#ICYMI: Pitching Physics with Ron Darling

To break down the physics of a pitch, this week Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly welcome former New York Mets starting pitcher and 1986 World Series winner Ron Darling Jr. and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson Don’t miss an episode of Playing with Science. Subscribe to our channels on: Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/playing-with-science/id1198280360?mt=2 GooglePlay Music: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Iimke5bwpoh2nb25swchmw6kzjq SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/startalk_playing-with-science Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/startalk/playing-with-science TuneIn: http://www.tunein.com/playingwithscience NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Find out more at https://www.startalkradio.net/startalk-all-access/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to this next installment. First, if you may not have known, StarTalk, which we've been running for many, many years now, has a new spinoff program called Playing with Science. Because we recognized that there was a subset of our fanbase who loved the science of sports shows that we did for StarTalk. You know, football, baseball, hockey, soccer. And so, we figured, let's create our own subdivision of StarTalk called Playing with Science. And your main hosts there are Chuck Nice, Chuck.

• 0:41Chuck Nice?

  Hey, man. How are you?

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dude.

• 0:43Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dude.

• 0:44Chuck Nice?

  Good to see you.

• 0:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gary, you're in from the UK.

• 0:46Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 0:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just before they separated, we got you just before.

• 0:50Chuck Nice?

  Gary made his own Brexit.

• 0:53Gary O'Reilly?

  What they did was, they sent me over to the US with a long rope. And at this present moment, we're just tugging the UK towards the USA, away from France. It's very gentle, very slow, but we're getting there.

• 1:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Gary O'Reilly, they are the two hosts, and I'm kind of interloping now, because I'm the resident astrophysicist. So we're talking about baseball and pitching. And dude, we got you here. This is great. I'm happy to be here, and thanks for coming, guys. Man, man. And you've, so one of the reasons why people make themselves available is because, like, they have a book. And so, you've got a book that just came out. Oh, I did. I don't have to talk about that, though. Let's not take any time away from the science.

• 1:33Gary O'Reilly?

  Let's not do that.

• 1:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He does not have a book out. Called Failure in Time for the Biggest Game of My Life.

• 1:40Chuck Nice?

  I love that. Gary's the guy that you go to dinner with, and you're like, "Let me get this." He's like, "Go right ahead."

• 1:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So 14 years, 14-year career? Yes. And in that, my crack team of researchers, 136 wins, 116 losses. Yes. All right. So that's, it's good to be on the upper side of 500 in this game. Absolutely. Good, good. 13 shutouts. Nice. Okay. 1,590 strikeouts. Nice. Very nice. Oh, you didn't know that? No, I didn't. Yeah, we'll tell you. We'll tell you. Or, how many times you scratched her balls? That was another one here. Five thousand, six hundred.

• 2:17Speaker 03

  I'm from the school, the longer I look at my stats, the least impressed I get.

• 2:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, yeah, you just don't, don't, don't look then. No, we're, we're good. So, let me ask you something. We, what we try to do is mix science with everything we see in life and in pop culture. And find it if you didn't even know it was there. And so, what I always want to know, that's you as a professional baseball player. Were you ever thinking about the science of the pitch at all? Or is it just kind of you're feeling it and you're just going with the flow?

• 2:50Speaker 03

  No, I, I think you think about the science all the time. I mean, it depends on, I guess, who you are and what you like out of the game. I mean, you're trying to, at some point, spin a baseball. The more revolutions it has, the better pitch it's going to be. So, you try to maximize that.

• 3:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Better as in more confusing to the batter?

• 3:10Speaker 03

  More confusing to the batter, more break. You're not, you're not only full with that.

• 3:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Break is, just in case we have new listeners, break would be, there's the trajectory you think the ball has coming in. And where it actually lands as it crosses the plate.

• 3:23Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 3:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the break.

• 3:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, the break. And also, you can change the break by your grip. So, if you want it 12 to 6, you're more on top of the baseball, getting the seams to turn over 12 to 6.

• 3:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you've only used digital clocks before, no one will have any idea what that stands for.

• 3:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've got a couple of kids in the audience, how, how old are you? You're 13. He does not know what 12 to 6 means.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  North to south?

• 3:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I bet he does. I bet that young man does know exactly. He does look kind of smart, so he would know it for that reason.

• 3:54Chuck Nice?

