No such thing as a break in a curveball?

The answer to the question of whose curveball breaks harder -- that of the Yankees' A.J. Burnett or the Phillies' Cole Hamels -- may be neither.

Zhong-Lin Lu, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at USC, along with USC alumni Emily Knight and Robert Ennis and Arthur Shapiro, associate professor of psychology at American University, developed a simple visual demo that suggests a curveball's break is, at least in part, a trick of the eye.

Their demo won the Best Visual Illusion of the Year prize at the Vision Sciences meeting earlier this year.

Try it at http://illusioncontest.neuralcorrelate.com/2009/the-break-of-the-curveball/.

The idea is that the effect is due to the batters being forced to switch between peripheral vision and central vision during a swing.

Source: University of Southern California (news : web)

   

• VOR - Oct 27, 2009
  • Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
  .what a depressingly arrogant and ignorant article. omg that is such total BS. they should be so ashamed. the contrast of the stitches is somewhat minimal. of course curves break. the saddest thing of all this is that its so easy to verify by looking at path of baseball objectively. jeeeeeeeezzzz. they should put a simulation of real baseball color/stiches spining at typical curve speeds in that simulator- would minimize illusion.
  
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• VOR - Oct 27, 2009
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  from http://www.straig...ly-curve "Truth was, the reality of the curve had been demonstrated as early as 1877, when a couple of pitchers--one a lefty, the other a right-hander--threw curveballs around boards that had been set up at intervals along a straight chalk line. (The pitches in question obviously curved more from side to side than up and down.) The scientists who've gotten into the act since the 1940s have used strobe photography, wind tunnels, and other sophisticated technology, but their conclusions have all been the same: Yes, a curveball curves--in the hands (well, having left the hands) of a skilled pitcher, as much as 18 inches. "
  
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• gopher65 - Oct 27, 2009
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  The actual work involved here merely suggests that the curveball's curve appears *exaggerated* from the point of view of the batter due to an optical illusion. Their work does not claim that the ball doesn't curve, contrary to the article's title.
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