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Baseball lore has it that the curveball was invented in the late 19th
Century by either Candy Cummings 1 or Fred Goldsmith. An early
demonstration of the "skewball" or curveball occurred at the Capitoline
Grounds in Brooklyn in August of 1870 by Fred Goldsmith. In 1884, St.
Nicholas, a children's magazine, featured a story entitled, "How Science
Won the Game". It told of how a boy pitcher mastered the curve ball to
defeat the opposing batters. In the early years of the sport, use of the
curveball was thought to be dishonest and was outlawed,[citation needed]
but officials could not do much to stop pitchers from using it. In the
past, major league pitchers Bob Feller, Virgil Trucks, Herb Score,
Camilo Pascual and Sandy Koufax were regarded as having outstanding
curveballs. Bert Blyleven is said to have had the best curveball in the
recent modern era.[citation needed] Other notable pitchers who throw or
threw great curveballs since 1900 are/were, Sal Maglie, Dwight Gooden,
Nolan Ryan, and Barry Zito.
In 1949 Ralph B. Lightfoot, an aeronautical engineer at Sikorsky
Aircraft, used wind tunnel tests to prove that a curve ball actually
curves and is not an optical illusion. (http://www.phschool.com/science/science_news/articles/pitching_science.html)
Lightfoot is in the Baseball Hall of Fame for this work.
Regardless of the evidence, some viewers over the years remained
convinced that the curveball was an optical illusion. Baseball Hall of
Fame pitcher Dizzy Dean has been quoted in a number of variations on
this basic premise: "Stand behind a tree 60 feet away, and I'll whomp
you with an optical illusion!"
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