  He's actually wearing a Patek Philippe watch, so I don't know how rich you are, young man.

• 4:00Speaker 03

  It's not his fault, it's passed down.

• 4:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, passed down, that's correct, right, Ron. So, go on, so 12 to 6 would be top to bottom?

• 4:06Speaker 03

  Top to bottom. But if you change your position on the ball, you can have it more where it goes from, I can't say the clock now. But from 2 to 8. So, you can change how the, how the pitch breaks. Um, one thing I tried really hard to do and I never could do it, um, is the thing that we called carry. When you throw a fastball, four seams, just by gravity alone, the ball at some point is going to fade. It's going to start to work its way away from the intended target. You worked on carry so that the ball would fini- if you finished your pitches, the ball instead of fading, which the hitter is gonna see and say, "Boy, that ball's gonna fade out of the strike zone," it had carry. So it would stay on that line and the hitter

• 4:51Speaker 03

  would be fooled, take the pitch for a strike, and it would be a strikeout. And they'd look at you, like, "How'd you do that?"

• 4:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What the hell'd you do? So is this, is this what they call a rising fastball?

• 5:00Speaker 03

  That's what they call a rising fastball.

• 5:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they don't actually rise, they just simply don't fall as much as they could. So your perception, since you, we all have a native, because we grew up in earth gravity, we have a sense of the rate at which things fall. Even if we're not calculating that, you just have a sense of it.

• 5:15Chuck Nice?

  Nine point eight centimeters per second squared.

• 5:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Somebody has some physics 101. Actually, it'd be 980 centimeters per second, 9.8 meters per second squared.

• 5:26Chuck Nice?

  Okay, thank you.

• 5:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stupid.

• 5:28Chuck Nice?

  All right. Who's the rest of the National Physics?

• 5:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, right. But you know what? That ain't a bad thing when Neil deGrasse Tyson calls you stupid. I'm like, "Thank you." Stay in your lane, buddy. So, guys, do we have a clip of seeing, seeing Ron pitch? Do we have, do we got a clip?

• 5:48Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, as a matter of fact.

• 5:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could you introduce it, because I haven't seen it?

• 5:51Chuck Nice?

  Sure. So what we like to do on the show, uh, whenever we, we start the show is we, what we do is we kind of unpack a single play and then, uh, kind of knead the dough and stretch out the science from there. Uh, but since we have Ron here, uh, you know, Ron actually was in a game where he struck out Rick Camp, and apparently it was a huge deal because Rick Camp was supposed to serve him his lunch or something. Um, but, but of course, uh, he sits him down and, uh, this is the last pitch and the call from the announcer. So let's hear it.

• 6:25Gary O'Reilly?

  We're in.

• 6:29Chuck Nice?

  There's the pitch. Ooh! A devastating swing by Kemp. And then you see Ron Darling being carted off on the shoulders of all of the other players.

• 6:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But isn't this like for radio? So how is this gonna work? I have to be very descriptive.

• 6:47Chuck Nice?

  I just told everybody what happened.

• 6:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the batter swung.

• 6:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I swear the bat missed the ball by six inches.

• 6:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and that's what they call fanning a batter.

• 6:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. No contact.

• 6:59Chuck Nice?

  Right. He didn't just miss the ball. Like, it's almost like he was trying to swing. It's like he was trying to beat somebody up that wasn't there.

• 7:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Swing at a phantom ball.

• 7:10Speaker 03

  A piñata swing.

• 7:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good one!

• 7:14Chuck Nice?

  I like that piñata swing.

• 7:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because the piñata's bigger than the bat itself.

• 7:18Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 7:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but yeah, but he's not hitting the ball. So, do you have a foresight that as the ball leaves your hand, it's an awesome pitch and they're just gonna miss it?

• 7:29Speaker 03

  I think what happens, and I don't know if this is science for you folks out there, but every sequence of pitches puts you in a position to make a pitch that it's gonna be the correct pitch.

• 7:40Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 7:40Speaker 03

  If you make that correct pitch, you know 99% of you knows that that ball is not going to be playing.

• 7:48Chuck Nice?

  And Ron, is that because you're... Is that kind of a mental chess match that you're playing with the batter? Is that because you faced him before and he's anticipating something and then you do something differently? Or is it just a general psychology that you know if I have this pattern, 1-2-3 curveball and then fastball, or 1-2-3 fastball and then off speed, that I'm gonna get you?

