Salon.com > toronto blue jays

Is the knuckleball an optical illusion?

Tue, 14 May 2013 18:14:00 +0000

STANDARD baseball pitch—slider, curveball, fastball—seems to slavishly follow the laws of physics, making it possible to predict where a ball will go and how it will get there. The knuckleball is different. It appears to dip suddenly, dart to one side or the other, or—when you least expect it—to float in straight over the plate. Hitters are left flailing desperately at it. On a six-game streak last season, pitcher R. A. Dickey struck out sixty-three batters and gave up a single unearned run. And yet Dickey, who joined the Blue Jays this season, is the only active knuckler in the major leagues. When he won the National League Cy Young Award in 2012, he was the first knuckleball pitcher ever to do so.

Did an MLB player paint a homophobic slur on his face?

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 15:29:00 +0000

Toronto Bluejays shortstop Yunel Escobar occasionally paints Spanish words on his face for game day. But he may have taken the ritual too far this Saturday, when he painted "Tu ere maricon" under his eyes for Saturday's game against the Red Sox. The message is a slur that could be interpreted as homophobic -- the most offensive being, "You are a faggot." Twitter rage exploded over Escobar's "black eye"over the weekend, and the player may face disciplinary action from Major League Baseball.

But some argue that the slur isn't a slur at all. Maria Cristina Cuervo, a Spanish professor at the University of Toronto, told the Star that the phrase amounts to trash-talking: