Pitchers who play hardball
QUESTION Other than cricket, are there any examples in sport of ball-tampering?
BASEBAll is similar to cricket in that the pitcher can alter one side of the ball to affect its flight. He can do this legally by changing his grip or with the spin he creates when he throws it.
A pitcher who’s willing to break the rules can create other effects by doctoring the surface of the ball by scuffing it, moistening it or making it sticky.
When thrown, a tampered ball will create air turbulence around the scuffed side, which causes the ball to swing.
To create this effect, pitchers have been known to rub dirt into the ball or even scour it with a belt buckle.
In 1987, Minnesota Twins baseball pitcher Joe Niekro was caught with an emery board and a square of sandpaper stuck to his finger.
The most common form of tampering is the spitball. This involves applying saliva, Vaseline or dirt to the ball. There’s also a long tradition of the ‘ball shiner’ in cricket, using a sucked sweet to give the ball a sugary coating.
Spitballs were once legal. However, in 1920, a stray spitball by New York Yankees pitcher Carl Mays killed Cleveland Indians player, 29-year-old Ray Chapman.
‘No pitcher in the American league resorted to trickery more than Carl Mays in attempting to rough a ball in order to get a break on it that would make it difficult to hit,’ said umpires Billy Evans and William Dineen.
Though banned in 1921, spitballs never went away. In 2006, Detroit Tigers pitcher Kenny Rogers was accused of rubbing pine tar on a ball to make it swerve.
Tim Coleman, Cirencester, Glos. IN THE 2011 World Cup rugby finals in New Zealand, England golden boy Jonny Wilkinson was caught up in a balltampering scandal.
He’d had an uncharacteristically poor tournament with the boot and blamed the quality of the balls.
During England’s 67-3 thrashing of Romania, it emerged that coaches illegally swapped the game ball for their own version before Wilkinson took his kicks Throwback: Kevin Costner in the 1999 film For The Love Of The Game without seeking permission from referee Romain Poite. In his autobiography, Wilkinson said the match balls were a ‘joke’ due to their inconsistent movement: ‘Again and again, I’m hitting the same kick every time, but it’s non-match ball straight through the middle, match ball to the right.’
Paul Watkin, West Drayton, Middx.
QUESTION Which evolved first: the cell wall or the DNA nucleus?
THE cell wall evolved long before the DNA nucleus.
The Earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago and life-building chemicals, such as amino acids and DNA (the complex spiral chemical that carries genetic information), evolved in the primordial soup 3.8 billion years ago.
These were enclosed in a membrane to form early life. It took another 1.5 billion years for complex cells with a nucleus, containing the cell’s genetic information, to evolve.
In 1953, the American scientist Stanley Miller performed a ground-breaking experiment. He sent an electrical charge through a flask of a chemical solution of methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water. This created organic compounds including amino acids.
This demonstrated the plausibility of the spontaneous synthesis of organic molecules such as DNA, providing the basic materials from which the first living organisms arose.
All life on Earth today is based on DNA genomes and protein enzymes. Yet many evolutionary biologists believe this was preceded by a simpler life form based on another replicating molecule called RNA. Whether you subscribe to this idea or not, the first cell is believed to have arisen by the enclosure of a self-replicating RNA or DNA molecule. These early, simple, single-celled organisms were surrounded by a membrane and cell wall, with a circular strand of DNA containing their genes. It took another 1.5 billion years for the complex eukaryotic cell, the basis of multi-cellular life, to evolve. They are thought to have arisen from symbiotic union, where one organism devours another and the two exist in harmony. It is thought the nucleus evolved this way between 2.2 and 1.7 billion years ago, long after the evolution of the cell wall. Jan Wishart, Edinburgh.
QUESTION The opening credits of TV’s Call The Midwife show a street of terrace houses and a huge ocean liner in view. Is this a genuine picture?
SEEINg the picture of the ship, the Dominion Monarch, at the end of Saville Road in london’s Docklands, brought back many memories.
My mother and I boarded it on April 28, 1946, to join my South African father in Cape Town. We travelled from North Shields — my mother had never left the North-East. At Tilbury, Essex, where it was raining profusely, we went onboard and were given bunks in a dormitory.
The adjoining dormitory was for Italian PoWs being repatriated to Naples. On arrival, one of them was found to have smallpox, so they all had to be vaccinated, which took the whole day.
The reception committee and band waiting to greet them played the wellknown Neapolitan song O Sole Mio continually for hours.
At Port Said in Egypt, we took on East African troops bound for Mombasa. We went ashore and when we saw bananas — which had not been available in Britain during the war — we gorged ourselves, with unfortunate results!
On arrival in Durban, we were met by soprano Perla gibson, who stood on the shore and sang through a megaphone.
After another five days on a train, we arrived in Cape Town via Bloemfontein. My mother was so relieved to see my father.
Christopher Pinn, Sittingbourne, Kent.
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