• 8:13Speaker 03

  You know, I think it's a combination of all those things. I think that what happens within the framework of an at-bat is that you are trying to set the batter up to a point where the pitch that is coming can't be thought of before, can't be anticipated, can't be put in play. And if you do it correctly, as a pitcher, you really are playing chess. But on the bad days, it's more like Chinese checkers. It's just kinda trying to figure stuff out.

• 8:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You did lose 118, 116 games here.

• 8:43Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 8:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah.

• 8:44Gary O'Reilly?

  Do you get halfway through the pitch and go, "I've seen something I don't like"? And go into a different mode, a change of thought or process.

• 8:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the wind-up, you're talking about?

• 8:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, there are times when you get to the top of your wind-up where your leg is as high as it's gonna be and you're supposed to have kind of a balanced position before you proceed to the plate and you're like, shit, I'm in a little bit of trouble here.

• 9:10Gary O'Reilly?

  That was the moment I was really trying to get to. That particular moment.

• 9:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How to articulate that moment?

• 9:17Chuck Nice?

  And has that ever been because your leg was so high that you actually just did that?

• 9:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, right.

• 9:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Not to shit.

• 9:25Speaker 03

  That never happened, thank God.

• 9:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 9:29Gary O'Reilly?

  But then again, if you're a batter, probably how many have never faced you before? They've all got your pattern. So I know if you're gonna go one, two, three, fourth one's gonna come at me in a certain way. How many people?

• 9:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, Gary, it works both ways.

• 9:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 9:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The batter has seen the pitcher and often you get a fresh batter, a rookie, not just a rookie, first time at bat and they hit a triple or a homerun and, oh, here's the next great player. No, they just haven't seen him yet. You guys just know how to pitch to him yet.

• 9:57Chuck Nice?

  You know, I think that happens in like a lot of sports because even in football, when you have a young quarterback who defenses haven't seen, that quarterback often his first two or three games, everybody's like, this guy's a phenom, he's amazing. And all the defenses around the league are like, just wait, bitch.

• 10:17Gary O'Reilly?

  So true. The analysts haven't got to him yet. Cut that tape up just quite yet.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  I think also knowledge can be your enemy, you know, in a sense that you-

• 10:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't say that in front of me.

• 10:30Speaker 03

  Knowledge-

• 10:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, just whisper that.

• 10:33Speaker 03

  Knowledge can be your enemy in the sense of too much knowledge. You have so much that at some point, I call it double thinking. You're facing a batter, you faced him before, you know exactly how to get him out and some part of your brain says, wait a minute, he's gotta catch on. I mean, I've been doing this for four and five years. He's gotta catch on at some point. Let me try something different. A ringing double off the fence and you're like, I double think there. I should have just stayed with what was working.

• 11:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we can break down the path of the- We can break down the forces on the ball. So the mound, remind me how high the mound is relative to the rest of the field?

• 11:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, 15 feet.

• 11:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, how tall the mound is above the ground?

• 11:15Speaker 03

  Oh, sorry, 15 inches.

• 11:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  15 inches, okay. And I'm old enough to remember when the mound was- That would be so cool if it was 15 feet. Oh, my God, that'd be the coolest game ever. It'd be called Bean Ball. That's right. So I'm old enough to remember when the mound was taller than that.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 11:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they wanted to give more an advantage to the batters just to get more action in the game.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  I think I made a mistake. It was 15 inches in 1968 when all the pitchers-

• 11:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  12 inches now.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  Now 12 inches now.

• 11:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, there it is. So that reduced the advantage.

• 11:43Chuck Nice?

  I just love the fact that Neil knew that it was 12 inches, but he was gonna let Ron-

• 11:47Speaker 03

  So kind.

• 11:48Chuck Nice?

  Stay at 15. He's just like, yo, dude, you're a major league baseball player. You don't know how high that is.

• 11:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can't help you if you don't even know that. So there's not only that, and there's so much written about tall pitchers, even though they're not always necessarily the best. I'm thinking of, who's the guy from Boston? The short pitcher.

• 12:09Speaker 03

  Pedro Martinez.

• 12:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pedro Martinez. It couldn't have been more than 5'10".

• 12:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, 5'10", 5'11".

