Who is credited with inventing the curveball?

Candy Cummings is credited with inventing the curveball. The 19th-century baseball pitcher developed the pitch while experimenting with ways to make a baseball bend in flight.

Cummings later said the movement was inspired by watching seashells curve when thrown. He first used the pitch in competition on October 7, 1867, while playing for Brooklyn’s Excelsiors against Harvard College. At the time, pitchers delivered underhand, making the wrist action especially unusual.

The credit is sometimes disputed because Fred Goldsmith also claimed to have invented the pitch and demonstrated it in 1870. However, later historical research has generally supported Cummings’s earlier claim, and baseball authorities have widely recognized him as the inventor. The curveball’s sideways and downward break comes from spin, which changes the ball’s movement as it travels toward the batter.