Sport: A Bolt of Blue Lightning

ACCORDING to eyewitnesses, it "pops," "hops," "skips," "jumps," "bams," "burns," "booms," "tails," "sails," "smokes," "swoops," "sinks" or just plain "whooshes." If it sounds like a UFO, that is only because the hitters who have faced the fearsome fastball of Oakland A's Pitcher Vida Blue tend to endow it with out-of-this-world qualities. Roy White, the otherwise stable outfielder for the New York Yankees, claims that the Blue darter "speeds up on you and then seems to disappear." Kansas City Royals Third Baseman Paul Schaal swears that "it jumps...