• 12:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, around there. And he had awesome pitchers, pitches. So, but let's go with this. So you've got a 12-inch mound. There's a tall pitcher. Your arm is high up before you release it. So now you have the speed of the ball, gravity pulling it down, you have the spin that you put on it, and then the aerodynamic forces that influence its trajectory. So all of this is going on. And so I love the way Chuck thought of it as this chess match between you and the batter. And so, what I like about baseball, and I wonder if people thought about this, if it is humid out, okay, it will be lower atmospheric

• 12:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  pressure than it if it is dry air. Because for every molecule of dry air, what's the air we breathe? It's got oxygen, that's 21%, and mostly nitrogen, okay? Nitrogen molecule, which is N2, two nitrogens attached together. So, stay with me on this, because it's worth it, I promise, okay?

• 13:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So just watch this. So nitrogen had the number of particles in its nucleus is 14. So it has seven protons, seven neutrons. You have two nitrogen atoms together. It's 14 plus 14. So nitrogen weighs 28 in these units. Okay? If you swap a nitrogen molecule with a water molecule, because now you have humidity in the air. Water is what? We all know. H2O. So H, its weight is one. Because it has one proton in the middle. It have two of those. It's two. And we've got an O. One O, which is oxygen, and its weight is 16. So the, in these units, nucleon units, the weight of an, of a water molecule is 16 plus two is 18.

• 13:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The weight of a nitrogen molecule is 28. So if you, if you're moving through air and breathing air, that has any humidity in it at all. It weighs less than dry air. And so because of this, there'll be less air pressure to help you in a pitch. That's my point.

• 14:17Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 14:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. And I don't know if pitchers think about this.

• 14:21Speaker 03

  It does seem counterintuitive because when you breathe humid air.

• 14:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You think it's heavy.

• 14:24Speaker 03

  It's thick. So, yeah, but that's awesome. That's great.

• 14:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not only will a pitch curve less in humid air, a ball can be hit farther in humid air because the air weighs less. So the, the mass of the drag on the ball as it plows through the air will be less because the air doesn't weigh as much. Because you have water molecules sitting in its place. And, and I don't know if people, if they thought about this.

• 14:49Speaker 03

  I'm thinking every baseball player I've ever met, including myself, think exactly the opposite.

• 14:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The opposite.

• 14:56Speaker 03

  Exactly the opposite.

• 14:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In, in moist air, a ball can be hit farther because there's less drag on it. And because there's less drag, your curveballs won't curve as much.

• 15:05Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 15:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'll have to, you'd need cold, you need, uh, dry air in any case, and cooler air even more so.

• 15:11Speaker 03

  Now, what, when people talk about Colorado, which is at mile high.

• 15:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's another, that's another example.

• 15:17Speaker 03

  Why doesn't the ball curve there, do you think?

• 15:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, for the same reason. Yeah. When you're mile high up, there's less atmospheric pressure.

• 15:23Speaker 03

  So, so, so.

• 15:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in the limit.

• 15:25Speaker 03

  Thin air or dry air gives you the same effect?

• 15:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no. Thin air.

• 15:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or the thin air because you swapped the molecule out.

• 15:34Speaker 03

  Right.

• 15:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or low pressure air because you're at high altitude.

• 15:38Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 15:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Both of those will reduce your ability to throw a curve ball.

• 15:41Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 15:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, and so what I wonder is, if you're not thinking this, and then you have a game, so I had a bad day today. Maybe it was all atmospheric and you weren't factoring that into how you should have handled that game.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  I'm just trying to figure out how to get rid of some of those 116 losses.

• 15:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out how many were Colorado.

• 16:01Speaker 03

  I can figure it somehow. I can get maybe the 82.

• 16:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah. After the fact, fix the books.

• 16:07Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 16:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that was a weather loss, not because you didn't know what you were doing.

• 16:10Chuck Nice?

  That was an atmospheric pressure loss.

• 16:12Gary O'Reilly?

  That one's not on me. That's something else.

• 16:14Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 16:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Do you have a favorite pitch? One that you went, you know what, no matter what's going on, this is gonna do the job.

• 16:21Speaker 03

  You know, pitches, pitchers change over time because your skills when you're 24 are not the same when they're 30 or 32.

• 16:29Gary O'Reilly?

  Your evolution of your pitching style changes as your career progresses.

