Where did this term come from and how did it come to mean someone who is crazy?
Probably from the baseball pitch. IIRC a screwball is thrown with no spin which causes an erratic flight because of the stitches.
Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang supports Padeye’s view, giving a first usage date of 1930’s.
My Chambers(who usually agrees with the OED) says the “eccentric” meaning is US in origin and lists a specific date, 1933. So if one were inclined to consult the OED, an exact quote would probably be found.
Interestingly(or not), Chambers cite the term “screwball” from 1866 in cricket in the UK. He says the term appears in the US in baseball in 1928.
And, I always thought a knuckleball “is thrown with no spin which causes an erratic flight because of the stitches.” I thought a screwball just curved in a direction one wasn’t expecting.
Oh, for a Dickson. Or BobT.
A screwball breaks inward as seen by the pitcher; a curveball breaks outward and a sinker breaks down.
FYI, knuckleballs do not spin, so they can go almost anywhere. A really good one can flutter about like a butterfly.
A screwball is thrown with spin as cornflakes has said. My grandfather pitched in semi-pro baseball during the early 20th Century, and he threw a pitch he called an “inshoot.” My father says it was a screwball. In any case, it broke the opposite way of a curveball.
This ability actually caused my grandfather to knock a carny worker out at Coney Island once. The game was to throw baseballs at a man who was sticking his head through a hole in the back of a tent, where a horse collar was hanging. Grandpa threw his inshoot, the man went down and in, opposite of what a righty-thrown breaker would do. Well, so did the ball, striking him right between the eyes and knocking him backward, out of the horse collar. Grandpa didn’t stick around to collect his Kewpie Doll.
I seem to remember some information that Christy Mathewson threw what amounted to a screwball, but that he had a different name for it as well.
Apparently the pitch has been around for some time, but the universal term “screwball” wasn’t applied until the 1930s. Perhaps because its greatest practitioner, Carl Hubbell, had his salad days during that time.