Authored by Alan Nathan of the University of Illinois, Lloyd Smith and Warren Faber of Washington State University, and Daniel Russell of Kettering University in Flint, Mich., “Corked bats, juiced balls, and humidors: The physics of cheating in baseball,” just appeared in the journal of the American Association of Physics Teachers.

The researchers set out to investigate, from a physics perspective, three “questions of relevance to Major League Baseball”: “Can a baseball be hit further with a corked bat?” “Is there evidence that the baseball is more lively today than in earlier years?”, and “Can storing baseballs in a temperature- or humidity-controlled environment significantly affect home-run production?” Their experiments took place in the bat-ball test facility at the Sports Science Laboratory at Washington State University.

The first question under consideration was whether a baseball can be hit farther with a corked bat. The researchers note that in 2003 Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs was caught using an illegally corked bat: a wooden bat that has been drilled out lengthwise and filled with a lightweight inert material.

The theory behind corking is that, because the bat is lighter, players can swing it faster and therefore hit the ball farther. But the counter-argument is that a lighter-weight bat imparts less energy to the ball on impact. So…does a corked bat work?

To find out, the researchers fired a baseball from an air cannon at 110 mph onto a solid wooden bat, then on the same bat with a hollow interior, and then with the interior filled with cork. (They’d intended to try the experiment with the bat filled with superball material, too, but the bat broke.)

They measured the speed at which the ball hit the bat, and the speed at which it rebounded, using those measurements to calculate the coefficient of restitution, or COR, the ratio of the outgoing velocity of the ball to its incoming velocity. They found that the COR was identical, no matter what they did to the bat.

What about the swing speed? The effect of swinging a lighter bat faster versus a heavier bat slower, when both have the same COR, can be calculated mathematically, and the calculations were clear: the higher swing speed wouldn’t do the batter any good. In fact, a corked bat will usually hit the ball a shorter distance, not a longer one. The only advantage that a corked bat might give is allowing the batter to react faster.

The next question was whether today’s baseballs are livelier than those of the past, a question that pops up (rather like an overworked metaphor) whenever there’s a spate of home runs.

By good fortune finding several unopened boxes of baseballs from the late 1970s, the researchers were able to compare 35-year-old balls to modern ones, firing both against both flat surfaces and bats at speeds ranging from 60 to 125 mph. Again, they found no significant difference between the old balls and the new balls (although of course that says nothing about balls from even older eras, as the researchers are the first to admit).

Finally, the researchers set out to see if the Colorado Rockies’ practice of storing their baseballs in a humidor with a constant temperature of 70 degrees and a constant relative humidity of 50 percent, to counteract the effect of the lower air density in Denver, could account for the decrease in offensive statistics at Coors Field since 2002.

Sure enough, they found that the COR fell by 4.5 percent when the relative humidity at which the ball was stored increased from 30 to 50 percent. They estimate in an actual game the humidified balls would fly 14 feet less on average than regular ones, which could cut home runs by a quarter.

They also found you could cut home runs even more with cold baseballs: the COR fell by 3.3 percent when the storage temperature was decreased from 70 to 35 degrees F, translating to an average 10-foot reduction in flight distance, and a 19-percent reduction in home runs.

So the answers to the three questions? No, no and yes, respectively.

In baseball terms, that’s batting .333. In science terms, that’s batting a thousand.

(The photo: Toronto at bat against Baltimore, in Toronto, summer 2008.)

But, alas, basketball and I never got along very well. I could sort of dribble (if I didn’t also try to run) and sort of shoot (as long as nobody rushed me) but it was apparent early on that if there is a genetic component to being good at basketball, I was stuck in the shallow end of the gene pool.

Still, even if I can’t play basketball, I can uphold a bit of the family honor by writing about it: which is why a story this week about basketball shots caught my eye.

Dunks are an exciting part of the game (we even have an expression, “It’s a slam dunk!”, that describes something that’s pretty much an absolute certainty) and so are shots that get “nothing but net,” not even touching the rim as they swoosh through.

In fact, those shots excite fans so much that, not surprisingly, they’re what a lot of players focus on. But new research shows that that’s a mistake, if your goal is actually to win games more than garner applause: from certain spots on the court, the lowly bank shot, which bounces off of the backboard into the net, is definitely the way to go.

