Boston Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka apparently can make a baseball disappear, or so the story goes. Big deal, many a Red Sox pitcher has performed this trick -- "It's a deep drive, way back. It's gone!" But Matsuzaka does it in a way that can \o7help\f7 his team.
He throws a pitch called the "gyroball."
Matsuzaka has remained coy about his "specialty" pitch. And few batters have admitted seeing it. The Florida Marlins' Jason Stokes is one of those. He swore this week that he'd seen one whiz past him.
"I saw the gyroball," Stokes said after a 14-6 loss to the Red Sox. "It's like a split-finger -- downward angle, maybe runs in a little bit."
The gyroball may have reached Paul Bunyan status. Some have said it acts like a change-up that dips away from right-handed batters. Others have said it acts like a slider with an abrupt turn and dip.
The Marlins' Joe Borchard said, "What is a gyroball?"
Well, Joe, it was created on a computer by a Japanese baseball trainer, or so the legend goes.
It does make you ponder the ultimate opening day matchup: Gyroball vs. Sidd Finch.
Trivia time
What conference has won the most NCAA men's Division I basketball championships?
Read between
the lines
The sight of Willis Reed hobbling onto the court, inspiring the New York Knicks to a Game 7 victory in 1970, haunts old-time Lakers fans to this day. Unfortunately for Reed, when it comes to all-time lists, that memory lacks legs, having occurred before ESPN "invented" sports.
Reed was omitted from the top 10 centers of an all-time list that ran on the mega-sports channels' "Daily Dime."
The panel of "experts" rounded up the usual suspects -- Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Shaquille O'Neal, etc. But checking in at No. 10 was the Knicks' Patrick Ewing, the only list member whose jewelry box lacks an NBA championship ring.
Reed and Ewing have similar career numbers. Ewing, though, won two fewer titles than Reed, as in zero.
Of course, the only three centers on the list whose careers ended before ESPN went on the air were no-brainers -- Chamberlain, Russell and George Mikan.
Note to ESPN (Erase Sports Previous to Now?): Before he was a senator, Bill Bradley had a pretty fair jump shot.
What's in a name?
Headline last week on the Asian League Ice Hockey website: "Nikko Kobe Ice Bucks knock out Oji Paper!!"
Funny, it's usually scissors that beats paper.
