Here’s the Pitch …

A troubling controversy has been stirred up again, threatening to spoil the World Series, showcase of Major League Baseball—a curveball doesn’t curve. It only looks that way because of a batter’s vision and perception.

Zhong-Lin Lu, a neurologist at USC, is the latest participant in the fray, saying that the ball hardly moves at all … but the batter perceives it as dropping  precipitously. Lu is a specialist in visual motion and perception.

This debate has held baseball in thrall for a century. The sides as they line up: It curves because of aerodynamics and physics and depends on where the pitcher places his fingers on the seams of the baseball; it only seems to curve; and, maybe it curves and maybe it doesn’t. At least no one is taking on Bill Nye the Science Guy on the subject of “Dice-K has a gyroball that is unhittable.”

Lu basically is saying: It’s all in your head. What batters “see” is not at all what happens.

Early this season, the Associated Press dispatched its baseball reporter to get to the bottom of this. Arthur Shapiro, a psychology professor at Bucknell, an expert in the field of visual sciences, and a self-proclaimed die-hard Mets fan, told Ben Walker:  “There's something physical about it and something illusory about it.

"They look like they jump or break or do all these funky things, but they don't. The idea that the bottom falls out isn't so. I'm not saying curveballs don't curve. I emphasize that, yes, they curve. They just do so at a more gradual rate. Instead of making a sudden hook, they would form a really big circle."

Well, he took a big swing and covered all the bases.

Shapiro partnered Zhong-Lin Lu (yes, Zhong-Lin Lu at USC) and a couple of former students. Their beloved teams were not given.

Lu swings for the fences:  It’s all how a batter sees the pitch. A “slight curving trajectory” takes the ball into the batter’s peripheral vision and that shift makes him “see” the ball as breaking down, in or out.

“The greater your eyes move away from the ball, the greater the curve,” he says, careful to touch ’em all.

Lu and Shapiro developed a graphic demonstration of their hypothesis, and it won an award at the Vision Sciences Society meeting. You can test the video pitch for yourself.

This meeting was held in Naples, Fla., a hotbed of that illusion known as “spring training.” As in: The Chicago Cubs new owner just announced that the Cubs will win the World Series. He just didn’t say when.