Curve Ball... Palm Up or Palm Down?

Palm up is a flat curveball and as Star Says, is NOT truely "palm up"...............

Palm down is what I call a "round-house" curve..........

Then there is the "cork-screw" or "undercut" curve that I (and many others) teach........Moves out AND down..........

Spin defy's the laws of physics for movement..........But works wonders........

Watch Sarah throw it........TAKE SPECIAL NOTE OF THE SPIN DIRECTION..........The balls turns right but breaks left!

BoardMember said:

Watch Sarah throw it.

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talk about "fast and loose"!
check out her wrist flopping all around after release.
pretty cool slo-mo...

BoardMember said:

Spin defy's the laws of physics for movement

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Oh no you Diint! You did not just say that a softball can defy the laws of physics!

Caution-BMs account must have been hacked by Hal...

edited so I can try my GIFFing- looks like bullet spin


so much for that...still can't gif....

Out in Left Field said:

For the oldtimers, here is the modern version of starsnuffers' annoying same old same old tale:

A bunch of old cranky men who pitched step style, with no range of motion or manual dexterity were pitching the palm down curve in the beer league. It often wobbled and floated and matched the bat path right out of the park,never mind all the taped up elbows and shoulders, same as the boys pitching baseball and who had pitch counts. They lost attention quickly and couldn't make it to practice. Best they could figure was to mimic baseball. So a few young ladies (who learned to pitch when they were like 8, unlike the beer dudes) said we can do it better. They had superior flexibility, brains, attention to form, willingness to practice those boring reps, and leap and drags. They could spin the ball better and made their own curve, one that is safer for the arm to boot, the palm up curve.

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Thanks for the story Screwball... er... Out in Left Field.

BoardMember said:

Palm up is a flat curveball and as Star Says, is NOT truely "palm up"...............

Palm down is what I call a "round-house" curve..........

Then there is the "cork-screw" or "undercut" curve that I (and many others) teach........Moves out AND down..........

Spin defy's the laws of physics for movement..........But works wonders........

Watch Sarah throw it........TAKE SPECIAL NOTE OF THE SPIN DIRECTION..........The balls turns right but breaks left!

Click to expand...

BoardMember,

It looks like Sarah's ball is spinning "cork-screw," rotating counter-clockwise (catcher's perspective). How does THAT result in the ball breaking outward on a RH-batter? If what I just said is correct, seems girls who are trying to learn the riseball, but who only generate a "cork-screw" spin are throwing a type of curve ball, no?

Actually.......I have a gif file of the ball spinning.......I'll post it later tonight........The ball isn't spinning TRULY nose forward......

A lot of time the camera makes a strobe effect that makes things look like they're rotating backwards. That video of Sarah was not done with a high speed camera, it was regular speed slowed down electronically.

I'm not saying it is spinning in one direction vs the other, I'm just throwing that out there. Heck I've had kids who I swear were spinning the ball the wrong way to my naked eye and had to actually put some chalk on the ball and have them throw against a mat to see which way the ball skipped just to be sure.

But who knows, I've heard that rise balls defy gravity so maybe she's creating a wormhole or something. She is pitching prior to the Mowatt-Line rule in that video. She's skipping way outside of the lane and throwing across the plate (not to mention the leap). Honestly that pitch might actually be dead nuts straight but it's still going to appear to curve to the batter.

-W

That video just looks like a bullet spin /screw to me. That ball is long gone when she rolls over. lets assume for a minute that the laws of physics actually do exist. I cant even picture how that ball spins away on a right handed batter without going palm down much earlier to get it spinning the correct way. Every tourney I see all these palm up curve ballers talking about their movement and when I stand behind the plate I don't see squat. not saying that you are wrong but its a little like the jumping rise to me. till I see it on tape or in person just another urban legend.

Star.......This is ABSOLUTELY high speed video..........300 or more frames per second..........And "strobe effect" has nothing to do with the spin direction...........



It is a "cork-screw" curve ball............

Speaking of physics.... Seems to me the question is, "Does a ball that spins this way (i.e., clockwise to pitcher) break in the direction the seams are moving toward on the bottom of the ball (away from RH batter) or the direction the seams are moving on top of the ball (in to RH batter), or neither?"