What was the pitch?

 

“A 3-2 yakker,” Carlton said.

 

What?

 

“A 3-2 yakker,” the tall lefthander said, smiling. “That’s what Drabowsky calls it.”

 

Moe Drabowsky, relief pitcher, prankster and stockbroker, was consulted as a baseball terminologist. Please, sir, define 3-2 yakker.

 

“A yakker is a curve ball –any curve ball. The count doesn’t have to be 3-and-2,” he said. “Although that’s a great time to throw it providing you get it over.”

 

Drabowsky learned the term at some port of call, now forgotten, in his 16 years of baseball travels. And he couldn’t explain just how yakker came to mean curve ball. Perhaps it’s because a good curve often will send a batter to the dugout talking to himself.

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-St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 3, 1971