Well, actually, no. I searched and since no one else had decided to field this one, I thought I would. It has to do with the notion of escape velocity. If you "throw" a ball or a rock hard enough it will travel far enough away from the earth that the pull of the earth's graviational field will fall off faster than the rock (whatever) loses velocity. The escape velocity from the surface of the earth is about 11.2 km/sec. Even if you attained this velocity it would not allow you to escape from the sun's attraction. At the radius of the earth's orbit, the escape velocity from the sun is more than 42 km/sec. But you could lauch to the east at midnight and let the earth's orbital and rotational motion give you a 30 km/sec head start.