Baseball fans and physicists love the knuckleball because it is black magic, a dark art only few ever master.
The ball comes out of the pitcher's hand spinning rapidly all the time, except for the knuckleball.
It travels 60 feet six inches from the mound to home plate barely rotating, thrown at a speed just over half the velocity of the hardest major-league fastball.
The air interacting with the seams creates an unpredictable outcome, a surprise in every pitch. The ball may travel relatively straight, making it easy pickings for the hitter, or it may turn abruptly one direction or the other or suddenly drop, just as it approaches the plate.
The perfect knuckleball makes even Hall of Fame hitters look foolish, swinging waist-high at a ball that passes their body below their knees. It's hard work for catchers, both physically and mentally, and it's a challenge for umpires to call balls and strikes with accuracy.
Watching R.A. Dickey's knuckleball for the Toronto Blue Jays during the past two-and-a-half months has been much like watching the 42nd federal general election, now heading into the bottom of the ninth inning, over the same time period.
Exciting. Unpredictable. Constantly changing.
The baseball metaphor can be used further when it comes to the election. Pitchers deliver their best pitches in the hopes of delivering a win for their team. Political party leaders, too, deliver their best pitches in the hopes of delivering a win for their team.
The pitch politicians deliver, however, is a sales pitch, in the form of slogans, like "proven leadership" and "finger lickin' good," promised outcomes, like "balanced budget" or "makes teeth whiter," and shots at the competitors, from "Justin - just not ready" to "if it's not an iPhone, it's not an iPhone."
Voters increasingly see themselves as the consumers in this relationship, shopping for candidates during elections with the same attention to value and personal satisfaction as they do when on a weekend visit to the mall.
This new reality makes more than a few observers uncomfortable.
Some mourn the fact that marketing gurus have taken over political campaigns, alarmed that political platforms are now crafted with marketing in mind, setting policy by not what's best for the country but what's easiest to sell and most likely to attract support. Others see this transformation in a more positive light. Manufacturers and politicians alike are paying attention to consumer demands with products and platforms designed to satisfy those demands.
Regardless, this changing perspective has upended politics in two significant ways.
First, brand loyalty and political loyalty are both things of the past. In the same way that consumers shop around more than ever before, so do voters. Gone are the days when voters followed the same party allegiances of friends and family. Each election is a new visit to the political store for voters, with no consideration of prior choices or political ideology.
Second, the reliable base of core support political parties historically relied on has mostly evaporated. Thousands of union members in B.C. have voted Conservative federally and Liberal provincially, even as their unions have continued to back the NDP.
The federal Liberal base of suburban residents and new Canadians was taken by the Conservatives and might be in the process of being seized back by the Liberals. Business leaders and older voters, traditionally the backers of small-c conservative, right-of-centre parties, have demonstrated an increasing willingness to embrace moderate and even left-of-centre candidates on a case-by-case basis.
The result is the political knuckleball - sudden, dramatic and unpredictable change. Shari Green went from a political darling, elected Prince George mayor in 2011 to so toxic that she didn't run for re-election just three years later and finished third out of three candidates for the Conservative nomination in Cariboo-Prince George. Christy Clark led the B.C. Liberals to a shocking win in the 2013 provincial election. Rachel Notley became the NDP premier of Alberta.
Nationally, that appears to be translating into the NDP's orange crush looking more and more like orange crash, the Conservative base suddenly seeming soft, mostly due to deep-seeded resentment towards Stephen Harper and the Justin Trudeau Liberals roaring back from the dead.
Regionally, the knuckleball doesn't seem to be happening for the Conservatives in either of the local ridings but that's the thing with knuckleballs.
You never can tell how or when they'll break.
