[Kaliix]

As I said, the ball will not curve up. But a ball can thrown at a launch elevation angle so that it will achieve a greater height after it is thrown than when it was released. You've never seen a pitch rise up and go over the catchers head. Clearly that can and does happen.

Elevation angle...

Originally posted by briancurtin

"Most significantly, I discovered that in order for the ball to truly rise in flight--for the Magnus force to exceed the weight of the ball--the pitch would have to be launched with a backspin of more than 3600 rpm. This is far beyond the capacity of any major league pitcher. High-speed photography shows that spin rates of about 1800 rpm are the best that can be achieved. Thus, it is not humanly possible to throw a true rising fastball. With the ball spinning at 1800 rpm and traveling at 90 mph, the Magnus force retards the vertical drop by a little more than a foot. Instead of dropping 3 ft. vertically on its way to the plate, the ball drops slightly less than 2 ft. I concluded that the rising fastball is an optical illusion. The ball appears to rise only because it doesn't fall as much as the batter expects it to--in other words, the ball rises only in relation to the batter's expectations."
http://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...tml?page=2&c=y


"Even the greatest pitchers can't violate the laws of physics. Once a ball is thrown, it follows a smooth trajectory. Physics simply doesn't allow abrupt jumps in that trajectory.
So what's happening? 'The batter is using the wrong mental model,' Bahill says."
http://uanews.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects...ArticleID=1109