text: The gyroball is the name given to a breaking baseball pitch purported to be used by players in Japan. The pitch was developed by two Japanese researchers, Ryutaro Himeno and Kazushi Tezuka, who used computer simulations to create a new style of delivery intended to reduce stress on the pitcher. At the point of release, instead of having the pitcher's arm move inwards towards the body (the standard method used in the United States), the pitcher rotates his arm so that it moves away from his body, towards 3rd base. The unusual method of delivery creates a bullet-like spin on the ball, like a bicycle tire spins when facing the spokes or a perfectly thrown football. When thrown by a right hander, the pitch moves sharply down and away from right handed batters and towards left handed batters.\n\nIn baseball, most pitches are thrown with backspin, like the fastball, or with a more forward spinning motion, like the curveball and the slider. Batters use the arm speed of the pitcher and the spin on a baseball, highlighted by the seams, to judge the speed of the ball. The gyroball is thrown with the arm speed of a fastball but goes much slower, and since it has a bullet-like spinning motion, on occasion (perhaps when the seams are hidden from view of the batter) it will make experienced batters swing wildly ahead or behind the ball.\n\nThe gyroball is one of the available pitches in Baseball Mogul 2007, a baseball computer game. In that game, the trajectory of the ball looks similar to a flat fastball or change up, with a late lateral break (away from right-handed batters as thrown by right-handed pitchers). It was once thought that the only pitcher in the game that possesses the gyroball in his arsenal is Daisuke Matsuzaka. However, he himself says that he is just trying to learn how to throw it [1].\n\nThe gyroball is also often confused with a completely different Japanese pitch called the shuuto, due to an error in a well-known article by baseball writer Will Carroll (see external link). Although Carroll later corrected himself, the confusion still persists.