Rising fastball
 

Watching the Yankees–Blue Jays game this afternoon.

Yankee announcer Michael Kay just informed the viewing audience that some people think a fastball cannot rise, but "that last fastball definitely went up."

Just thought you all ought to know.

Well, if an announcer said it, it must be so.

Kind of like the "Dream Ticket", you know, Jay Bilas and Billy Packer.

Miracles (and defying the laws of physics) happen every day!

As an longtime poster on this board:

Good God, please lock this thread NOW...before it gets out of hand.

Oh come on law, there are plenty of new folks such as myself that haven't experienced the rising fastball wars. :o

What was his pregame drink?

Put Gottlieb in for Bilas, and you've got a nightmare ticket.

Actually Welpe, we can help the newbies along with a medley of recent threads! Perhaps it was a rising fastball that hit PU in the mask, but because of the batter's backswing the issue now becomes how many bases. I guess we need instant replay to figure it out.
None of which would have happened if PU had pleated pants.

There's a great book entitled The Physics of Baseball written by physicist and baseball enthusiast, Robert K. Adair Ph.D. that, among other interesting issues, addresses the "rising" fastball. A baseball pitcher cannot make it rise. On the other hand, a softball pitcher can mostly due to the delivery technique and the short distance between the rubber and plate.

There was a great baseball article in Popular Mechanics, of all places, many years ago that gave a very technical explanation of the physics of various pitches.

To quote from the article:
The laws of aerodynamics tell us that for a baseball to physically rise (that is, curve upward) as it approaches the batter, the Magnus force would have to be greater than the weight of the ball, and the rate of spin required to generate this much force is far beyond the ability of any pitcher. Thus, the rising fastball is an optical illusion. The baseball simply falls less than the batter expects it to.

David Emerling
Memphis, TN

Well, that should settle it.

Troublemaker. ;)

JM

Day game or night game?

He-he.................it's been a while since we discussed velocity vectors on the forum. This should be fun!


Tim.

Ibid. Damn Jesuits!

JM

Mr. Bernoulli................paging Mr. Bernoulli.............


Tim.

When I was a kid we used to play sandlot games (remember them?) at some picnic grounds near my house. The grounds were fairly flat with the exception of the area near home plate, which started to slope up a bit of a hill. Man, you should have seen us back then... rising fastballs, rising curve balls, rising sinker balls, you name it!

It's amazing what a wiffle ball can do, Walt!


Tim.

Rising fastballers
 

Look at the recent list of MLB, pitchers clocked over 100-mph. http://www.baseball-almanac.com/arti...baseball.shtml With a few exceptions, the pitchers have all made the list within the last 12 years. Data is slowly disappearing, thanks to the good folks at ESPN.
Notice many missing talented flame-throwers from MLB pre-steroid eras. Where are the pitchers from 1970 to 1995 who were on the list just 3 years ago? How come the big dawgs, like Tom Seaver or Dwight Gooden, are no longer listed?

~Sigh~
 

"Can a pitcher then throw a "doctored" rising fastball? I pose the following situation.
The key is each catch, fly ball, line drive or grounder changes the shape of the ball.
The ball develops a flat spot, the catcher adds "ointment" from his new glove, the back stop adds a fence link indentation, etc.
All of a sudden the pitcher flares a rising fastball. Doesn't it seems probable?"

You have lost this battle for about four years . . . ever going to give up?

Regards,

:D I think he got sent to the principle's office":D

The average lifespan of a major league baseball is about 6 pitches. That doesn't leave much time for much doctoring.

You know, I see this error so much, it took me .025 seconds to catch the pun. Nice work. :)

I have some colleagues who have business cards showing that they are "Principle Consultants." Yikes.

WESTLAKE, Ohio, June 6, 2008 — A Cleveland-area principal says he is embarrassed his students got proof of their "educaiton" on their high school diploma.

Westlake High School officials misspelled "education" on the diplomas distributed this weekend. It's been the subject of mockery on local radio.

Principal Timothy Freeman says he sent the diplomas back once to correct another error. When the corrected diplomas came back, no one bothered to check the things they thought were right the first time.

Publisher Jostens has reprinted the new diplomas—a third attempt—and sent them to the 330 graduates.

[Note that the newspaper knows the correct form of principal.]

I just edited a paper for an Ivy League professor and corrected affect/effect, complimentary/complementary, is comprised of/comprises, and led/lead, the last error, common today, being "the study was lead by Professor XXX." The term principal investigator is used so often in research proposals that the writers usually spell that form of principal correctly, but sometimes even the people with a dozen advanced degrees use it where principle belongs (e.g., . . . based on the principal that . . .).

People new to this forum might enjoy a "rising fastball" thread from two years ago: http://forum.officiating.com/showthr...=richard+miles

I think the speed needed for normal MLB baseball, without scuffed up seams, to rise was a little over 180mph.

Kyle,

Forget speed -- with big enough wings anything will rise