That’s the conclusion of a study in the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports led by Larry Silverberg, a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C.

Silverberg was inspired to study the question of bank shots by Larry Hunter, now coach of men’s basketball at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C., but assistant coach at North Carolina State from 2001 to 2005. Hunter believes that the art of the bank shot is being lost with the current style of play.

Silverberg plays basketball recreationally, and is himself a fan of the bank shot, which isn’t surprising: few recreational players can dunk the ball like top college and professional athletes can. He’s even more of a fan now that his study has shown that from certain areas of the court, players are more likely to score with a bank shot than if they aim straight at the hoop.

In earlier research, Silverberg’s group devised a computer program that simulates the release of a shot, the flight of the basketball, and what happens when it encounters the backboard and the rim. For this study, they used that program to evaluate the best release speeds and launch angles from more than 100 locations on the court that were all less than 15 feet (the distance of a free throw) from the hoop. It was a daunting task: it took months of processing for the program to analyze the millions of possible trajectories involved.

The researchers assumed a hypothetical player who released a standard men’s basketball from a height of seven feet. To make him a little more human, they built in an aiming error equivalent to someone who has a 70-percent success rate at free throws.

They then compared the results their computer-generated player got when aiming directly at the hoop with his results when he aimed at the ideal spot on the backboard to determine which kind of shot works best from various places on the court.

The best spots for bank shots turned out to be off to the sides, but not so close to the end of the court that the shooters can’t get a good angle on the backboard, and a small area a few feet in front of the free-throw line.

The increase in scoring using bank shots from those areas? As much as twenty percent, a huge difference in a game where evenly matched teams often battle to the final buzzer.

Silverberg didn’t just figure out where players were better off using bank shots: he also identified exactly where the best spots on the backboard are for players to aim at from different places on the court.

The best aiming spot turns out to depend on the angle between the baseline (the end of the court) and a line running from the basket to the shooter: the distance to the basket doesn’t change it. It also turned out that the sweet spots on the backboard bear no relationship to the square that’s painted there. Instead, they form a V above the basket. Silverberg has worked out the right size for a V that can be taped onto glass, and where to place a vertical rod a few inches behind the middle of the backboard. To find the perfect spot, a shooter aims at the point where the V and the vertical rod cross.

It’s a simple tool that smart coaches everywhere could adopt to allow players to practice their bank shots: smart coaches like my Dad.

I just wish I could still tell him about it.

(The photo: Outdoor basketball hoop, Davin School, Regina, Saskatchewan.)

***

Mike Sillinger holds the National Hockey League record for playing with the most teams—12 in all. He was traded nine times, another record.

All of which means that in 17 years as a professional hockey player, he moved around—a lot.

In fact, the list of teams he played for after being drafted from the Regina Pats by the Detroit Red Wings back in 1990 sounds like that old Geoff Mack song, “I’ve Been Everywhere.”

Mike could sing, “I’ve been to Detroit, Anaheim, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Tampa Bay, Florida, Ottawa, Columbus, Phoenix, St. Louis, Nashville, New York…I’ve been everywhere, man!”

When he retired in August, Mike could easily have moved back to any of those places—or, indeed, anywhere at all. It says something about both him and Regina that he and his family chose instead to come back here.

“We had a taste of living on the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, in the desert, the Midwest, but we never got a chance to dig our heels really good into any of those places,” says Mike’s wife, Karla, who, like Mike, was born and raised here.

“The last five years we were tossing the idea back and forth, ‘Where were we going to end up?’” But, she says, “We’d come home in the summertime and it seemed we were happiest here.

“A great place to raise a family”

“It’s a great place to grow up and a great place to raise a family,” she adds, and that’s an important consideration, since the Sillingers have three boys, Owen, 12, Lukas, nine, and Cole, six.

The boys have wanted to come back to Regina in the winter ever since the family spent Christmas here in 2004—made possible because of the NHL lockout that year. “The kids loved it,” Mike says. “They’d never seen Regina with snow. This is what they’ve asked for every year, and they have it now!”

All three boys are now enjoying their first full year at Jack MacKenzie School, and (of course) playing hockey.  “Owen plays Tier 1 Pee Wee, Lukas plays Tier 1 Atom, and Cole thinks he should play both,” Mike says with a laugh.

Mike and Karla, of course, have seen plenty of snow in Regina, having both grown up in the city’s north end.

They met while Mike was playing for the Regina Pats, recording three consecutive seasons as the Pats’ top scorer. “I was thumbing through the newspaper, and was intrigued by this hockey player,” Karla says. “We met through a mutual friend, and I said, ‘This is the guy I’m going to marry.’ That’s how it happened.”

But although she might have been thinking marriage right from the beginning, Mike wasn’t. “I thought she was a beautiful girl and we got along, but that’s not what was on my mind at age 17 or 18 years old, while I was playing with the Pats,” he says. “It wasn’t until a couple of years later, when I went and played in the Detroit organization, and we had a long-distance relationship, that I think I realized I had a good girl back in Regina. The following year we got engaged.”

They were married in 1994, and even though they only made it back to Regina during the summers for the next few years, they bought their first home in the city in 1997. They’ve had one ever since.

“We lived in a home in the summer time for 10 years in Westhill, then we bought a home in Lakeridge and owned it for two years,” Mike says. Now they’re in Windsor Park. “We thought we’d try the East End. This end of town I really enjoy.”

Injuries end career

Still, it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that they’d return to Regina at the end of Mike’s career. The way his career ended influenced things.

Mike’s final team was the New York Islanders; he played the 1,000th game of his NHL Career with the Islanders against the Tampa Bay Lighting on November 1, 2007, his family joining him on the ice for a special pre-gamer ceremony. But that season was cut short by a hip injury that required surgery in February, 2008. The following season, he had further hip problems, undergoing surgery again last February and missing the rest of the season. On August 26, he announced his retirement.

It was a “difficult way” to end his career, Mike says, and helped him make up his mind to get out of New York. “While I was having my last surgery, Karla and I decided, ‘Let’s put the house up for sale’—in the worst possible market ever.” Despite the poor market, the house sold by June, and Mike and Karla headed for Regina.

Not only would Mike have felt awkward remaining in New York after the way his career ended, they’d never felt comfortable there. “New York was a big change,” he remembers. “We’ve always enjoyed living in the Midwest. Easy going, easy living, no rush, no hustle. We always envisioned ourselves living in a Columbus or Saint Louis. It reminded us of back home.”

But instead of just moving someplace that reminded them of “back home,” they actually moved back home

“Everyone thought we were crazy,” Mike admits. “But when I have buddies come to town and take them up to my place at Pasqua Lake, they’re in awe. They never envisioned a place like that so close to Regina. They just think it is beautiful.”

“It may seem glamorous to have lived in all of those places, but we can never call any of those places home,” is how Karla puts it. “It’s a comfortable feeling when you can go to the grocery store and wave at people…You take for granted the friendliness that you’re accustomed to when you come back to small city like this.

“We’ve been in some cutthroat places, where you don’t get the please and thank you…some really stressful places,” she continues. “They’re great to be in for a bit, but we have three kids involved in hockey, we’ll be involved in minor hockey for a lot of years. You take for granted here that you don’t have to travel for half an hour or an hour and take a flight to a hockey tournament.”

Mike’s new job

That’s not to say that all the travel has ended for Mike—far from it. Almost immediately upon his retirement, he took on a new job as director of player development for the Edmonton Oilers.

“I probably travel the same amount as if I were playing the game,” he says, noting he’d just come back from Sweden. “It takes up a lot of my weekends. My job is, I’m in charge of the drafted players in the organization. They range anywhere from 18 to 22, 23 years old. A lot of college kids. I have good reads on these players, and I have to mentor them, teach them how to be an ultimate pro. I’m a player who’s been there, done that, been in all different situations.

“There’s such a variety of them,” he goes on. “My main focus is the 22 or 25 players who are going to be top prospects. There’s such a small window of opportunity for these players to make it. After I was drafted I didn’t know what I was doing, good or bad. Fortunately I had lots of great teammates.