• 16:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I, I broke my thumb in 87, which when you throw a curve ball, when you throw a good curve ball, you're able to tuck your thumb, okay? So you pull on the seam and you push with the thumb. Pull and push, pull and push. But because I broke my thumb, I had to pitch straight with it. I could never get that revolution again.

• 16:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why did you break your thumb?

• 16:53Speaker 03

  Uh, I was diving for a bunt.

• 16:55Chuck Nice?

  That and that.

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so, so you earned it then?

• 16:57Speaker 03

  I, I earned it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought he was diving in the Caribbean. No, no.

• 17:02Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 17:03Chuck Nice?

  He was diving for a bunt, but he also owed some people a lot of them.

• 17:07Speaker 03

  Oh, there you go.

• 17:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they got thumbs to take care of it.

• 17:13Chuck Nice?

  Charlie, they took my thumb, Charlie.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  They told, they told me not to go to Bensonhurst that night. I didn't think of that, so.

• 17:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, diving for a bunt. That's noble. Very noble.

• 17:22Chuck Nice?

  Ron, can you show that again? So for those of you who are not here. This is the most uncomfortable position that you could be in. So when you throw a curve ball.

• 17:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:33Chuck Nice?

  So you, right now, for those of you listening, Ron has two fingers across the top of two seams at where the seams come together at the most narrow point of the ball. And then underneath that, instead of wrapping your thumb, which would be like the way you would think

• 17:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 17:47Chuck Nice?

  That you would do it, which is you take the flat part of your thumb where the, where the fingerprint is, put it up under the ball and you throw it. No. What he did was, take his thumb in the most unnatural position possible, which is bending it back towards the end of his hand and put it under the ball and that's how you throw that thing every time?

• 18:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's Kate Dad's knuckle.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  Kate Dad's knuckle.

• 18:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 18:07Speaker 03

  You pull with your middle finger, push with your thumb, and I know people can't see this because it's on radio.

• 18:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:13Speaker 03

  But I have a scar on my thumb, uh, from throwing that pitch still today.

• 18:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  Like a long scar because it, it used to sit right on that seam and it would rip it all the time. And you'd leave a game many times with this bleeding.

• 18:26Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 18:27Speaker 03

  That's cause.

• 18:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's called a blood ball.

• 18:30Gary O'Reilly?

  How long did it take you?

• 18:31Chuck Nice?

  Does that change the, uh, rotation of the ball when you put a little blood on it and is that legal?

• 18:35Speaker 03

  It, it is. It's a vampire ball they call it. And it scares them just enough.

• 18:42Gary O'Reilly?

  How long does it take you to master a whole series of different pitches? I mean, you might have some natural talent as a young player, but then, as you said, your style evolves throughout your career. Do you find that you can change your pitches as you progress?

• 18:56Speaker 03

  I, I think that's one of the great thing, uh, about pitching. I've heard that about people who play golf. There's no mastering. You know, it is, it is a continued, continued search.

• 19:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  For perfection. That'll never come. And that's, uh, the, the most difficult and beautiful part of trying to pitch.

• 19:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But so, but some pitchers, uh, I think Mario Rivera among them.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was not known for having a large repertoire of pitches.

• 19:20Speaker 03

  A one pitch.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, basically a one pitch guy and people still had a hard time hitting it. So it's, it can't be just a rule that the more pitches you have, the more effective you can be.

• 19:29Speaker 03

  Well, I, I think, um, the ability to control movement. So we've talked about how the ball moves and doesn't move.

• 19:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:36Speaker 03

  Um, one of the things that's very difficult is controlling movement. You've got to be able to control it. It, it's great to have the ball move, but you've got to be able to control it so it moves three inches instead of four and a half. It's got to be able to break.

• 19:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Inches are about the width of your thumb, just so he's a Brit.

• 19:54Gary O'Reilly?

  No, no, we're imperial. We're drifting towards the States, so we're inch happy. We've never been really embraced centimeters.

• 20:02Chuck Nice?

  We're actually going back to inches now that Brexit is.

• 20:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gotcha, back to inches.

• 20:06Gary O'Reilly?

  We never left. The old country never left inches. We sort of, eh, to the centimeters. So we still have gallons and all sorts of things like that.

• 20:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay, so we're gonna have to translate for you.

• 20:15Gary O'Reilly?

  We're not at all stubborn or set in our ways.

