I've watched it a dozen times, frame by frame, just to make sure. And after those dozen times, I remain confident that I've never seen a pitch quite like the curveball with which Mike MacDougal struck out Albert Pujols on Sunday in the bottom of the ninth.

	Mike MacDougal is 16 of 21 in save opportunities this season.

Already down in the count, Pujols was just trying to stay alive when MacDougal unleashed a truly nasty yakker. Pujols took a nice healthy stride, like he always does ... and then some piece of his brain became utterly convinced that the baseball was heading straight toward his brain. This realization -- or, rather, this misconception -- resulted in a chain reaction that included 1) Pujols' knees buckling, 2) Pujols' rear end turning toward second base while his head turned toward the backstop ... and 3) the umpire calling strike three!, because the pitch sliced through the middle of the strike zone to end the game.

MacDougal throws his fastball in the mid-90s without straining, and he just might have the nastiest curve in baseball. Sunday, the 26-year-old rookie earned his 16th save by striking out Pujols with that curveball. In the Royals' first game this season, MacDougal earned his first save by striking out Frank Thomas with that same, if not quite so nasty, curveball.

McDougal's already picked up a cool nickname -- "Mac the Ninth" -- but he's still got some things to learn. Consistently throwing strikes, for example. But he's a lot better than I ever thought he'd be. I first came across MacDougal two years ago in Tacoma. I was sitting behind the plate at Cheney Stadium, where the Rainiers were hosting the Omaha Royals. Sitting right in front of me were two athletic sorts, who I took to be Omaha pitchers (which, as it turned out, they were).

I recognized one of the pitchers as Brian Meadows, a once and future major-leaguer, but I didn't recognize the other, a skinny redheaded kid who looked like he might be 18 or 19 years old. When the skinny kid left, I started talking to Meadows, who told me the redhead was actually Mike MacDougal, a former first-round draft pick who was, at the time, 24 years old. I was surprised, because MacDougal seemed a lot more interested in talking to his girlfriend and telling a real kid what he wanted from the concession stand than watching the baseball game. How could this guy (I wondered to myself ) ever become a major-leaguer? He's 24, but he looks and acts like he's 18. An immature 18.

Meadows, only a year older than MacDougal but already a major-league veteran, didn't seem concerned. MacDougal wasn't pitching well as a starter and would wind up with a 4.68 ERA that season, with 110 walks and only 76 strikeouts in 144 innings. But all Meadows could talk about was MacDougal's stuff. Considering MacDougal's age, his performance, and what I judged to be his lack of emotional maturity, I figured that even if Meadows was right about MacDougal's stuff, the kid was a long shot to ever do anything in the major leagues.

Then again, maybe Meadows knew what he was talking about. Meadows was talking about MacDougal's arm, and MacDougal might have a better arm than anybody who's pitched for the Royals. Ever.

And I think if Nuke LaLoosh were a real person, he'd have been turned into a closer, too.

Some near-midseason surprises
Now, just a few statistical notes, mostly sans analysis ...

			Avg.		AB
Melvin Mora		.249		1,438
Milton Bradley		.234		717
Hank Blalock		.211		147
Eric Byrnes		.246		142