“It’s my job to be these guys’ mentor and follow them along. Our scouting staff still watches these guys, but I want to make sure they have the opportunity to make it to the National Hockey League. If you’re drafted into the organization, you’re drafted for a reason.”

Mike didn’t expect to go straight to work after retiring. “I never planned to do anything,” he says. “I was just going to kick back. When the Oilers approached me—and I retired and I had this job all within a week—I had  people call me from the media, saying, ‘I thought you weren’t going to do anything!’

“And I wasn’t! I was going to hang out in Regina and coach my kids’ hockey and watch them grow. But when this opportunity presented itself, Karla and I both thought that if I was to pass it up and it was November and December, we’d be wondering what the Oilers wanted me to do.

“It almost seemed too good to be true. I wasn’t expecting to be hired that quick. But pretty much my interview the end of August was, ‘Now that you’re retired, I’m going to offer you a deal, and I need you in Edmonton next week!’”

“That’s what you wanted,” puts in Karla. “You didn’t want to find something, you wanted something to find you.”

Mike agrees.

“I was flattered to be contacted by the Oilers,” he says.” It’s a team I never played on, but here I am working for the Oilers, seven or eight hours down the road. It’s almost like it was meant to be.

“I figured I won’t know if I’m going to like it unless I try it,” he continues, and so far, “the Oilers have been nothing but first-class. I can work out of Regina, and still stay connected to the NHL. They’re very understanding that I have a family. They want me to do my job and do it correctly, but if my son has a tournament, they’ll say, ‘Go ahead, go with your boy to his tournament.’”

Family comes first

It’s important to Mike to be able to spend time with his boys, even if he isn’t coaching them as he thought he might be this winter. “It’s not about coaching minor hockey, it’s their lives I don’t want to miss!”

With three boys playing hockey, the family spends a lot of time at rinks. The boys are very “sports-oriented,” Mike says, not only playing hockey and lacrosse but enjoying watching Roughrider games and Regina Pats games. “Every time I have to go to a Pats game, they always says, ‘Can I come? Can I come?”

Mike and Carla both work out at Level 10 Fitness. They like to dine out at places like Crave, Rock Creek and the Roof Top. Mike mentions The Tap and the Press Box as two pubs he favours if he’s going off to watch football or hockey. The Keg and Earl’s rate a mention, too. But, says Mike, “We’re mostly home bodies.”

And that, ultimately, is why Mike and Karla Sillinger have chosen Regina over all the other places they could be living.

“We’re back here,” says Mike, “because home is home!”

That simple declarative sentence contains a novel’s worth of angst for fans of the Riders (and possibly for fans the Stampeders, too, but I can’t speak about that, not being one of those LOSERS!…oops, sorry, did I type that out loud?).

Roughrider fans, often said to be the greatest in the country, are passionate about their team. They want them to win. They really, really want them to win. (Please, God, let them win!)

And yet, deep down, they fully expect them to lose.

This, science tells us, is precisely why they enjoy watching the Riders play so much.

A new study from Ohio State University has found that when sports fans watch their favorite  team play, they enjoy the experience most when their excitement is mixed with a strong helping of fear and maybe even a soupcon of near-despair.

The researchers studied fans of two college football teams as they watched the teams’ annual rivalry game on TV. They found that it was the fans of the winning team who felt at some point during the game their team was sure to lose who, in the end, felt the game was the most thrilling and suspenseful.

Or, as Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, co-author of the study and associate professor of communication at Ohio State University, puts it, “You don’t want to be in a great mood during the whole game if you really want to enjoy it…We found that negative emotions play a key role in how much we enjoy sports.”

For the study, which appears in the December issue of the Journal of Communication, the researchers studied 113 college students who were watching the 2006 football game between the Ohio State University Buckeyes and the University of Michigan Wolverines. Ohio State was ranked number one and Michigan number two that year, so added to the classic rivalry was the fact that the winner would go to the national championship game.

At halftime, Ohio State was up 28-14, but with 14 minutes to go in the final quarter, Michigan closed the gap to 35-31. With five minutes to go, Ohio scored, making it 42-31; but with two minutes to go Michigan closed the gap again to 42-37, and then made a two-point conversion to make it 42-39. A field goal would have tied the game, but Michigan needed to recover an onside kick…and failed.