• 20:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so a couple more, more points here. If you allow me to reflect on this, one of my favorite films, just because it was a head trip, just to watch and to experience, was For the Love of the Game. And it was like the 10th baseball movie by, by.

• 20:38Gary O'Reilly?

  Kevin Costner.

• 20:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kevin Costner. How many baseball movies can the guy make? So if you're unfamiliar with the film, and I'll leave out many of the details. He's a, he's a, he's an aging pitcher. And the entire movie is inside his head during a game that he's pitching. And he's pitching this game very well. And what, I did not appreciate what you guys do on the mound until I saw that film. Because you're in his head and he's, and he's saying, oh, hey Joey, in his head. Hey Joey, it's been a while since we both came up at the same time. I remember you never, you know, you never swung at the first pitch. You just never did. Okay, so bam, threw a strike right down the middle, a meatball right down the middle, and he looks at it for a strike.

• 21:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so I'm thinking, you're just trying to throw to, but no, the mind game. I fi- I finally appreciated deeply what this chess match really is.

• 21:30Speaker 03

  You know what's interesting is that people ask me all the time,

• 21:35Speaker 03

  do you remember pitches you threw in a game? And, and I try to explain it, if you have children, you remember everything about your child, right? Because you're, it's so dear to you. I can remember every pitch I've ever thrown in a game. If you tell me, Wrigley Field in 1984, you faced the Cubs, you gave up three home runs. You were knocked out in five and a third, a guy threw beer on you as you were coming off the field. What did you throw to say in the third at bat? Boom, I can tell you exactly every pitch.

• 22:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Wow. Ladies and gentlemen, that's incredible, by the way.

• 22:04Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 22:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell us about all 116 of your losses.

• 22:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To understand this.

• 22:11Chuck Nice?

  No run support, atmospheric.

• 22:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're, you're listening to Playing with Science, a new spinoff of StarTalk. And I'm your interloper host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your resident astrophysicist. But we've got Gary O'Reilly and Chuck Nice, you're the main dudes here. And, and who do we have with us? Ron Darling of the New York Mets.

• 22:33Speaker 03

  The one and only.

• 22:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The one and only. And you had the privilege and honor of pitching for the 1986 world champion season. So, did you guys feel that the whole season going? Or, did you, there's a certain inevitability to your, to the mixture of talent that makes the, the championship team? Were you a team of destiny?

• 22:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I, you know what's, what's interesting about when you're on a team that's special is that it really, it kind of changes how you're going to feel about those people forever. You're in the room, you know something special is going on. I, I don't know because I'm not an actor, but I'm sure if you're in a hit show, it's kind of the same deal is that you know, not only is everyone special in the room, but you also know that, hey, whatever happens, I'm there and you're there for me.

• 23:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's family.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  And once you have that feeling, it, it never leaves.

• 23:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Before 86, was it 19, uh?

• 23:31Speaker 03

  69.

• 23:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, 69, the amazing, the, the amazing Mets. So, uh, I, I'm born in the Bronx, so I'm fundamentally a Yankee fan, just forgive me for that. I'm sorry, I'm in the wrong company.

• 23:43Speaker 03

  Feel free to boo, feel free to boo, guys. Come on, let it out.

• 23:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just know that if we go more than eight years without a championship, we're pissed off. That's how spoiled we are. Um, so, uh, let's, let's move forward into your, the later seasons and even just now, if you, you're a sports commentator now.

• 24:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the, could you react to the role of the application of science to sports today, to training, to the analysis, the statistics? Baseball has always had statistics, but now it's reached some other, like, dimension of statistics.

• 24:16Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 24:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, what's your reaction to, does that add to the game or take away from the game from the old days?

• 24:20Speaker 03

  I, I think it definitely adds to the game. I think the analytics or sabermetrics of the game. The math of the game just adds to your knowledge of the game. That being said, numbers can be used in so many different ways. And how you use them, let's say we all get the same numbers about whatever we're doing.

• 24:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Same data.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  We're same data. We're all going to apply it in a different way. And I think the ones that can apply it, that have the combination of the data, also factoring the human factor, the ones that do it the best with both are the ones that are better teams.

• 24:58Chuck Nice?

  You know what, speaking of that, so tell me how you feel about when you, when you talk about that kind of data, Moneyball per se.

• 25:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The book and the movie.

• 25:09Chuck Nice?

  The book, well, yeah, you don't have to give me a review, but even though I would appreciate it.

