• Homicide by David Simon
• How to Conquer The New York Times Crossword Puzzle by Amy Reynaldo
• Robot Building For Beginners by David Cook
• Observing the User Experience by Mike Kuniavsky
• Sketching User Experiences by Bill Buxton
• Head First Design Patterns by Elisabeth Freeman & Eric Freeman

Idea for the post comes from poetpainter.

I initially set out to capture the speed, break, and movement of the pitches in a single diagram for each pitch, showing the trajectory from the catcher’s perspective. As I got further along in the process, some pitches become harder to identify, because I had trouble distinguishing movement and break (splitter and forkball were particularly difficult to render). Movement being the general direction the ball is moving and break being a sudden shift in direction. This led me to add small profile views that help make the difference in break more apparent. It can still be quite subtle.

From the previous post, here is the final work including all twelve pitch diagrams:

I‘m a baseball fan. I’ve watched my share of televised games and attended a few handful. After all this, I was still in the dark about the difference between pitches. I knew a curveball broke downwards, but what exactly was a circle changeup?

The diagrams below are the results of skimming through baseball books and doing online research. This is not a complete guide. I’ve picked twelve of the more common pitches:

• Fastballs: Four-seam, Two-seam, Cutter, Splitter, and Forkball
• Breaking Balls: Curveball, Slider, Slurve, and Screwball
• Changeups: Changeup, Palmball, Circle Changeup

Learning to Identify Pitches

The list of pitches might seem like a lot to keep track of, but remember that each pitcher utilizes only a selection of these pitches. For example, Pedro Martinez throws a curveball, circle-changeup, an occasional slider, and a fastball. Do a little research on the pitcher before the game.

Things to watch for that will help you identify a pitch:

• Speed
• Movement - the general direction the ball is moving
• Break - a sudden shift in direction

There are a few other things that can help you identify a pitch: ball rotation, point of release, and grip. For a casual fan though, it might be a bit much and I don’t illustrate or discuss any of the latter three items.

Reading the Diagrams

Take note of the speed, movement, and break of the ball. Don’t worry about where the baseball is shown in the the strike zone. You can throw a fastball in the middle of the strike-zone like the one illustrated, or you can throw one high and away from the batter. It’s still a fastball. Location doesn’t determine the pitch.

I’ve collected all twelve of the pitch diagrams below, minus the text notes, into a single PDF:

Four-seam Fastball

85-100 mph

• Fastest, straightest pitch. Little to no movement.

Two-seam Fastball

80-90 mph

• Also known as a Sinker.
• Moves downward, and depending on the release, will sometimes run in on a right handed hitter (RHH).

Cutter

85-95 mph

• Breaks away from a right handed hitter (RHH) as it reaches the plate.
• Mix of a slider and a fastball. Faster than a slider but with more movement than a fastball.

Splitter

80-90 mph

• Breaks down suddenly before reaching plate.

Forkball

75-85 mph

• Like a splitter, but with a less dramatic, more gradual downward movement.

Curveball

70-80 mph

• Commonly called a 12-6 curveball. The 12-6 refers to the top to bottom movement (picture a clock with hands at 12 and 6).

Slider

80-90 mph

• Breaks down and away from a RHH.
• Between a fastball and a curve.

Slurve

70-80 mph

• 11-5 movement. Similar to a curve but with more lateral movement.

Screwball

65-75 mph

1-7 movement. Opposite of the slurve.

Changeup

70-85 mph

• Slower than a fastball, but thrown with the same arm motion.

Palmball

65-75 mph

• Ball is gripped tightly in palm.
• Just like a changeup, this pitch is slower than a fastball, but thrown with the same arm motion.

Circle Changeup

70-80 mph

• A changeup with 1-7 moment like the screwball.

Answering requests, I have setup a Cafe Press store which offers the nine coffee cup illustration printed on all sorts of things. I have never purchased anything from Cafe Press, so fingers crossed the quality is decent. I bought myself a mug.

If you’re simply looking to print up a copy to fold up in your wallet, I’ve created a PDF file which contains all nine images.

Source File

If you’d like to extend or localize the illustrations you can grab the Adobe Illustrator source file. You can also open up this file in Adobe Photoshop, without the vector data, as a bitmap..

License Information

I’m offering the illustrations under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License. What this allows for is the use and modification of the work for noncommercial purposes. I chose a non-commercial license because I do not want people to sell the image. If you want to use the image for educational purposes in a commercial space such as a website or cafe, you have my permission to do so. As for attribution, I ask that you leave my name and website address in the fine print.

I‘m new to the world of fancy coffee drinks. With the vast number of ordering options and new words with accented characters to pronounce the coffee shop ordering experience can be intimidating. I’ve created a few small illustrations to help myself and others wrap their head around some of the small differences.

About Espresso

Espresso is prepared by forcing pressurized steam through finely ground dark-roast coffee beans. Think of it is strong, concentrated coffee. You can add extra ’shots’ of espresso to make your drink stronger.

Espresso
[ess-press-oh]

Espresso Macchiato
[ess-press-oh mock-e-ah-toe]

Espresso con Panna
[ess-press-oh kon pawn-nah]

Caffé Latte
[caf-ay lah-tey]

Flat White

Cafe Breve
[caf-ay brev-ay]

Cappuccino
[kapp-oo-chee-noh]

Caffé Mocha
[caf-ay moh-kuh]

Americano
[uh-mer-i-kan-oh]

About the Diagrams

I gathered most of my information from Wikipedia and tidbits from other online sources. Know that drinks might be prepared a bit differently coffee shop to coffee shop, and especially country to country.

The biggest and most delicate item, the blog, has been moved here from huddletogether.com. Over the next week I will be moving the rest of the content and adding some nice new things.

This change is not solely superficial. I’ll post about some of the new items and my plan for the site shortly.

After much delay comes the new update. I’m not extending the functionality at this point but making some tweaks and fixing some of the small bugs. You can grab it from the main page: Lightbox JS v2.03

• Object and Embed elements hidden on Lightbox activation, prevents Flash movies and other media from appearing through Lightbox image
• extended keyboard support (arrow keys, esc key)
• added toggle in Javascript file to turn off animations
• imagemap support
• valid CSS
• clicking anywhere in ’shadow’ closes Lightbox
• removeDuplicates function works with incontiguous items
• a bit of code cleanup

Like I said, minor stuff.

I’m rearranging the site to better reflect my current habits. I’m not dropping the blog part, but shifting some of the site’s focus to highlight new work, keep everyone abreast of ongoing projects, note which events I’m attending, and other things to soon be figured out.

The site was due for a redesign anyway. Stay tuned.

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