The Knuckleball

To continue on with yesterday's baseball pitches theme, today I thought we'd look at the knuckleball, which was on display last night as Boston's famous knuckleball pitcher, Tim Wakefield, was knocked around by the Rays' offense. Outside of Wakefield, there are only a couple other Major League pitchers playing the game today who throw the unusual pitch. This is due in no small part to the level of difficulty not only throwing the ball, but catching it. An MLB.com headline yesterday, before the Boston game started, read: "Boston could be in real trouble if Tim Wakefield's knuckleball isn't fluttering"¦"

Throwing a fluttering, or dancing knuckleball is tremendously difficult because in order to make the ball dip, corkscrew, and flutter, there has to be very little spin of any kind. In fact, it's not unusual for the ball to make less than a couple rotations total before it reaches home plate. Making things even more complicated, the ball is thrown with very little velocity (generally between 55-75 mph). So a bad knuckleball is easy to track and swat out of the park, as happened three times last night. On the other hand, a good knuckleball makes the best batters look like amateurs. So what's the secret to throwing a knuckleball?