GyroBall: Tech Watch: Pitch Perfect

Tech Watch: Pitch Perfect
By Davin Coburn
Published in the November 2006 issue.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/outdoors/sports/4199557.html

It's quickly becoming the Bigfoot of baseball, an urban legend born in a Japanese lab and racing across the Internet. They call it the "gyroball"?-the exact translation is probably closer to "Demon Sphere Gyro Ball"?-and it's either the first new pitch in nearly four decades, or a complete and total sham.

Daisuke Matsuzaka, Seibu Lions pitcher and World Baseball Classic MVP, claims he can throw gyroballs. (AP)Five years ago, computer scientist Ryutaro Himeno was testing super-computers by modeling the fluid dynamics of airflow around baseballs. Himeno's deconstruction of existing pitches led to a strange new one?-whirling clockwise as it flew forward, the virtual ball curved as abruptly as its closest relative, the slider, but without sinking. Himeno met with Kazushi Tezuka, who runs baseball training centers in Tokyo and Osaka, and they ironed out the pitch's mechanics.

As detailed in the books the pair has since authored, a gyroball calls for a complex flip of the fingers during release, ending with the thumb pointed down. At its most effective, the pitch breaks horizontally as it nears the batter, as though shrugging off gravity.

It's one thing to hypothesize a new pitch. It's another to throw one. Japanese pitching phenomenon Daisuke Matsuzaka, who led Japan to the World Baseball Classic championship in March, says he's thrown gyroballs. "I have done it in a game," Matsuzaka told Yahoo Sports. "But not too much. Sometimes accidentally." Gyroball theorists point to slo-mo video of Matsuzaka in action and photos taken of his thumb-down follow-through as further evidence.

But all of the so-called evidence is subjective. One pitching coach showed PM a video of a high schooler supposedly throwing a gyroball. But that same student's college coach says it's just a curveball. Fans may get a chance to decide for themselves, as Matsuzaka could finally join the major leagues next year.