Clipping:Matthews on the various curves

19C Clippings

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Date	Monday, August 27, 1883
Text	[describing an article in the Philadelphia Press] [Bobby Mathews] hooted at the idea now prevalent that some pitchers are able to deliver an “up-and-down” curve, a “zig-zag” and a double curve. “It is all a mistake,” says Matthews. “I never saw but one curve, and never made any more. Of course, a ball will shoot in a little distance, but you can't call it a curve, because you can't hold that kind of a ball so as to make a curve out of it. The only genuine curve is the one which turns out from the batsman, but after two or three of that kind a straight balol, if it is properly pitched, looks as if it was turning the other way. 'Drop' balls, or balls which apparently shoot or curve downward, are all deceptive work, and are thrown from the highest start the rules allow. Risign balls are the same thing—started from as near the ground as possible and pitched upward. 'Slowed' balls are started slow, with an apparently fast flourish, for if they were ever started fast I don't know what skill could hold them back, and, as to balls which go both in and out, why that is a manifest impossibility. I know there have been several tests made of that, on particularly at Cincinnati, where four posts were put up, and the pitcher required to make the ball go on one side of one and the other side of the next, but I don't think he did it. If he did, it was through some decpeiton in regard to the place where he was standing. No, sir. Good, straight pitching, thorough command over the ball, a good out 'curve' and a good in 'shoot' are what the great pitchers are working with to-day, and I, for my part, don't believe in any thing else.
Source	Cincinnati Enquirer
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Submitted by	Richard Hershberger
Origin	Initial Hershberger Clippings

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