This floating ball must be a knuckleball because they're lighter.Bill Simmons once wrote a column where he said that he thought baseball players were the dumbest of all professional athletes. I'd have to say I agree with him. And that's because when it comes to physics and baseball, most baseball players seem to harken back to the equivalent of the pre-Galileo days.
Here was an excellent nugget of infomation that Tim McCarver passed along to viewers after Casey Blake launched that mammoth home run off of Wakefield.
One thing Francona was telling us before the game is that a knuckleball is so light, that if you make crisp contact with it, it will fly.Wow. The stupidity alarm is exploding right now. So Francona believes that the weight of a baseball somehow gets lighter if it's a knuckleball? While curve balls clearly gain weight. God, Francona's statement is so dumb it makes my head hurt. I guess Francona has more important things to worry about right now than gravity, considering Boston is down 3-1 in the series.
But my question is why do announcers let guys get away with shit like this? Sure McCarver's a former player, but shouldn't Buck step in and say, "That's ridiculous."
Did you know managers used to think you couldn't have a knuckleballer throw in a domed stadium because there was no wind? That's brutal, but true. And you constantly hear announcers who say "look at the late break on that ball." Curve balls don't break. Sliders don't break. No pitches break. If a pitcher could throw a ball that could travel 55 feet in a straight line, and then break a foot down into the dirt, no one would ever get a hit. Curve balls, sliders, splitters all do what they do because they're on a set path once they leave a pitcher's hand. It's an optical illusion that they break late or do something "magic." Let's take a look at the trajectory of a curve ball.
Anyone see a massive break at the end? Because I sure as hell don't. Selig should just force every baseball player to take a class in physics so we don't have to hear any more of these asinine comments by managers and announcers. Because seriously, I felt stupider after hearing Francona's thoughts on the knuckleball.
-WCK
14 comments:
My favorite is when the announcer says something like, "His sinker dives just as it gets to the plate." Which, of course, is right up there with, "His fast ball rises." The only fast balls that rise are thrown by those few weird guys whose hand practically scrapes the ground as they release the ball. These guys probably believe those commercials where home run balls orbit the earth.
The only thing lighter than a knuckleball is a head without a brain (see Francona).
Just to play the devil's advocate here... I do believe some pitches have a "heavier" feel to them off the bat than others, presumably because of tight spin.
In defense of the "idiots," here is a very interesting article (not from my blog, don't worry).
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FCI/is_12_63/ai_n6355551
Oops, the whole url didn't get pasted somehow.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FCI/is_12_63/ai_n6355551
Dangit! Just google "heavy baseball pitches sinker"... it's the first result on there.
It's like this post was coming right at me, and then it suddenly fell right off the shelf.
Seriously, though, good stuff.
Thanks for the article, Kevin. It confirms the original post. Baseball players and many of the people who comment or write about baseball are stupid. The article doesn't defend anything, it is just a virtual catalog of fantasies and misconceptions. Perhaps these people think the laws of physics have been repealed for baseball players. But then a lot of people once thought the earth was flat.
I didn't write that last anonymous post by the way, or any of them. But I've got to agree with anonymous here. The article is a lazy piece of journalism. In the second sentence the writer dismisses physics completely. That's no different than saying "you know what, scientists may say the earth revolves around the sun, but I don't care. I say the sun revolves around the earth." The writer at least has to acknowledge physics. Instead he brushes it off. Lazy, lazy writing.
In the same vein, another baseballism that sounds just great if you don't mind breaking a basic law of physics: that a ball thrown to first base, taking one hop on artificial turf, will somehow "speed up" after the hop. I've heard announcers claim that you can actually get the ball to first base faster that way.
(That's almost as good as the baserunner diving on his way to first base. Like the friction caused by sliding through the dirt will somehow make you get there faster than just running.)
Steve H, you have to consider the vectors involved in relation to projectile motion. Assuming an infielder (SS, e.g.) will throw the ball with equal force (and therefore velocity) at each trajectory, the lower-trajectory throw to first (taking the one hop) will have a greater velocity vector parallel to the playing field (x plane) than the ball thrown at the higher trajectory. The x plane velocity is the vector which deterimines flight time (x=v0t), and a reduction in flight time will also reduce the effect of air resistance.
The complication occurs when the ball takes the hop - how much of the velocity in the x plane is lost, I don't know, but this will be presumably less on astroturf than on grass. Taking into account trajectory, drag, and velocity loss at impact for both trajectories is more math than I'm willing to do, but you can see how this issue is quite complicated and the argument for the one-hop trajectory does have merit.
My brain hurts.
But seriously (now that it's morning and I can think straight) you raise a good point. The closer to perfectly parallel the throw can be, the quicker it will arrive at first base. And of course, any throw that starts perfectly parallel will have to fall a certain amount before it arrives (exactly equal to the distance it would have fallen during that time if simply dropped, discounting the aerodynamic effects of the rotation). But without trying to get into the exact coefficient of friction and how much that would slow the ball down, I imagine it would be significanly more than whatever small gain you'd achieve from the ideal trajectory.
As you mention, of course, the friction caused by astroturf will be less than that caused by natural grass. That's probably where this perception came from. I've played on the evil rug myself, and when that ball bounces, you instinctively expect it to behave the way balls have bounced the last few thousand times you fielded one. When it skips off the turf and hits you right in the cojones, you realize this is a whole new ballgame. The fact that it's noticeably less slowed down on turf than on grass could make you believe that it's actually getting faster -- the same way that a "rising" four-seam fastball that falls less than a normal two-seamer might make you believe that it's actually going up.
However we stand on this one, though, can we definitely agree that it's a dumbass move to slide headfirst into first base?
Okay, the ball certainly isn't lighter, it always has the same mass, but a Wakefield knuckleball usually travels at around 65 mph. So it definitely has less momentum (p = mv), and must certainly _feel_ lighter off the bat. Calling it lighter is silly, but it's not a completely stupid thing to say.
try hitting a sinker and tell me it doesn't feel heavier than a changeup when it hits the bat.
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