Headscratchers / One Outs

• It's a wonder that nobody else figured out that Williams' knuckleball was fake. Sure, Williams avoided pitching it to Takami because Takami has good eyes, but Tokuchi himself figured it out by watching the ball on video. Which means anyone else could have done so as part of standard research on the opposing pitcher.
  • Tokuchi is expert at handling the ball spin and on top of it he suspected that Williams's team cheats so he scrutinized every aspect of their play i.e. he was actively looking for evidence of cheating. Other teams studied paths of the ball but they were not suspecting that knuckleball was fake.
    • Maybe so, but even the dumbest ones on the team know that knuckleballs do not spin. That means anyone who studied William's ball in slow motion for even a second should have seen it spinning and figured that something was off.
    • But then that lends the question, why would anyone study it so closely? Unlike most pitches which carry their own "identity" so-to-speak depending on the pitcher, a Knuckleball is a completely random beast. To the point that there's very little reason to bother studying a certain pitcher's version because generally they're all the same in their randomness. Once William's ball was identified as a Knuckleball, something any batter would realize the second they saw his grip, there would be no more need to study it. Hence why it even evaded the studious Takami. Yes, Willams avoided pitching them to Takami but under normal circumstances he would've studied Williams independently anyway. But since he was a Knuckleballer, he likely saw no need and would just rely on his visual acuity at bat to see the difference between the Sinker and Knuckler (which of course never came up). Tokuchi was the first person to actually have a reason to study him so closely.
• Kojima's been in the league for twenty one years? When did he go pro?
  • Baseball players can play until they're in their mid 40s; considering he is a star player in series, its probable that he made it through minors rather quickly and was in the pros very early in his 20s, which is a plausible scenario for a player in real life as well.