JUST REPORT TO CAMP ALREADY!:

Unwinding the gyroball: The physics behind the mysterious pitch and the burning question of whether Matsuzaka throws it (Brett Bull, 1/26/07, SI.com)

"It is a pitch with a gyro spin," explains Dr. Ryutaro Himeno, the director of the Advanced Center for Computing and Communication at the physics and chemistry research institution Riken in Saitama Prefecture.

Himeno, who has done computer simulations of the gyroball's movement since the late 1990s, says that the pitch is delivered much like a "football pass," speeding toward the plate in a tight spiral. In 2001, he co-authored the book Makyu no Shotai (The Truth about the Supernatural Pitch) with baseball instructor Kazushi Tezuka. "Tezuka is the godfather of the gyroball," Himeno says of his associate, who operates sports clinics in Tokyo and Osaka. "I just proved that the pitch exists."

Since Matsuzaka's signing, U.S. newspaper stories have compared the gyroball's elusiveness to that of a ghost or the Loch Ness Monster. Graphs have apocryphally approximated the degree of the pitch's break, showing a sweeping turn as it crosses the plate -- a movement so large that it exceeds even that of a curveball.

But Matsuzaka has never admitted to more than occasionally experimenting with the gyroball; often, he has denied using it at all. The diverging opinions of Himeno and Tezuka, the foremost experts on the pitch, only add to the uncertainty. In fact, reaching some kind of concurrence on what the gyroball is and whether Matsuzaka throws it is about as easy as hitting a Matsuzaka delivery -- any one of them.

In the highlights that have been shown on tv, his best pitch seems to break in on righthanders, suggesting more of a classic screwball.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 26, 2007 1:16 PM