{"id":2507,"date":"2014-07-14T05:55:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-14T05:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=2507"},"modified":"2025-09-28T17:13:45","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T17:13:45","slug":"the-vanishing-baseball-screwball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=2507","title":{"rendered":"The vanishing (baseball) screwball"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good feature in this past NY Times magazine section.<\/p>\n

Today there's only one major league baseball player throwing "the screwgie", to quote Phil Rizzuto. Rizzuto would (as any longtime Yankee fan would know) have been referring to Luis Arroyo<\/a> and his screwball – and his glittering 1961 season as a Yankee reliever.<\/p>\n

No reference to Arroyo in this article – but some discussion of other famous screwgie pitchers – Spahn, Hubbell, Valenzuela. The reason the screwball is unpopular: an evidently false notion that it is more damaging to your arm then other pitches.<\/p>\n

Excerpts below, but great article to read in it's entirety if you're into baseball.<\/p>\n

The Mystery of the Vanishing Screwball<\/a><\/p>\n

Earlier that day, in a spring-training game, Santiago, a 26-year-old southpaw from Newark in his fourth season, threw a screwball to the All-Star outfielder Carlos Gomez of the Milwaukee Brewers. His previous pitch, a fastball, hit 94 m.p.h. The screwball approached the plate at 76. The difference in velocity alone would be difficult for a hitter to process, but the clockwise spin on the screwball also caused it to drop precipitously and veer to the left, away from the right-handed Gomez rather than toward him, as a curveball would. Gomez swung mightily and missed. \u201cThat pitch was filthy,\u201d he told me later. \u201cI was looking for it. I had it. And it disappeared. Put that guy on ice, man. He\u2019s going to win a lot of games.\u201d<\/p>\n

******<\/p>\n

Today few, if any, minor leaguers are known to employ the pitch. College coaches claim they haven\u2019t seen it in years. Youths are warned away from it because of a vague notion that it ruins arms. \u201cPitchers have given it up,\u201d says Don Baylor, the former player and manager, who now works with Angels hitters. \u201cCoaches don\u2019t even talk about it. It\u2019s not in the equation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of baseball\u2019s best hitters have never seen a screwball. This spring, I spent time in nearly a dozen clubhouses asking about the pitch. \u201cMaybe in Wiffle ball,\u201d David Freese, the Angels\u2019 third baseman, said. \u201cBut I\u2019ve never sat in a hitters\u2019 meeting and heard, \u2018This guy\u2019s got a screwball.\u2019 It doesn\u2019t come up. I\u2019m not sure I even know exactly what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result, the pitch has taken on somewhat mythical properties. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s physically possible,\u201d the Giants\u2019 Buster Posey, the 2012 National League M.V.P., told me one morning. \u201cI just don\u2019t believe that a right-handed pitcher can make a ball move as though he were left-handed. I just don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Posey\u2019s clubhouse locker faced the corner where many of the team\u2019s pitchers dress, including Tim Hudson. The veteran fastballer had overlapped in Oakland with Jim Mecir, a right-handed journeyman who threw screwballs from 1995 to 2005. \u201cI didn\u2019t think I\u2019d ever see one,\u201d he volunteered. \u201cI thought screwballs were just really, really good changeups. Then Mecir threw one, and it broke like a curve in reverse. That\u2019s when I understood.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good feature in this past NY Times magazine section. Today there's only one major league baseball player throwing "the screwgie", to quote Phil Rizzuto. Rizzuto would (as any longtime Yankee fan would know) have been referring to Luis Arroyo and his screwball – and his glittering 1961 season as a Yankee reliever. No reference to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8337,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2507\/revisions\/8337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}