5000 fps Camera Reveals the Physics of Baseball 144
concealment sends this quote from an article at The Physics of Baseball "This clip from Game 4 shows Marco Scutaro hitting the ball right near the tip of the barrel. The amplitude of the resulting vibration is so large that the bat breaks and the ball weakly dribbles off the bat. Note that the bat splinters toward the pitcher. The reason is that when the ball hits the barrel tip, the barrel of the bat bends backward toward the catcher and the center of the bat bulges forward toward the pitcher. That is the natural shape of the fundamental vibrational mode of the bat. Since the fracture occurs near the center which is bulging outward, that is how the bat splinters, as the wood fibers on the pitcher side of the bat are stretched to the breaking point. If the ball had impacted the bat near the center, the center would have bulged toward the catcher, as in the Yadier Molina clip. Had the vibrational amplitude been strong enough in the Molina case, the bat would have splintered toward the catcher."
Re:Isn't the game long enough already? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just as long? Show me a five day game of baseball that ends in a draw. And if you are going to count "best of X playoff" multiple games as a single game, then cricket has the 5 test series, for 25 days of playing also ending in a draw.
Re:Wow, look! Stuff I don't care care about... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wow, look! Stuff I don't care care about... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Isn't the game long enough already? (Score:2, Interesting)
Nothing is equal.
Put 2 5lb bags of sugar on a scale.
One of them is heavier. Just because you do not want to invest in a scale that can tell the difference does not make them equal.
The truth is when you get to the level of professional athletes they are all so good you could just call them equal. We do not though.
We test them. A test which shows them as equal is a failed test.
This isnt science or revealing. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Isn't the game long enough already? (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone who played soccer/football in children and youth leagues and then later officiated the sport for several years, I have to say that I find it boring to watch skilled players on TV or from the stands. And it's not for lack of action, since there is plenty of that. The problem with it is one of pacing and difficulty in appreciating what's going on.
The athleticism and skill on display can be incredible in the sport, and when you're close to the action, it's fun to watch. But when you're up in high the grandstands or watching a zoomed out view on TV (which are the only ways most Americans have ever seen it), you can't appreciate the footwork that's being done, which is what makes the game so compelling to watch on a minute-to-minute basis. That leaves you with just the bigger plays, like breakaways, and the game doesn't hold up so well at that level when it comes to entertainment value. It basically boils down to sustained action for extended periods of time, interspersed by highlight-reel plays that are difficult to see, with very little of it actually amounting to anything. And with the ball changing sides so often, it's difficult to have a sense of when you'll see some hard pressure being applied or something important will happen. That's poorly paced as a source of entertainment and rather tiring to watch, kinda like a suspense movie that sustains the suspense for too long instead of raising and lowering it.
I have similar problems with watching hockey, but at least hockey has people smashing into each other regularly, which has an appeal as a darker form of entertainment (i.e. the same thing that draws NASCAR viewers...which I still don't understand). That's also a mark against soccer/football, since its players are oftentimes prima donnas that fall over in an unsportsmanlike manner at the slightest touch. No one likes seeing that.
Baseball has some similar issues as well, though it does have some advantages. It's easy to nerd-out on baseball since there are loads of statistics that actually matter and can make it far more interesting for those who are so-inclined. And as you get more runners on the bases, the tension steadily mounts, oftentimes culminating in a series of entertaining plays, with its natural breaks giving you time to read the situation and figure out where you should be looking for those plays. Of course, as the game reaches its end, you usually already know who the winner will be well in advance, thus undermining its enjoyment, and those highlight-reel plays are easy to miss for people who aren't as familiar with the sport, while much of the rest of the game is rather rote and boring.
In contrast, while I'm not an American football fan, I do appreciate it as being a well-crafted form of entertainment. The entire game is structured so that it has rising and falling tension, regular opportunity for highlight-reel plays that happen at prescribed times and can be easily understood from a distance, natural breaks that allow you time to appreciate the players' tactical positioning and movement, and a sense of progression as the play methodically moves back and forth on the field in a massive game of tug-of-war. It's a game that you can go pretty deep into thought on, as strange as that might seem for such a brutish sport.
Long story short, I do think that some games are inherently more entertaining than others, but I don't think that in any way establishes them as being superior. Personally speaking, while I'm not a fan of any of the sports I discussed, I'd rather go to a baseball game than the others, simply on account of the ambiance that is present at those games and the fact that there tends to be a stronger sense of good sportsmanship as a result of it being "America's pastime". The games tend to be laid back social outings, as opposed to the higher-energy (and sometimes downright aggressive) crowds you have in those other sports. My enjoyment of it is independent of the game's entertainment value.