MLB: Five Pitches That Changed Everything

In the late 1870’s however, a obscure name in baseball history literally turned the game upside down by introducing a brand new pitch. His name was Candy Cummings and we’ll let him tell the story…….(Source: SABR)

"“I began to watch the flight of the ball through the air and distinctly saw it curve, wrote Cummings many years later. A surge of joy flooded over me that I shall never forget. I felt like shouting out that I had made a ball curve. I wanted to tell everybody; it was too good to keep to myself.” All day long, Harvard batters flailed helplessly at the new pitch. The secret of the curveball was his, and for several years afterward Cummings was the only pitcher in the nation to claim mastery over the pitch."

The most effective curveball is the one that breaks in a 12 to 6 downward rotation One of the best in baseball today is thrown by Clayton Kershaw (pictured above). Others like to throw the wide sweeping curve that they aim straight at the hitter hoping he will “step in the bucket” throwing his timing off.

Because the pitch is thrown by “breaking the wrist” and with the natural motion of the fastball, it is generally not believed to put much additional stress on the arm, and is therefore not usually a cause of injury