Calculations
 

Tan(.1 degree) => Get your facts. My calculations over 60 feet is a 1.2 inch difference. That means the faster ball would rise 1.2 inches if released from the same angle. I know, I know, it doesn't RISE because it only appears to fall less than normal due to gravitational influences. Add the air resistance passing around 100 mph fastball and the gravitaional effect will decrease even more as the target trajectory approaches a straight line -> FLIGHT.

Now when does a rise appear. I have read 150 mph and 135 mph. But was that in Denver or LA? Anyone care to recognize the difference in atmospheric conditions?
Don't let that little baseball fool you. Don't drop the ball like the grown adult reaching up into the sky only to have it fall right behind him. Gee, why didn't the ball come straight down. You may answer SPIN, but it actually has to do with falling through increasing AIR PRESSURE -> LIFT. What are the needed ingredients for FLIGHT?

The Fermi lab guys have their hands full w/ more impt things. Now I only suppose the Fermi guys say a baseball cannot achieve LIFT at 100 mph? I would hope they know something about FLIGHT characteristics: 1) Atmosphere, 2) Velocity, 3) Lift! I tend to think the conditions are RIPE.

The calc at 135 was done at sea level. Anything higher would need to be faster.

The reason the Fermi guys won't bother calculating lift on a sphere is that there can be no lift on a sphere - whatever calculation you use to come up with an upward force on the bottom of the ball is exactly negated by the same calculation on the top of the ball.

And no, raised seams will not change this particular calculation, although they do come into play when calculating the Bernoulli Force that comes from the spin of the ball.

I'll give this one last try, against my better judgement.

If you insist on saying a ball has lift, why does it only have lift if the ball has backspin? Almost all of the change in vector (and all of that that matters for this discussion) of the ball that is not because of gravity is related to spin - which is why a curveball curves, and a ball with topspin drops ... and a ball with backspin falls more slowly than it might otherwise have fallen.

If a sphere had lift, then a CURVEball would rise. It doesn't.

day-yum, SA, if you spent a 1/10 as much time working on your game as you do spewing BS arguments, you'd be in the bigs already :D

I resighted my 308 last fall for 200 yards. After I had it zeroed in I took some shots off the bench at 50, 100 and 150 yds because you never know where Bambi is going to show up. Anyway, I wanted to know how high I was at each yardage so I would know how to adjust my shot. Interestingly enough, at 50 yds I was dead on to .5 high. I expected to be a 2-3 inches high.
At 100 yds I was 2.5 inches high, at 150 yds between 1.5 and 1.75 high and at 200 dead on. Which means between 50 yds and 100 yds the bullet defied gravity and rose 2 inches.
My boys and I often play paintball on the farm and many times I see the little round spherical ball rise up and over my intended target right before I get blasted with one that didn't rise.

Why did these two objects rise? I don't know, I'm just a dumb farm boy and I haven't taken the time to learn all this aerodynamic stuff, but if the pitcher the hitter and the catcher all say the ball rose, I'm not arguing with them.
In every industry, it's the white shirts in the office working on theory and the men in the field working in reality, I tend to side with reality.

Deep Deep thought of the day...
The baseball is like a microcosm of the earth.
Science says the earth is billions of years old, all us umpires evolved from rats and a baseball can't rise.
Reality is the earth is 8,000 years old, thankfully we did not evolve from rats, at least most of us, and a baseball can rise. Of all the things science is wrong about rising fastballs seems to be the least of their transgressions.

Damn... well that says it all, doesn't it.

Could you give me the fancy scientific calculations for me to determine which way my son's knuckleball is going to go?

You are apparently new and missed the initial discussion. Knuckleballs were not part of this discussion. The initial question was whether an overhand fastball can rise.

SAump

The Magnus force has been proven in wind tunnels.

BUT

As stated in the article you provided:

"A fastball delivered with an overhand arm motion produces backspin. That is, the balls top surfaces spins back toward the pitcher, and the bottom spins forward. The Magnus force will “lift” such a pitch. More accurately it decreases the distance the ball falls due to gravity."

As I'm sure you know, even an airplane, which has lifting surfaces (wings) that are designed to provide maximum lift will not lift the airplane if the volume of air passing underneath the lifting surfaces is not adequate.

In your calculation you must consider:

1. The shape of the ball (Calculate the surface area of the ball which can provide lift).
2. The weight of the ball.
3. The volume of air that would be required to pass under the lifting surfaces of the ball in order to provide positive lift.
4. The speed a human would have to throw the ball in order to acheive the required volume of air passing underneath the lifting surfaces for the ball to rise (this would have to take into account the density of the air where the pitch occurred).

There is no indication in the data provided (the publication you referenced) that indicates that a MLB player throwing a baseball can achieve the required airflow, in fact, it indicates that a ball thrown by a MLB pitcher does not provide adequate airflow under the ball's lifting surfaces to provide positive lift.

Bottom line....the ball does not rise...it merely does not drop as fast as other types of pitches. Sorry!

i used to play paintball and never saw a paintball rise, even when shooting at grossly over-the-limit settings. i dont remember what normal fields limit you to, maybe like 275 FPS or something like that, but even with my Impulse cranked up to essentially it's maximum before it breaks, balls still dropped.

Perhaps his paintball gun was shooting knuckleballs.

No, I understand the discussion.
My point is that I believe the movement of a knuckleball cannot be predicted because there are too many variables.
If that is true then I humbly submit that perhaps a 100 mph fastball can't always be predicted because of variables not accounted for.
Is it possible that whatever conditions enable a 65 mph knuckler to rise 3-4 inches could also help a 100 mph 4 seamer with backspin rise a 1/2".
I'm no scientist, but it doesn't seem out of the question.

You are right on one account
I am new to the group and look forward to having fun discussing and learning more about the rules, as well as debating subjects like these.
In the long run I don't care if a ball goes up, down or around, I'm just looking for strikes.

I'm not diving into this... but I can tell you for certain that the forces that cause a knuckleball to move in unpredictable ways are minimal (i.e. less than 1/1000 of a percent of the total forces) when the ball is spinning even a little.

Come to think of it all my shots eventually dropped as well.
I suggest however that a few of them rose before they dropped. You just weren't paying attention.
I don't think your barrel was rifled, the balls certainly are not, consequently, the spin is not always consistent. The Impulse is a good gun but not above shooting a knuckler on occasion.

Now we're getting somewhere.
SAump was at 1 in ten million
now we're at 1 in a 1000.
Pretty soon even the change-ups are going to be rising

saump....your calculation and mine are the exact same.....how about reading my post first? besides that, who cares....