Crossword clues for curveball
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context baseball English) A forespin pitch thrown by rotating the index and middle fingers down and resulting in motion down "curve" 2 An unexpected turn of events initiated by an opponent or chance.
Wikipedia
The curveball is a type of pitch in baseball thrown with a characteristic grip and hand movement that imparts forward spin to the ball, causing it to dive in a downward path as it approaches the plate. Its close relatives are the slider and the slurve. The "curve" of the ball varies from pitcher to pitcher. Outside the context of baseball, variants of the expression "to throw a curveball" essentially translate to introducing a significant deviation to a preceding concept.
Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi (, ; born 1968), known by the Defense Intelligence Agency cryptonym "Curveball", is a German citizen who defected from Iraq in 1999, claiming that he had worked as a chemical engineer at a plant that manufactured mobile biological weapon laboratories as part of an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program. Alwan's allegations were subsequently shown to be false by the Iraq Survey Group's final report published in 2004.
Despite warnings from the German Federal Intelligence Service and the British Secret Intelligence Service questioning the authenticity of the claims, the US Government and British government utilized them to build a rationale for military action in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, including in the 2003 State of the Union address, where President Bush said "we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs", and Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council, which contained a computer generated image of a mobile biological weapons laboratory. They were later found to be mobile milk pasteurization and hydrogen generation trailers. On 24 September 2002, the British government published its dossier on the former Iraqi leader's WMD with a personal foreword by Mr Blair, who assured readers Saddam Hussein had continued to produce WMD "beyond doubt".
On November 4, 2007, 60 Minutes revealed Curveball's real identity. Former CIA official Tyler Drumheller summed up Curveball as "a guy trying to get his green card essentially, in Germany, and playing the system for what it was worth." He lives in Germany, where he has been granted asylum.
In a February 2011 interview with the Guardian he "admitted for the first time that he lied about his story, then watched in shock as it was used to justify the war."
"Curveball" is the 23rd episode in the third season, the 64th episode overall, of the American dramedy series Ugly Betty, which aired on May 21, 2009. This episode doubles as the first part of a two-hour episode, a first in the series' history.
A curveball is a type of pitch used in the sport of baseball.
Curveball may also refer to:
- Curveball (informant) (born Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi in 1968), an Iraqi informant
- Curveball (Ugly Betty), an episode of the television series Ugly Betty
- Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip, a 2012 book by Jordan Sonnenblick
Usage examples of "curveball".
Between junior and real college, Barry Zito refines the delivery of his curveball to the point where it is indistinguishable, as it leaves his hand, from his otherwise uninteresting fastball.
The deliberate curveball, even as he wondered who had ratted him out to Leonard.
Castle started him off with a couple of curveballs, and he was patient enough to lay off them.
He was left-handed, threw nothing but curveballs, and had beaten us the year before, nine to two.
Screwing up his courage, John asked, "SusanSue speaking of curveballs, here's one for you.
As Brennan glanced through them he saw snippets about the sex life of politicians and the drug habits of bankers, notes on alliances between cops and gang figures, and even a list of which Dodgers had trouble with high fastballs and which were suckers for curveballs in the dirt.
Bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, two outs, full count, and the pitcher had hung a curveball right over Main Street, and he was about to stroke it over the Scoreboard.
He manipulated the baseball with his right hand--index and middle fingers on top, thumb below--holding it with differ- ent grips four-seam fastball, two-seam fastball, curveball.