Uncle Charlie (The Curveball)

Pedro Cerrano: I cannot hit curveball. Straightball I hit it very much. Curveball, bats are afraid. I ask Jobu to come, take fear from bats. I offer him cigar, rum. He will come.

Eddie Harris: You know you might think about taking Jesus Christ as your savior instead of fooling around with all this stuff.

Pedro Cerrano: Jesus, I like him very much, but he no help with curveball.

Eddie Harris: You trying to say Jesus Christ can't hit a curveball?

This week’s entry comes from Matt in Nashville, who wants to know the origin of the term "Uncle Charlie.” I’ll do you one better, Matt. We will not only delve into the mysterious past of Uncle Charlie, we’ll also take a look at the origins of the curveball itself, and the dozens of monikers that are used to describe the famous pitch.

The curveball might just be the greatest invention in the history of baseball (although some players may argue that distinction belongs to the cup). It’s even a widely accepted theory that hitting a curveball is the hardest thing to do in sports.

Imagine standing at the plate with Nolan Ryan pitching and taking a 100 mph fastball down the middle. You step out of the box, pee your pants a little, then step back in prepared to swing for the fences. Except this time, you see the ball traveling up in the zone and possibly directly into your face, and you hit the dirt…only to find out that it was an 85 mph curveball that broke right back into the heart of the plate.

The curveball is why most of our childhood dreams of playing in the major leagues are squashed around the time middle school hits. As Pedro Cerrano famously said in the movie Major League, "I cannot hit curveball. Straightball I hit it very much. Curveball, bats are afraid."

So, who threw the first curveball? That distinction belongs to Arthur “Candy” Cummings. He first got the idea in 1863 while throwing clamshells with some friends when he was fourteen years old at a Brooklyn beach. As Candy and his friends threw the shells, they would fly with a wide, curving arc before landing in the ocean. “All of a sudden, it came to me that it would be a good joke on the boys if I could make a baseball curve the same way,” Cummings said. Despite standing only 5’9 and weighing in at a whopping 120 pounds, Candy became the most dominant pitcher of his era because of his mastery of the pitch. Still others point to Jim Creighton or Fred Goldsmith as the inventors of the pitch, but Cummings is widely accepted as the true inventor and was even voted into the Hall of Fame because of it.

Now that we know a little history behind the curveball, let’s check out some of the funnier nicknames for the pitch and where they came from:

Uncle Charlie – The term was commonly used in citizens band (C.B.) radio in the early 1970s to describe the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Unfortunately, there’s no real reasoning behind the term being used for a curveball besides the sounds of “Uncle” and “Charlie” suggesting a curve. Disappointing, I know. Different spin-offs of the term popped up periodically including Sir Charles and Lord Charles, which was used to describe Dwight Gooden’s superior curveball in the 1980s.

Yakker – Comes from “yawker,” which is a nickname for a flicker, a yellow-shafted bird that flies in a manner similar to a sweeping curveball.

The Deuce – Describes the number of fingers a catcher will usually put down to signal for a curveball.

Bugs Bunny Curveball – A reference to the Warner Brothers cartoons when a character would swing three times before the ball even got to the plate.

Public Enemy No.1 – The nickname that Dodgers’ broadcaster Vin Scully used to describe top prospect Clayton Kershaw’s curveball during a 2008 spring training game.

From Sandy Koufax to Bert Blyleven to Dwight Gooden, there’s nothing quite like watching a master of the curveball freeze a hitter in utter confusion. Still, some say that the curveball is just an optical illusion. Dizzy Dean had an answer for that.

“Go stand behind a tree 60 feet away and I’ll whomp you with an optical illusion!”