Slashdot Mirror
The Physics of Baseball
beatleadam writes "After seeing Randy Johnson of the Arizona Diamondbacks pitch a perfect game (coverage here), I searched Slashdot in the hopes of reading more about what the Slashdot readers thought of this feat of athleticism and science and to learn more about the physics of baseball (More information to be found here and here). As nothing was posted, I submit for your viewing pleasure a "course" in the Physics of Baseball and the subtle science that is pitching."
I hate all of you.
Fuck you all.
Love Always,
News For Turds
Why should nerds care about this, even if it has physics?
As nothing was posted,
Nothing was posted? HINT: Maybe because no one cares about illiterate retards hitting a ball with a piece of lumber... Sports are not important, they are a diversion.
Which link is most pertinent? Must I follow them all? Must I RATFA?
And who is the catcher in the /. crew? Answers in a postcard please.
It's still baseball though, right? Still boring...
Patiently awaiting Curt Schilling's comment... ;)
:wq
It's boring as physics 101 is..
:D
Instead look at the physics of HOCKEY! Now there is something interesting.. A 250lbs player moving on a surface at 45km/h with almost 0 friction, hitting another 220lbs player into the boards traveling in the opposite direction, cause X joules of energy to be transferred to the glass..
Mod +5 Drunk
People don't care about your old-style sports like baseball or basketball.. :)
We want BASEketball!
Alan Nathan Loves the Cock!
Who's on first?
Back in the day, we just threw/hit the ball and hoped for the best!
Now I can read how they do something I will be never be able to do. Maybe I can impress chicks with teh knowledge of this. Oh, wait...
Evolution or ID?
This whole article should be modded Offtopic! /. How many people play baseball, let's see a show of hands?
This is
How many people care enough about the physics of baseball to follow all those links?
It's times like these that I wish I could moderate whole articles....
Let's see that would be...
3 pitches per batter times 3 batters per inning per 9 innings.
That's 81 pitches, right???
-LG
"I don't think that word means what you think it means." Indigo Montoya
discussing the ECONOMICS of baseball? A breif list of the salaries of the overweight, corn-fed, ball-chuckers oughtta be interesting.
When I saw those women flashing to celebrate the Flames... I pitched a tent.
"If you build it, he will come".
The law by which Red Sox and Cubs are repelled by the World Series and especially by the prospect of each other's presence in it.
The Goat Rule
The Curse of the Bambino
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Besides, the Randy Johnson did has little to do with physics, and more to do with skill and athleticsm, especially for a 40 year old pitcher.
Slashdot Moderation: From positive to terrible in 2 "insightful" posts.
What spanner put this on on Slashdot ?
Is it news for nerds ? no.
Is it stuff that matters ? no.
What next ? Links to a detailed treatise on the physics of having a piss ?
Since it was a perfect game, it was missing the trajectory (batting) half.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Ask any Red Sox fan about baseball, they will tell you laws of physics do not apply as the Bambino curse is the ONLY law in the land of Boston Red Sox :)
As a sidenote, watch the movie Still We Believe for an inside view of how Boston fans related to the Boston Red Sox.
And the only people who can really relate to us are Chicago Cubs fans.
God, baseball. The most mind-numbing sport in the world.
Who cares if someone managed to throw a ball perfectly for 9 innings. Really
In one of the many links.
"The ball is still traveling along an almost straight line, and it may even still be accelerating."
Now I understand that when a ball slows down, its accelerating in a negative direction (Depending on your view I guess). But i'm pretty sure they are talking about the ball going faster and faster as it travels. With my limitied knowledge of physics, I don't see how a ball can just accelerate with no force applied to it.
Mark
Less on the physics than the effects of that physics, from the New Yorker last week; here's a general audience article on knuckleball physics, an interview with Robert K. Adair, and finally, another physicist, Joel Hollander, who works on baseball: if you look at the master's theses list, you'll see one on the physics of pitching.
Robert K. Adair's book "The Physics of Baseball" is a good source of information on this. Both the physics-geek and physics-neophyte can find interesting tidbits in it.
Has anyone else here read the old "Brains Benton" series of juvenile mysteries? Sort of like "Hardy Boys" and "The 3 Investigators", but vastly superior to the former. Brains Benton himself is a prototype stereotypical nerd genius (in a pre-computer era), except that he is good at baseball.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I read a newspaper article once about how outfielders catch fly-balls. Basically, the ball follows an arc in the air. It's parabolic (which is fairly obvious). The way a fielder judges how far or back they need to be to catch the ball is what is interesting. The fielder will move so the ball will always appear to stay in one spot (and just get larger), even while it is on its descent. As long as this apparent motion is kept, the ball should go right into the glove. If the ball appears to move down, the fielder must move forward. If the ball appears to move up, then the fielder needs to go back. If the fielder sees any curve to the path, then he/she needs to move to the sides to "straighten" out the path. A really interesting read, wish I could find a URL w/ it.
When an infielder catches a hard-hit line drive, he or she does it automatically. The ball is still traveling along an almost straight line, and it may even still be accelerating.
The author can rattle off F=ma, but clearly does not have a good understanding. How can the ball be accelerating when it reaches the infielder unless:
*There is still a force accelerating the ball
*The ball is losing mass
Either the author is presuming that:
*The hitter has one long bat and is contacting the ball in front of the infielder's face
*The infielder is standing in front of the batter's box
*The shell of the ball is coming off and is somehow propelling itself in a direction opposite to that of the motion of the ball.
Perhaps the author meant acceleration in the sense of deceleration, but the context of the article implies otherwise. IMAO, author is an id10ta.
What about the subtle science of proper link naming? (With links like those in the article, the box of "related links" isn't really helpful...)
Uhh, yeah, great, but baseball is a sport. This is Slashdot. Am I the only one who sees the problem here?
there is an book called the Physics of Baseball written by Robert Adair that wonderfully talks about the things you are always have wondered. some things such as how does a curveball curve. the difference between pitches. Its a great read and since I still play baseball its obviously holds interest to me. plus for the physics geek it actually gets into some of the areodynamic effects on the ball and the stitching. very cool!
"baseball, baseball game, ball - a ball game played with a bat and ball between two teams of 9 players; teams take turns at bat trying to score run; "he played baseball in high school"; "there was a baseball game on every empy lot"; "there was a desire for National League ball in the area"; "play ball!"
Ok.. If you don't know what baseball is, raise your hand and Tommy will come over and hit you on the head with a tackhammer because you are a RETARD!
Hmmm.
Most Strike-Outs in a regular 9-inning game is 20, shared by Roger Clemens, for Boston (04/29/1986 and 09/18/1996) and Kerry Wood, for Chicago(05/06/1998) http://baseball-almanac.com/recbooks/rb_strik.shtm l
-caf
From what I read about the lax drug testing in US sports maybe a chemical analysis of the player would be more interest?
Any game in which fatasses can lumber around the field, sleep DURING the game while not playing, and smoke heaters in their off-time is hardly a sport.
{funny = on} /. for sports information? Did you forget we are nerds not nuts(as in sports nut). Is there a News for Nuts site, I don't know and quite frankly I don't care.
I'm sorry did I miss something, you searched
Remember we are nerds we Hate:
Outside - Unless we are looking at our older sisters best friend sitting by the pool.
Sports - Unless it includes something with the word Bot in the little.
Athletic triumphs - Unless is the college cheerleading championship on ESPN
{funny = off}
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
A perfect game or a no hitter is great for a pitcher, but what people fail to realize is that for the pitcher to do either of those, requires all of his teammates help as well. How many pitches were hit only to be caught for the out, or thrown to first for the out? To me, a perfect game for a pitcher would be to strike out every player he pitched too.
The pitcher gets too much praise for when most of the work is actually done by his teammates.
From Tim Keown of ESPN: When high-brow attempts middle-brow, hilarity ensues: As just part of what you can learn by reading the sports stories in The New Yorker, there's this description of a knuckleball from Robert K. Adair, professor emeritus at Yale and the author of "The Physics of Baseball" -- "To understand how a knuckleball works, it helps to have a basic familiarity with Bernoulli's principle, the Magnus effect, and the Prandtl boundary-layer theory, for a start."
Mike Cameron on the Mets does it differently. He's trained himself since a very early age to see the ball off the bat and then estimate where it will land. He then runs as fast as he can to that spot, and lo and behold the ball is there for him. He doesn't actually watch the ball in flight, but he knows where it will land quicker than other outfielders. That's why he's far and away the best centerfielder (and outfielder in general) in baseball.
Hockey has some pretty sweet physics too.
- Sighuh?
In high school I lived the next town over from Tom Gordon. Tom (Flash) Gordon is still in the big leagues. Here's his bio. He threw a perfect game of strikeouts against our high school. Folks were bragging about even fouling a ball off on him! It was amazing to see someone that young throw like that.
And I gotta say, it was pretty surreal to watch the Atlanta crowd cheering for the "Big Unit". 'Course, some might argue that they had to have someone to cheer for. The game was so dull that I didn't even realize RJ was gunning for the perfect game until I overheard some of my coworkers mentioning it in the bottom of the 7th.
I grew up playing (mostly) softball on city playgrounds of asphalt or concrete. So, I never acquired the skill of diving for a ball. When I got older, moved to the 'burbs and played mostly on grass, I'd get ragged about not diving for balls that were just barely out of reach. I began to practice it and while I became fairly proficient and overcame the initial fear of the simple maneuver, I couldn't bring myself to actually use it in a game; I still had the sense I my chances were better if I stayed on my feet and kept running.
Some years later I read in an article (by some scholar who probably never played the game) that diving for a ball is pure spectacle and is not the best chance to reach a fly ball. Basically, the moment you leave your feet, you begin to slow down. Your best chance is to take the last step or two maintain your speed, and perhaps catch the ball knee high rather than at the shoe-tops.
Maybe it was just affirmation of my belief, but it made sense to me.
Oh, BTW, I don't think Willie Mays or Joe DiMaggio ever dove for a ball.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
definitely brush off ya shouldas yun' playa.
George: Guys, hitting is not about muscle. It's simple physics. Calculate the velocity, v, in relation to the trajectory, t, in which g, gravity, of course remains a constant. (Hits a home run) It's not complicated.
Jeter: Now who are you again?
George: George Costanza, assistant to the traveling secretary.
Williams: Are you the guy who put us in that Ramada in Milwaukee?
George: Do you wanna talk about hotels, or do you wanna win some ball games?
Jeter: We won the World Series.
George: In six games.
Try to understand the math involved to do this.
(Link goes to footage of Randy Johnson hitting a bird on a fastball).
This isn't math - this is Chaos Theory!
From 1900-1960, there were four; since then, there have been 11. Michael Coffey attributes the increase to:
Apparently, when Cy Young pitched his perfect game in 1904, he wasn't even aware until the last out that he had a perfect game going (the term in fact did not even exist at the time.) These days, if someone takes a perfect game into the sixth inning, it's mentioned on all the broadcasts of the other games and on any of the "sports news" programs that are on at the time.
It's not clear if these are the most important contributing factors but I think these are some reasonable points.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
So it actually is possible to have something more boring than baseball.
And they say that the sciences don't have enough funding! Pitchers get millions of dollars every year to work on their "subtle science." Maybe if cancer and AIDS researchers organized into teams and wore uniforms....
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
Here's a book on the subject.
When my father and I were playing (softball and little leauge respectivly) he bought an earlier copy of this book.
The fielder will move so the ball will always appear to stay in one spot (and just get larger), even while it is on its descent.
:)
Ummm, wouldn't that mean that the ball will eventually hit the player's face?
"After seeing Randy Johnson of the Arizona Diamondbacks pitch a perfect game (coverage here), I searched Slashdot in the hopes of reading more about what the Slashdot readers thought of this feat of athleticism...
:-)
Whenever I'm curious about sports, I head straight to Slashdot too.
No longer a news source for geeks. Just another news outlet that rehashes other major news outlets =\
It's a joke. Laugh.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
An interesting article has recently appeared on the page of Natural History (the offical magazine of the American Museum of Natural History) I suspect the aricle may be available online at the museum website!
Check out Hurling. A player running on a large grass pitch has to be able to catch a small ball in his weak hand (no big mitt to help him), sprint like a 100 metres champion, avoid getting shoulder-charged into the ground, twist and turn like a basketball player, and strike the ball in mid-air whilst on the move and be able to do so with a forehanded or backhanded swing of his stick. If he wants to take more than three steps while in posession of the ball, he has to balance it on the end of his stick, and he can't have the ball in his hand more than twice while in posession of it. And he has to be able to hit it on the ground as well. And he can't pick it up off the ground by hand, he has to scoop it up with his stick. And if someone blocks his stick then it'll shatter. And if someone gets in his way while he's swinging then they'll get their head taken off. See also here.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
There's a little guy inside the baseball, after it is thrown he jumps out (in the opposite direction the baseball is travelling), and due to the conservation of momentum the ball must speed up.
What is it about baseball that makes it the ultimate nerd sport? I see so many articles about the physics of baseball, or the statistics of baseball, but nothing for basketball (arguably a more popular sport in the world these days). Is it that it can be devided into small statistic-friendly chunks? Football has chunks. Is it because the parabolic flight of a homerun makes it an obvious physics problem? Basketball works too for those. What gives?
My dad got me a while ago a book called Newton at the Bat. It dealt with the physics involved in a lot of different sports including baseball.
:)
It's probably dated now (early 90s?), due to the technological advances of sensors, imaging, and athletic study.
Might be worth checking out [no amazon affiliate link to be provided]
--D
Pitching has a lot to do with physics, true. But I'd say it has much more to do with psychology. It is, after all, the most difficult task of a pitcher to second-guess what the batter is expecting the pitch to be.
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
On a realated note the economist recently had an interesting article about cricket and recent controversy over one of the more important rules - the bowler (pitcher) is not allowed to straighten his arm when delivering the ball. Some are claiming that new bowlers are breaking this rule and other question whether the rule itself might actually contradict physics. Being an American who didn't know much about cricket I found the article to be thouroughly amusing. That game could never exist here in the states.
Is it really necessary to have a link to Slashdot in a Slashdot article?
I believe pitching the perfect game now requires a healthy dose of steroids, HGH and greenies.
Baseball is dead.
A few people, and some dogs (most individuals of the Retriever breeds) have an innate talent for being able to intercept an object on the fly. Others (most people, and most dogs outside of the Retrievers) have to learn the skill, and may or may not be able to learn it to a useful degree. It's as if some brains process the "interception math" (essentially trigonometry) automagically, others don't have the talent but can learn it as a skill, and still others can't see the math at all.
I've noticed that having this skill is very much true with the best outfielders -- they don't have to stand there eyeballing the descending ball, they just run to the spot and there it is. Same with wide receivers in football, perhaps even more so since the QB often throws on the run, whereas the batted baseball comes from a known position (as Satchel Paige said, "Home plate don't move").
In fact, one could apply this to anything in sports that involves intercepting moving objects of variable trajectories, and distinguish the good from the great by their ability to use it. Positions like shortstop, where the batted ball can be on you in a fraction of a second, likely need even more of an innate talent for "interception math".
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Exactly what is athletic about baseball? Stand around in a field for two hours, occasionally catching and throwing a ball.... kinda like playing with a three-year-old. Not exactly an Olympic event.
Pitching is just as athletic as darts, or bowling, or archery. It's an accuracy thing, a skill, not an athletic event.
Randy Johnson is probably in fairly good shape. But look at some of the stars of the game: Mark McGuire is listed as being 6' 5" and weighing 250 pounds when he played - a BMI of 29.6. Than's officially "overweight", and just a tiny hair below "obese", by government standards. That's probably why he used to hit home runs - then he can trot around the bases, instead of actually having to run.
Baseball still sucks!
Go cricket!!!
It was written by George Plimpton and was wholly false aided in part by the Reds, who at their spring training put up sheets to obscure part of the field as if there was someone to obscure.
George Plimpton was the greatest sports writer ever and popularized participatory journalism (he fought a pro boxer, pitched at an All-Star baseball game, played in a symphony orchestra, and was friend of many presidents). Everyone should read his work.
In softball, a pretty close cousin to baseball, the object is to hit a slow pitch (underhand, with arc) ball.
The current Associations starting banning certain Bats and Balls as too powerfull. (www.asasoftball.com)
So.. last year the Miken Ultra ][ was legal and boy was it fun. I hit several out, and enjoyed life. It was 300 bucks.
This year? I purchased a Miken Freak for 300..
Can anyone safely tell me the way these bats are truely banned? Is it not for economical reasons?
If safety was a concern, then Wooden bats would be the only thing allowed.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
Did anyone happen to spot the number of pitches Randy had to throw? What would they call a game with only 27 pitches? I think there was a game once with only 54 pitches. To win in less than 81 pitches takes some help from your teammates.
Here at the American Institute of Physics, we love baseball. More specifically, our science writer Ben Stein loves the game, and has written several articles on it, including a statistical analysis of the chance of going to seven games, why AL batters get beaned more often, and a new way to determine under- and over-achieving teams.
One of the links says:
"Does sliding help a runner to get to second base any faster? Of course not."
And then goes on to almost figure out that yes, it does.
Sliding allows the runner to run faster until he's very near the base. But he's going so fast he'll go past it if he doesn't slide. The steeper his deceleration, the longer he was going at full speed, and the shorter his total time getting to the base. That's the part the link forgot.
If he could reliably collide with the fielder to shed his inertia, he'd do that, instead, because it'd allow him full speed until he's right on the base.
If I was him I'd ignore the Big Unit nickname and just say, "Hi, I'm Randy Johnson, a professional baseball player. I make millions of dollars a year. You wanna come back to my place?"
Pitching a baseball is the fastest physical human movement. Which tops out at around 100 MPH for professional baseball players.
Chew: You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.
Roy: Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.
