All in the timing

Adair, Robert Kemp. The Physics of Baseball. New York: Harper & Row, 1990. Print.

while so many people consider baseball to be boring, slow, and pointless, they don't realize just how much precise calculations and split second decisions the players have to make.

The hardest part of baseball by for is actually hitting the ball. the chance of hitting an MLB fast ball, which travels between 90-100 MILES PER HOUR! Think about it, you're hitting something the size of an apple with a thin wooden stick. The best batters will have a hitting ratio of around 0.4, which means for every 1000 balls pitched, 400 are hit. Keep in mind 0.4 is a very extremely high number, a pretty good batter will have a batting average of 0.35. This is down to facts, "The batter must judge the trajectory of the ball...decide to swing or not...how he will swing... this takes time and judgment - GOOD judgement" (Adair 38). I had no idea, I honestly thought batters just took a swing at it (literally HA get it?) and hoped for the best. But there is actually a lot of thought process that goes into batting. With very limited time, "the time it takes to blink, a fast ball can be half way to the batter" (Adair 39). It takes a fast ball 0.4 seconds to reach home plate, I wonder why the call it a fast ball. Knowing this I want to try and react to something in .4 seconds, to do this I learned in physics a procedure to judging reaction times.

The art of pitching

Adair, Robert Kemp. The Physics of Baseball. New York: Harper & Row, 1990. Print.

Breaking down the most important part of baseball; pitching.

The primary goal of a pitcher is to through a strike, which means throwing the ball as close to center of the strike zone as he can without allowing the batter to get a square shot on the ball. “A ball not swung at will be called a strike if it passes over the plate so as to nick a five-sided box with a cross section the shape of the plate -17’’ wide, 26’’ high, 17’’ deep-that might be suspended with its bottom edge 19’’ above the plate” (Adair 48). With this definition you can picture the strike zone that the pitcher must throw at, it’s not as big as it may seem, and one tiny error with the release of ball from the pitcher’s hand, or the force which the pitcher applies, can drastically change where the ball goes. “The velocity, the placement, and the ball movement, are all part of the art of pitching, and the laws of nature" (Adair, 49). Using what I have learned from this part of the book, I was able to picture the size and shape of the strike zone, thus making a target for me to pitch at. What do you think having to picture a square while pitching? Does it really help?