Rick Smith Jr. is a former baseball pitcher and professional magician.

That means he is perfectly suited for throwing playing cards great distances with incredible accuracy.  It probably also means he can pull a rosin bag from a hat, tear and restore a scorecard or spit in different colors.

He used his card throwing skills this weekend to set a new Guinness Book of World Records record for highest vertical throw.  He currently holds the world record for horizontal throw of 72 yards (in metric that is really far) and this Saturday he threw a card 67 feet straight up in the air.

The news media claim he actually threw it higher but the Guinness are all about being exact and creditable so they only allow records based on “measurable events.”

They were willing to crown him the world’s most accurate card thrower based on causing 46 out of 52 cards to sail through a 10-inch aperture (in metric, that is really small) in less than a minute (we don’t know what a minute is in metric, maybe a nanohour).

Mr. Smith entertained the assembled well-wishers with his magic act before getting down to business as part of the science center’s Myth Busters exhibit.

Read more about Mr. Smith at The Cleveland Plain Dealer website here.

Check out Mr. Smith’s web site here.