Finger release sequence for fastball and curveball pitches.
- 1 March 1985
- journal article
- Vol. 10 (1) , 21-5
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to determine the action of the thumb, index, and middle fingers in releasing fastballs and curveballs for nine right-handed college pitchers. Micro-switches for the fingers were created by using two strips of electroconductive tape and a ball covered with electroconductive paint. Time data, accurate to 10(-4)s, were initiated by the stride foot onto a floor mat switch. When each digit left the ball, a corresponding timer was triggered with the final channel tripped by a contact switch in the catcher's glove. A total of 103 fastball and 88 curveball trials had complete data for each of the variables studied. Results showed that for the fastball, in 91.1% of the cases, the thumb preceded the middle and index fingers by approximately 6 ms. (p less than .001) but there was no significant difference between the middle and index fingers. The curveball data indicated that five of the nine pitchers had a definite release sequence of thumb first followed by middle then index finger (p less than .001). In total, 72.7% of the curveballs thrown had a release sequence of thumb, middle, and index fingers and 24.0% had a middle, thumb, index finger release sequence. The remaining 2.3% of the pitches had either similar times or odd combinations of release sequence.This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: