One of my fondest memories is attending a baseball fantasy camp in February 1999, a chance to spend an entire week in Florida playing a slate of games with my new-found 72 baseball friends and forming teams coached by former Reds players. My coach was Pat Zachary, a pitcher who helped Cincinnati win the World Series in 1976. Pat’s Texas drawl and sense of humor kept me laughing through a series of weekday doubleheaders in which I was the starting pitcher for the morning games. Late in the week I was clearly tired and couldn’t seem to get my fastball by a hitter who fouled off five consecutive pitches. From the dugout I heard Pat yell, “Hey Gieseke, give him the hook.” Knowing that the entire ballpark had heard his comment, I decided anyway to abide by his wishes and serve my curveball to the plate. About 300 feet later, I knew it was the wrong choice. Pat belly laughed from the dugout.

A curveball is a pitch designed to keep hitters off balance by creating downward spin as the ball approaches the plate. It can go by many names – hook; breaking ball; deuce; No.2 (the catcher signals the pitch by putting two fingers down); Uncle Charlie; and nowadays a slurve or sweeper. What you don’t want to throw is a “hanger” which I did back in 1999 that has little downward movement and seems to be served up to the batter on a silver platter. The physics of the pitch is called the Magnus effect with the goal of delivering it to the plate with topspin, creating a pressure zone on top of the ball that causes it to move downward in flight. The most common way to grip a curveball is to position your middle finger along one of the seams and snap the ball downward on release.

The history of the curveball is an interesting one. Many point to Candy Cummings, a pitcher in the 1860s and 1870s, as the inventor. John Thorn, who is the official historian of MLB, credits Joseph McElroy Mann of Princeton University as the first college pitcher who threw one. Crazily, when pitchers started to master the pitch, they were considered to be too deceptive. Harvard University actually banned the pitch for its team claiming that it was a dishonest practice unworthy of its players. Pitchers soon though adopted the pitch as part of their arsenal, since it created lots of swings and misses, and of course strikeouts. As for me, I fell in love with it as a 12-year old pitcher. It was my out pitch, and little did I know or care how much stress it placed on my shoulder.

There are some all-time great pitchers who are famous for their curveballs. At the top of the list is Sandy Koufax, who pitched for the Dodgers from 1955 through 1966. What is often untold is that Koufax was just an average pitcher in his early years, described by sportswriters as one having a great but wild fastball. Until he perfected the curveball. From 1961 to 1966, Koufax had the best six seasons on the mound than anyone in baseball, ever! His achievements include – 3 Cy Youngs (1963, 1965, and 1966); five times NL ERA leader (1962-1966); four times NL strikeout leader (1961, 1963, 1965, and 1966); two times World Series MVP (1963 and 1965); four no-hitters and a perfect game. He was simply unhittable, mostly because he had a curveball that would move close to 20 inches as it arrived at the plate. Unfortunately, his career came to an untimely end after the 1966 season when he experienced chronic pain in his left elbow.

Around that same period another pitcher picked up the curveball gauntlet who experienced much more longevity, Nolan Ryan. Ryan began his career in 1996 with the Mets and ended it in 1993 with the Rangers, with two other stops along the way (Angels and Astros). Most think of Ryan as this dominating, 100+ mph fastball pitcher, which he was, setting the all-time strikeout record of 5,714 Ks. He was also known for perfecting the 12-6 curveball, dropping his curveballs straight down at the plate at a high velocity. He simply overpowered batters, setting the all-time batting average against record of .204. Ryan recorded seven no-hitters in his HOF career, yet never threw a perfect game and even more amazingly, never received the Cy Young.

Today, another Dodger, Clayton Kershaw, is the one most known for having an unhittable curveball. Kershaw began in 2008 with LA, and has remained a Dodger for his entire career. Just this season, Clayton recorded his 3,000th strikeout. His career numbers are outstanding – first pitcher to lead MLB in ERA for four consecutive seasons; a 3-time NL wins and strikeouts leader; and a 2.52 career ERA, the second-lowest in baseball history. His win-loss record is an amazing 221-96! Yet, many see him now as the pitcher who hasn’t fared well in post-season play (4.49 ERA) and now struggling to baffle hitters with an assortment of breaking balls thrown at different arm angles and speeds.

In baseball today, curveball usage has seen a steep decline. The statistics are overwhelming. The overall MLB rate dropped from 10.7% in 2019 to 8.1% last year. Indeed, there were 22,962 fewer curveballs in 2024 than five years ago. The Athletics, making it sort of a no-no mantra for its pitching staff, has seen their pitchers use curveballs at a rate of just 2.5% this season.

So why the huge drop off? In short, it’s all about velocity nowadays. Average four-seam fastballs (throwing the fastball across the seams for an upward motion) are clocked at 94.4 mph this season up from 91.9 mph just fifteen seasons ago. Indeed, they are now used 22.6% of the time, compared to 15.6% in 2008. And basically, almost every pitch in the repertoire of pitches today are thrown at high speeds to overpower the hitter. The new motto on the mound is throw hard for as long as you can until the next fireballer replaces you. Yankees star pitcher Gerrit Cole said it best: “As you’re an amateur going to the big leagues guys are looking at velo. Velo is important and it pays.”

One of today’s only true curveball pitchers, Charlie Morton, received much attention at the trade deadline (traded on July 31 from the Orioles to the Tigers) because of his consistency in taking the ball every fifth day as a starter. He actually leads MLB in curveball usage at 39%. Morton often tells the story of learning the pitch at an early age from his dad, saying that “you basically throw it like you’re re-throwing a knife”. The knife image is way too vivid for me, since I’ve had the wonderful experience of having two replacement shoulder surgeries in the last fifteen years. Advice from your Coach to the children and grandchildren out there: don’t throw the pitch until you are at least 18 years old and do so only 2.5% of the time!

Until September 22,

your Baseball Bench Coach