baseball (Page 3)

Mathematicians investigate baseball! One way for a major league hitter to win a baseball game is to veer toward the dugout on the way to first base. While at first glance this route might not seem the best way to start a sprint toward home plate, it’s the actually fastest way around the diamond.

Although the quickest path to first base is (of course) a straight line, for baseball players who hit a long ball, the best way around the bases takes a more circular shape. By cutting off the corners, an average runner can round the bases 20% percent faster, saving approximately four seconds.
read more

Isn’t the season over? – Who’s thinking of baseball now? We have basketballand football to watch. But with the annual winter baseball meetings under way, fans wonder whether the expensive long-term contracts their favorite team gives to big name free agents will give them the incentive to play hard. Are those big salaries worth it, especially when so many ordinary people are out of a job? This is a question we need a psychic to answer!
read more

“Monk” with a baseball bat? The image of the obsessive-compulsive TV detective swinging away may seem ludicrous, but it’s not so far-fetched after all, because it turns out that the best athletes are all “OC.” And You know you shouldn’t take vitamins after you exercise. We’ve also told you that chocolate milk and coffee work better than sports drinks. The latest recommendation for your recovery after playing sports? Cereal and milk!

In New Scientist, Peter Aldhous reports on what we’ve all noticed when the TV camera gives us close-ups of the dugout: athletes are superstitious. They have certain rituals, such as twirling their bats or wearing their caps a certain way, that they repeat with every game because they think this will help them to win.
read more

…It’s not quantum (yet) – Mechanical engineers say that baseball pitching coaches are coaching their players all wrong (which is why the pitching is so bad on most teams?) They should be paying attention to Newtonian physics!

Mike Marshall, the former major league baseball pitcher, does it right: he teaches a pitching methodology based on Sir Isaac Newton?s three laws of motion.

Marshall, who played in the major leagues for 14 years and won baseball’s most prestigious pitching honor, the Cy Young Award in 1974, believes “pitchers of all ages would be very well served by learning and applying the three laws of motion correctly.”
read more