From the researchers’ point of view, it was a perfect game. Not only did their team win, the game was close enough to cause serious doubt in their fans that Ohio State could hold on.

The students participating in the study (from Ohio State, the University of Michigan, and Michigan State) completed questionnaires ahead of time indicating which team they were cheering for and how committed they were to it.

They then watched the game on television, wherever they wanted, and logged onto a website during each of the commercial breaks (24 in all) to answer questions about how likely they felt it was their favored team would win, how suspenseful they found the game, and how positively or negatively they were feeling.

The results: negative emotions made for a more enjoyable game.

“You need the negative emotions of thinking your team might lose to get you in an excited, nervous state,” Knobloch-Westerwick says. “If your team wins, all that negative tension is suddenly converted to positive energy, which will put you in a euphoric state.”

Naturally, participants who were fans of one of the teams found the game more suspenseful than those with no strong allegiance, but the intensity of fan commitment didn’t matter: “super fans” did not find the game any more suspenseful than less committed fans.

So, Rider fans, and Stampeder fans, too, if you really want to enjoy the big game on Sunday, you first need to convince yourself that your team stands a good chance of losing.

Fortunately, as a long-time Rider fan, I think I can safely say this will not be a difficult challenge.

UPDATE: In response to this column, I received the following email:

Dear Edward,

While snowed in at Rogers Pass in early Fall of 1988, I watched my first CFL game on TV as the Roughies took it in the shorts.  I remarked to my wife that the team in green needed some fans.  Journeying on to Vancouver, I went into a sports store and informed the salesman that I wished to purchase one of the green and white caps with the S on it.  “Oh, my gosh,” he replied.  “Why not get a cap of a winning team?”  “Give me the green one,” says I.   Well, guess which team won the Grey Cup the following year.

Of course, I place no special significance on my joining the legions of loyal ‘Rider fans.  But, the initial result was something to behold, eh?

Although we live seven months of the year in Reno, my wife and I own a condo in Canmore, and attend games in Calgary when the Roughies are in town.  Oh, do I ever get a kick out of the Rider Nation fans.  All their quaint, colorful costumes.  And the noise they make.  You would think we’re watching the game at Taylor Field.

Kent Austin did it again in 2007.  I went ballistic.  What a great victory for Saskatchewan and the fans.  Again this year, the road to the Grey Cup goes through Regina.  Go ‘Riders!

And, thanks for the great science columns.

Max Andrew

Reno

That’s because science progresses in fits and starts. Researchers put forward a possible explanation, a hypothesis, for the results of an experiment. Other researchers attempt to duplicate their results and refine the hypothesis. Sometimes the hypothesis is completely discarded, and a new hypothesis gains sway.

But in the media, this slow process is seldom reported. It’s much easier to pick up on the report of a single study—particularly if it has startling results—and present the hypotheses put forward by its authors as fact, rather than simply one possible interpretation.

I’m sure I’ve been guilty of that myself in this column, though I try to avoid it by using phrases which, if I could only charge a dollar to every reader for each use, would have long since made me rich: “One possible explanation…” “The researchers suggest…” and, of course, “More research is needed.”

By this time you’ve probably twigged to the fact that I’m about to tell you that something you may think is a fact is anything but—and you’re right.

Go to any gym, and you’re likely to see people engaging in the time-honored practice of static stretching, bending themselves into a pose that pulls muscles and tendons tight and holding it for a few seconds.

They do this because they’ve been told, at some point, that it’s important to “stretch out” before engaging in vigorous physical activity, in order to avoid injury.

Guess what?  In all likelihood, they’re wasting their time.

This isn’t exactly news, or shouldn’t be. As Cynthia Billhartz Gregorian points out in a story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, it’s been five years since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reviewed 361 research studies done by its epidemiology program office and found no evidence that stretching either before or after exercise prevents either injury or muscle soreness.

