‘Gyroball’ becoming fast legend

Boston Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka apparently can make a baseball disappear, or so the story goes. Big deal, many a Red Sox pitcher has performed this trick -- “It’s a deep drive, way back. It’s gone!” But Matsuzaka does it in a way that can help his team.

He throws a pitch called the “gyroball.”

Matsuzaka has remained coy about his “specialty” pitch. And few batters have admitted seeing it. The Florida Marlins’ Jason Stokes is one of those. He swore this week that he’d seen one whiz past him.

“I saw the gyroball,” Stokes said after a 14-6 loss to the Red Sox. “It’s like a split-finger -- downward angle, maybe runs in a little bit.”

The gyroball may have reached Paul Bunyan status. Some have said it acts like a change-up that dips away from right-handed batters. Others have said it acts like a slider with an abrupt turn and dip.

The Marlins’ Joe Borchard said, “What is a gyroball?”

Well, Joe, it was created on a computer by a Japanese baseball trainer, or so the legend goes.

It does make you ponder the ultimate opening day matchup: Gyroball vs. Sidd Finch.

Trivia time

What conference has won the most NCAA men’s Division I basketball championships?

Read between

the lines

The sight of Willis Reed hobbling onto the court, inspiring the New York Knicks to a Game 7 victory in 1970, haunts old-time Lakers fans to this day. Unfortunately for Reed, when it comes to all-time lists, that memory lacks legs, having occurred before ESPN “invented” sports.

Reed was omitted from the top 10 centers of an all-time list that ran on the mega-sports channels’ “Daily Dime.”

The panel of “experts” rounded up the usual suspects -- Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Shaquille O’Neal, etc. But checking in at No. 10 was the Knicks’ Patrick Ewing, the only list member whose jewelry box lacks an NBA championship ring.

Reed and Ewing have similar career numbers. Ewing, though, won two fewer titles than Reed, as in zero.

Of course, the only three centers on the list whose careers ended before ESPN went on the air were no-brainers -- Chamberlain, Russell and George Mikan.

Note to ESPN (Erase Sports Previous to Now?): Before he was a senator, Bill Bradley had a pretty fair jump shot.

What’s in a name?

Headline last week on the Asian League Ice Hockey website: “Nikko Kobe Ice Bucks knock out Oji Paper!!”

Funny, it’s usually scissors that beats paper.

Still, the victory set up a semifinals matchup against the two-time defending champion SEIBU Prince Rabbits. The Ice Bucks stopped there. SEIBU swept the best-of-five series to advance to the finals against the Nippon Paper Cranes.

Prince Rabbits? Paper Cranes? Geez, maybe the “Mighty” Ducks wasn’t so bad after all.

Does Tony Soprano get a cut?

The New Jersey Devils are delivering a vicious forecheck to fans, clobbering them with a 114% increase for the top season tickets when the team’s new arena in Newark opens.

“Certainly the prices are going up, especially in the club-seat area,” Devils owner Jeff Vanderbeek said in the Newark Star-Ledger. “But when you sit down with people and talk and educate them, they understand.”

Just asking, but wasn’t the “sit down with people and talk” the same thing Gary Bettman said about fans understanding the need for a salary cap? You know, the one that was going to keep ticket prices from skyrocketing.

Fans, of course, could always stay home and watch games on Versus. Then again, finding a Prince Rabbits game might be easier.

Trivia answer

It’s the conference that became the Pacific 10 with 15. The Atlantic Coast Conference and Big Ten are second with 10 each.

And finally

Wim Hof, a Dutch daredevil, will climb Mt. Everest wearing only boots, shorts, gloves and a cap, although expedition leader Werner de Jong said, “Overnight and during tea breaks, he will wear clothes.”

Yup, nothing more crass than drinking tea with Sherpa guides, semi-naked, 29,000 feet up.

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