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Title: Keep Your Eye on the Ball: Curveballs, Knuckleballs, and Fallacies of Baseball, Revised and Updated by Robert G. Watts, A. Terry Bahill, Terry Bahill ISBN: 0-7167-3717-5 Publisher: W H Freeman & Co. Pub. Date: April, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)
Rating: 4
Summary: Using science to understand baseball
Comment: When asked if he was an athlete, a recently retired professional baseball player replied, "No ma'am, I'm a ballplayer." However, as this book clearly shows, if the question was, "Are you a practicing applied physicist?," the answer would have to be yes. While fascinating to read, this work points out how little science has contributed to the understanding of the game. And given that baseball is a billion dollar industry, this is surprising.
The most interesting and astounding point made throughout the book is that to play baseball you must reason very quickly with estimates. For example, it is impossible for the human eye to track the path of a pitch thrown in excess of 90 miles per hour. To track a ball moving at 100 miles per hour as it crosses home plate, the body must respond at a rate in excess of 1000 degrees per second. And yet, studies are consistent in showing that the human limit is on the order of 90 degrees per second. It turns out that batters loose track of the ball as it nears them and extrapolate the data to actually hit it. Students lost sight of the ball when it was 9 feet away from them and professionals when it was 5.5 feet away. The absolute limit is on the order of 5 feet.
The explanation of why a pitch will curve and what makes a knuckleball dance are truly works of art. And the physics of the best choice of bat in case you actually hit it should be required reading for all those who think they know baseball, players included. All are done using equations and example numbers rather than text. It is gratifying to find authors who ignore the adage about sales declining in direct proportion to the number of equations.
Science and mathematics teaching is often(justly) criticized for lacking practicality. Well, what could be more practical than teaching someone to hit a baseball? This is one of those books where learning is fun. It could be used as a textbook for any course that deals with the physics of motion and force. And if class gets boring, you can always go out and hit a few.
Published in Journal of Recreational Mathematics, reprinted with permission.
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Title: The Physics of Baseball (3rd Edition) by Robert K. Adair ISBN: 0060084367 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 07 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Curve Ball: Baseball, Statistics, and the Role of Chance in the Game by Jim Albert, Jay Bennett ISBN: 038700193X Publisher: Copernicus Books Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Sports Science for Young People by George Barr ISBN: 0486265277 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 01 December, 1990 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
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Title: Sports Science Projects: The Physics of Balls in Motion (Science Fair Success) by Madeline Goodstein ISBN: 0766011747 Publisher: Enslow Publishers, Inc. Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
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Title: The Physics of Sports by Angelo Armenti ISBN: 0883189461 Publisher: Springer Verlag Pub. Date: March, 1992 List Price(USD): $49.95 |
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