In fact, some sports medicine experts say static stretching actually inhibits performance, decreasing power and speed, and can cause micro-tears in tendons, ligaments and muscles. Nor is stretching going to help you work out a strain: stretching it makes it worse, not better. Strained muscles should be rested, and then the focus should be on rebuilding strength.

So should you give up stretching altogether? (You know, just like you gave up coffee and chocolate before you found out both are good for you?)

No; but you might want to think twice about static stretching. Modern thinking—you know, as opposed to that old pre-2004 thinking—holds that dynamic stretching is the way to go: moving through stretches without pausing or holding a position, walking forward while grabbing the knee toward the chest, that kind of thing. A little jogging in place or skipping while swinging your arms, or going through the required motions of a particular sport at half-speed might help.

Now, static stretching does have some benefits. If you do it every day for three months, it will make you more flexible, for instance. “Senior athletes” can benefit by doing traditional stretching after—but not before!–their main workout, because it helps minimize the effects of arthritis and joint degeneration. And any athlete can benefit from static stretching after prolonged exercise because it reduces lactic acid accumulation in heavily exercised muscles.

But beforehand? Not recommended.

When you think about it, our physically active ancestors didn’t worry about stretching. As California doctor-and-author Dr. William Meller points out, “Can you imagine a caveman engaging in a program of stretching before heading out to chase down prey?” And I doubt most farm hands carefully stretched before going out for a day of tossing hay bales onto a wagon.

So why have we been stretching all these years? Because at some point, researchers decided it was good for us. Scientists continued to study the issue, however, and our knowledge evolved.

Which gives me great hope, because personally, I’m hoping for a study that says the whole “exercise is good for you” thing is similarly misguided.

If I find one, you’ll hear it here first!

This year alone, a coach in the visitors’ dugout and a fan in the stands, both at Dodger Stadium, have been seriously injured by chunks of broken bat.

In both cases, the bat that broke was made out of maple. As a result of those incidents, and others, players, teams and league officials are now collecting information on the hazards posed by maple bats and looking at what they can do to address this troubling new safety issue.

Once upon a time, all bats were made of hickory–that’s what Babe Ruth used–but hickory, though very strong, is also very heavy. Ash is lighter, which allows for faster swings and thus higher batting averages, and so ash replaced hickory and was the wood of choice for the next half-century. But in the 1990s, maple bats began to appear. They were kind of a fringe choice until Barry Bonds set a new single-season home-run record in 2001 using them. Now they’re the choice of 60 percent of major league batters.

Maple is supposed to be stronger than ash and last longer than ash, but when a maple bat breaks, it tends to fracture into bigger, jagged shards that go flying off in all directions, whereas ash bats tend to crack and flake off in smaller chunks (although people have certainly been hurt by flying bits of ash bat, too).

LiveScience.com writer Andrea Thompson explains in a recent article that maple and ash break in different ways because the pores in the wood are structured differently. In ash, the pores (which transport water) are concentrated within a few areas in the growth ring of the tree, whereas in maple the pores are more evenly distributed.

Turned into a baseball bat, ash tends to flake as the porous areas collapse under the onslaught of baseballs (which exert more than 2,200 kilograms of force when hit). As well, the pore structure tends to channel cracks the length of the bat. This means a crack has to grow a long way before the bat splits. As well, batters are more likely to notice the crack when they pound the bat on the plate or swing it in practice.

Maple’s pore structure allows cracks to form in any direction–say, from the middle out toward the edge of the barrel. This makes it less likely that batters will notice them, and more likely that when the bat breaks, it will explode into larger chunks.

Hillerich & Bradsby is the company that makes Louisville Sluggers for Major League Baseball. In an interview with Popular Science, company spokesman Bill Williams points out that modern major-league players typically grew up swinging thin-handled, lightweight aluminum bats with big barrels. As a result, they want thin-handled, big-barreled wooden bats, too.

Most of the weight in such a bat is in the barrel. And reducing the diameter of a bat handle by 10 percent–the equivalent of a millimeter or two–reduces the strength of that handle not by a tenth, but by a third.

As Williams says, “You combine a big barrel with a thin handle with a 90-mph fastball and a hitter who has been training with weights, and you set up the possibility of a broken bat.”

