{"id":154,"date":"2009-11-01T18:29:33","date_gmt":"2009-11-02T00:29:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2009\/11\/01\/091101_curveball\/"},"modified":"2009-11-01T18:29:33","modified_gmt":"2009-11-02T00:29:33","slug":"091101_curveball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2009\/11\/01\/091101_curveball\/","title":{"rendered":"The Anatomy of a Curve Ball"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In honor of the World Series (which I understand is being contested now between two teams indistinguishable from Yankees, regardless of what they&#8217;re called, and thus is of absolutely no consequence to your scribe) <a href=\"http:\/\/twistedsifter.com\/2009\/07\/optical-illusion-of-the-year-the-break-of-a-curveball\/\" title=\"Twisted Sifter\">here&#8217;s an analysis of why a well-pitched curve ball is the stuff of batters&#8217; nightmares<\/a>. The animated visual is particularly remarkable.<\/p>\n<p>The linked post postulates that there are two aspects of a curve ball that confound batters. There is an actual physical phenomenon that causes the ball to move along a non-straight route, but its trickiness is compounded by a perceptual trick that exaggerates the effect for batters. I wonder if the better hitters are able to either compensate for or completely overcome this perceptual &#8220;puzzle.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I wouldn&#8217;t know, personally, because the curve ball is only one of a long list of pitches I cannot now and never could hit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In honor of the World Series (which I understand is being contested now between two teams indistinguishable from Yankees, regardless of what they&#8217;re called, and thus is of absolutely no consequence to your scribe) here&#8217;s an analysis of why a well-pitched curve ball is the stuff of batters&#8217; nightmares. The animated visual is particularly remarkable.&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2009\/11\/01\/091101_curveball\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Anatomy of a Curve Ball<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","category-sports","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}