For those who are interested in the physics of sports, here's a pretty in depth one on billiards:s /apapp.pdf
http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~penningt/262/p
I always thought a perfect game was 27 strike outs, and a no-hitter covered other variants where players may have gotten to the base (walks, hit by pitches, balks, etc).
I guess I'm wrong, as a quick google suggests that Roger Clemens and Kerry Wood share the record of 20 in a 9 inning game.
Baseball's not a sport.
No strategy
No need to be in good shape
Supersize me !
Howabout the databases (or sysadmins) behind baseball? How the heck do they come up with those obscure statistics so fast? The last left-hander to pitch a 4 hitter in the city of new york....
The feat of the no-hitter is indeed special, but you do truly have to be a sports fanatic to really be moved by the act. Ironically, the act of hitting a baseball is statistically one of the most difficult feats to perform (a 90 mph fastball crosses the plate approximately 0.4 seconds after it leaves the pitcher's hand (for those who need perspective, try this test Reaction Time) as the hitter must determine location (strike or ball), spin on the ball (curve, slider, fastball, splitter) and then swing a round bat to hit the round ball providing for a small margin of error for effective contact...not to mention that there are 9 guys on the field trying to catch the ball too...surprising that there aren't more perfect games. Thus, it is no surprise that those people that are considered "Hall of Famers" that have .300 batting averages failed roughly 7 out of 10 times. Or was that software projects?
"Everything in the universe is clouded by the impositions of the mind"
Your scenario was off still, but here's another one.
It's not impossible, but let's just say EVERY batter on one team bats out of order. When each batter initially steps into the batter's box, the opposing team confers with the home plate umpire, who sees the batter is out of order and calls him out. If each batter does this, and the other team scores at least one run, then the pitcher can complete a win while not throwing any pitches at all! Of course it would take an incredibly stupid manager let this happen.
Pitching a baseball is the fastest physical human movement.
:).
Hrmmm, I would think faster movements occur in martial arts... or maybe on the PWAMT (Professional Whack-a-Mole Tour
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
My old chemistry professor wrote an extremely funny article on the subject of quantum baseball. Okay, so extremely funny is a relative term, but at least I enjoyed it...
http://www.aps.org/apsnews/0100/010008.cfm
"There's no crying in baseball."
...is Ben Sheets' near-perfect game just two days earlier against the same Braves team. Such a miserable offensive performance by the Braves against Sheets should have left them eager to pound the ball against Johnson on Tuesday. And, in comparison, they did.
Sunday: Ben Sheets of the Milwaukee Brewers allowed three hits and struck out 18 Braves in a complete game win over Atlanta. With 18 strikeouts, one walk, three hits, and one sacrifice bunt, Braves batters retreated to the dugout without putting the ball in play or reaching base 18 out of 31 times (58.1%).
Tuesday: Randy Johnson's game may have been perfect (meaning no Braves reached first base safely for any reason), but his 13 strikeouts mean that the Braves retreated to the dugout without putting the ball in play or reaching base only 13 out of 27 times (48.1%).
So while Johnson's game is defined as "perfect" by MLB, it was slightly more reliant on the Braves hitting the ball directly at the defense, while Sheets' near-perfection was betrayed by a couple of lucky hits.
So the subject of this comment is misleading. Sheets was actually more dominant, but he won't be remembered in the record books for his more dominant performance because the ball managed to find holes in the Brewers' defense. Then again, Sheets walked a batter, so no perfection for him!
Either way, this is not good for team looking for it's 13th consecutive division title (not counting the unfinished 1994 season). Over two days, they managed three hits in 56 at-bats (58 total times at the plate). Ouch!
Great one! There's likely 50 or so good Yogi quotes too.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
From the New York Times:
4 /s ports/20040404_PITCH_GRAPHIC.html
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/khtml/2004/04/0
evanchik.net
I love the Adair book except that he got the slider wrong. A slider is thrown like a football -- it should have a tight spiral the axis of rotation of which is down and away from batters (assuming righty on righty). Hitters are told to look for a "red dot" (seen at the near end of the rotational axis) in order to spot an incoming slider.
Does this annoy anyone else, or is it just me?
68.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Listening to Vin Scully explain his first physics lesson learned in the Brooklyn Dodgers' Stadium. This lesson was conveyed to him after the young Mr. Scully asked the person next to him why the bat struck the ball before the sound of the crack was heard. I believe he said that his age at the time was 8.
Discussion of baseball physics would be incomplete without a serious treatment of modeling team performance through (useful) statistics. Bill James (literally) wrote the book on the subject.
There's quite a bit of those "the physics of X" articles here.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
ask Harvey Haddix, who pitched a perfect 12 innings, only to lose in #13.