Especially if the batter hits the ball badly, missing the “sweet spot.” As anyone who’s played baseball knows, if you miss that sweet spot, the bat will sting your hands, because the bat is vibrating and bending more than usual. That extra bending can put enough stress on the bat that it will break–usually at the weakest point, that narrow handle.

Major League Baseball has just begun its investigation into bat safety. Measures it may consider include extending the netting behind the plate down the first- and third-base lines, putting a minimum limit on the width of bat handles, or even banning the use of maple bats altogether.

In the meantime, if you go out to the ballgame, don’t just keep your eye on the ball: spare one for the bat, as well.

UPDATE: Check out this new technology called WebWrap, designed to make bats safer by wrapping them in “an ultra lightweight winding of high strength fibers often used in bullet proof vest applications.”

So this week I was pleased to discover that there are solid scientific grounds for missing easy pop flies, and they have nothing…well, very little…to do with a complete lack of skill and/or depth perception on my part.

A team of researchers led by Alan Nathan at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Terry Bahill at the University of Arizona, Tucson, will soon be publishing a “pop-up paper” in the American Journal of Physics that explains it all.

Normally, a ball that’s been hit follows a parabolic path, which is pretty easy to figure out. But when a ball is popped up, its path is influenced by the backspin it gets from the top of the bat. This backspin generates a rotating layer of air around the ball, which makes it curve (something known as the Magnus effect).

Sometimes this curve is enough to cause a ball that originally flew forwards at a steep angle to begin climbing vertically, and then actually loop back on itself.

The researchers used a computer simulation to calculate all the various trajectories a pop-up could take. They also simulated a fielder, who reacted to the pop-up just like a real fielder: it moved back and forth in a kind of dance as it attempted to position itself under the ball.

With baseball soon to get underway even here in late-blooming Saskatchewan, the study is a reminder that there’s a lot of physics at play in the game…which may be why a lot of physicists like to study it.

Just last December, two physicists at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Edward Meyer and John Bohn, decided to find out if the Colorado Rockies baseball team’s practice of keeping game balls in a high-humidity chamber for several months prior to their use would actually achieve its stated goal of making the balls more “sluggish,” the better to counteract their propensity to fly up to six meters farther in Denver’s high-altitude air than they do in other parks.

It turned out that in their experiments, keeping a baseball in humidity of 30 to 50 pecent for two months actually had the opposite effect. At first that seems counterintuitive: after all, humidifying the balls increased their diameters by an average of 0.24 percent and their mass by 1.6 percent, making them both squishier and more subject to air resistance.

However, the balls’ slower speed off the bat is more than made up for by their increased mass, which means they take longer to decelerate. Not only that, moist balls curve less than dry balls, making them easier for batters to hit.

And speaking of curves, I could never hit those, either. Turns out that, once again, it’s not really my fault. Rather, it’s the fault of our evolutionary history, according to Cathy Craig, a psychologist at Queen’s University in Belfast.

Craig was investigating soccer, not baseball, but the principle is the same. She decided to see if experienced players could follow the trajectories of balls with side spin. She had them watch simulated shots with a spin of 600 rpm, and asked them to decide whether the balls would end up in the goal or not–and discovered that even professional soccer players couldn’t predict the results accurately.

The reason? Until recently, there was no reason why humans needed to be able to judge the trajectory of a side-spinning sphere travelling through the air. We know how gravity affects objects moving through the air, because that’s been important in evolution, Craig told New Scientist magazine. “But spinning balls don’t occur naturally. Why would nature bother having a visual system that’s adapted to them?”

My point exactly. Which means that I, who am unable to accurately judge the trajectory of spheroids hurtling through the air, am the normal one, and all of you good ball players are freakish mutants.

I feel much better now.

More photos here.

There is no excuse for athletes being more respected and honored in school than scholars. But few indeed are the high schools that provide scholars and musicians and actors and poets with anything remotely like the honor given to athletes. And it’s not because athletics is harder than those other activities.

It may well be easier than, say, music composition or songwriting. Heaven knows, they manage to find enough professional football players to fill the NFL every season — but to find a songwriting team that can write an enduring Broadway score … well, that doesn’t even happen once a year.

Preach it, brother.