Baseball wouldn't be nearly as exciting if every player could hit the curve ball. To say the least, it's difficult to predict where a curving ball will end up. Inaccurate predictions often end up with batters swingly wildly at thin air while the ball plops into the catcher's glove elsewhere.

Cathy Craig, a psychologist at Queen's University Belfast, UK got interested in curving balls, from watching soccer, not baseball. She wondered if experienced soccer players could accurately predict whether or not spinning soccer balls would end up missing or hitting inside a goal. They couldn't - at least in the virtual reality display that Craig used in her test.

Craig suggests it might all be a case of need for adaptation:

The side spin on the ball produces something called a Magnus force, which accelerates the ball in a direction that we simply are unable to process, says Craig. We can anticipate the effect of gravity on moving objects, as that has been important in evolution. "But spinning balls don't occur naturally. Why would nature bother having a visual system that's adapted to them?" says Craig.

But obviously some players can cope with curving balls quite well, at least sometimes. What do they know that other don't? It just might be that they've somehow learned this adaptation and then filed it away so that they can respond automatically - and very rapidly.

Though it's hard to predict the path of curving baseballs and soccer balls, many golfers know where their drives are going to curve toward: the trees, or maybe the sandtrap.