Keywords: Whiffle ball philosophy, how to throw a curveball, curveball arm motion
The other day
I threw a baseball for the first time in a months with a kid who belongs
to one of the players on our Old Man's League softball team.
The ball was so small compared to a softball that, gripping it in my hand,
it felt like I could make it do whatever I wanted it to do: curve,
slide, knuckle, sink, you name it. But the truth is that nothing's
changed since Little League- I know how to throw all those pitches,
but they never actually work. I can make the ball spin, but I can't
make it curve.
I didn't let
on to the bright-eyed Little Leaguer that not only would his pitches probably
never curve either, but that, whether he continued in baseball or not,
he would be tossing no-curve spin-balls for the rest of his life.
That's how most everything in life seems to work: knowing how
to do something and just doing it is only a recipe for success in Nike
commercials. If things were as simple as that, everyone could throw
curve balls like a Cuban national, cook like Chef Boyardee, and pick up
ladies like Billy Dee Williams. Only in whiffle ball (as the
Whiffle slogan says: "It Curves!") does effort plus knowlege equal success.
I need a whiffle
life. In whiffle life, any effort would produce results.
In the kitchen, mixing a can of pork 'n beans with a can of tuna would
yield a tasty entree. At the bars, "wanna play foosball" would be
a line that turned the ladies into putty in your hands. From my generation's
early TV memories of the Dukes of Hazard to the amazing paint-stripping
sponge-things that I saw an infomercial for last night, television has
taught us to expect a whiffle life. Instead, most of us have been
handed not an "It Curves!" wiffle life, but a "Why Didn't It Curve?" baseball
life. And not even an official baseball either, but one of those
crappy ones that just says CHINA
in tiny letters along one of the seams.
Never one
to discourage a youngster, I told the Little Leaguer to be patient:
in time that gleaming-white CHINA
baseball of his will be batted lopsided and scuffed suede-- then it should
be a little easier for him to get some kind of curve out of it.
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