The curveball came out of Clayton Kershaw’s hand and dropped so far and at such an angle that David Wright did not even try to swing at it. He kept his bat on his shoulder and stood in the batter’s box for a moment as A. J. Ellis, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ catcher, threw to third base before Wright could even fully grasp that he had struck out.
The way Wright described the pitch later, swinging would not have made much difference.
“The only one that you can even hit starts at your eyes,” he said, “and as a hitter, if you get a ball that starts at your eyes, you almost give up on it, and then the bottom falls out of it.