found an old New Yorker piece on Wakefield and the knuckleball. While some of the references are obviously dated, the history of the knuckleball, the grooming of Charlie Zink, and the backstory on Tim Wakefield are all fascinating. Take a peek.

The knuckleball—also known as the knuckler, the fingernail ball, the fingertip ball, the flutterball, the floater, the dancer, the bug, the butterfly ball, the moth, the bubble, the ghostball, the horseshoe, the dry spitter, and, curiously, the spinner—has been around, in one form or another, for nearly as long as professional baseball itself, though for much of that time it has been regarded with suspicion. Spinning is precisely what it does not do. In fact, a lack of spin is about the only identifying characteristic of the pitch. There is no right way to hold a knuckleball when throwing it (seams, no seams; two fingers, three), and no predictable flight pattern once it leaves the hand. “Butterflies aren’t bullets,” the longtime knuckleballer Charlie Hough once said. “You can’t aim ’em—you just let ’em go.” The pitch shakes, shimmies, wobbles, drops—it knuckles, as they say. Which is doubly confusing, because the term “knuckleball” is itself a kind of misnomer, a holdover from the pitch’s largely forgotten infancy.

Definitely worth printing out and reading wherever you do your monocle-popping deep thoughts reading.

Naturally, I mean on the toilet.

Source.

Rick Vaughn charlie zink, knuckleball, new yorker, pitching, tim wakefield

This past Friday, Eri Yoshida of the Kobe 9 Cruise made history as the first female to play in the Japanese professional league - as a knuckleballer. She entered in relief in the ninth, walked the first batter she faced, then struck out the next.

MLB.com has more:

“I wasn’t thinking about anything other than just going out there and giving it my all,” Yoshida, who emulates Red Sox knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, was quoted as saying by AP. “I think this was a bad result, but the stadium is great and the fans were really cheering me on. I want to be able to pitch more innings and become a pitcher who can be relied upon.”

Yoshida, who started playing baseball while in the second grade, said she hopes to stick with the Cruise.

I imagine we’re still a ways away from seeing a woman enter the MLB, partially due to the fact the sport clings to tradition no other, partially due to the popularity of softball as a girly alternative to baseball. Take this asinine Nike commercial, for instance:

Source.

Joe Blancato cruise, eri yoshida, japan, knuckleball, mlb.com