• 25:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Ron Darling gives it five stars.

• 25:16Chuck Nice?

  But no, the actual, you know, the actual use of it as a recruiting and as a GM putting together a team, do you see the validity of it?

• 25:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I, I think the interesting thing about Moneyball is that you have to put it in historical context. It was a team that did not have a lot of money to spend on players. So had to find a new way or a new player that could give them a chance of success that no one else was really factoring in. The on-base percentage, something that's been around for forever, had never been looked at as a real plus on a ball club until Billy Bean, kind of take the GM of the Oakland A's.

• 25:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, when I grew up, there was no on-base percentage.

• 25:59Speaker 03

  That's right, yeah.

• 25:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was not a thing. It was just never given. And when they finally came over, they said, hey, that's kind of, I like that.

• 26:05Speaker 03

  Well, when they talk about pitchers, pitchers, they always talk about whip, right? Walks and hits for innings pitched. Well, that's always been around. And you knew that if you gave up a lot of walks and a lot of hits, you're not a very good pitcher. So that's a, you don't really need the number.

• 26:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Quantify how bad you are.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  Exactly. Now that you can, yeah, exactly.

• 26:22Gary O'Reilly?

  So you, you mentioned sabermetrics and then Billy Bean. Billy was a teammate of yours in the Mets. And am I not mistaken? Sandy Alderson is GM currently, so this thing's really quite circular. They're the, they're the, the genesis of sabermetrics and Moneyball of the Oakland A's, yet they've got such a connection to the Mets and even to you.

• 26:42Speaker 03

  Well, well, that's a great question, and, and what happened, why Billy really took this on, is that Billy Bean was in the first round pick of the New York Mets, the same year they drafted a kid named Darryl Strawberry.

• 26:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Uh huh.

• 26:55Speaker 03

  Who ended up being a fantastic player. They were separated by 25 picks in the first round. So you would think if Darryl Strawberry's one of the greatest of all time, or a great, great player, that Billy's got to be somewhere within that planet of, of players.

• 27:10Chuck Nice?

  Nice analogy in front of me, but you get points for that.

• 27:12Speaker 03

  Thank you. But he wasn't, he, he was a failure. And what he was trying to do, I think initially, was trying to understand with the mathematics of the game, how he was a failure. How could that happen?

• 27:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Wow.

• 27:27Chuck Nice?

  Whoa.

• 27:27Gary O'Reilly?

  That's how it came out of his.

• 27:28Chuck Nice?

  That's like trying to figure out why my father doesn't love me.

• 27:32Speaker 03

  It was.

• 27:32Chuck Nice?

  Quantitatively.

• 27:33Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly.

• 27:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Because he, he, we, we've discussed here with pitching, and the whole center of pitching, and me as, as a complete layman to baseball, understands everything is controlled for you, and everything Billy didn't have in his game at that time was controlled.

• 27:48Speaker 03

  Well, well, I think what, what happened is, he's, he's looking at himself and people who scout the game. So the scouts of the game, when they look at a guy like Billy Bean, 6'4", 195 pounds, had a full scholarship to Stanford, if you put it in the computer, it spits out star. And he was not a star. So he was trying to understand how his team could get a, a, a bit of an edge by looking at players, not because they look beautiful, but, but they play beautiful.

• 28:17Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 28:18Speaker 03

  And that's where it started.

• 28:19Chuck Nice?

  But now, think about this, I mean, because you said, well, he was a failure, but don't you have to consider the baseline? Because to get to the level of play where you guys play, you are an infinitesimal portion of the entire global population. I mean, it, it's all, it's. Like so small, the sliver of people.

• 28:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Another way to think about that, every person in professional sports was the best ever in their high school. And one of the best ever in college.

• 28:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now they're all in this pinnacle.

• 28:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now you, now you, that separates out.

• 28:58Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 28:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now are you the best of the best?

• 29:00Chuck Nice?

  Of the best.

• 29:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of the best of the best.

• 29:01Chuck Nice?

  And so, you know, how do you, you know, how do you qualitatively break that down when you're starting with such an elite base to begin with? So, yeah, Billy Bean, failure on that level.

• 29:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 29:14Chuck Nice?

  But let's look at him as a mere mortal. He's a god.

• 29:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 29:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay?

• 29:19Speaker 03

  That's right. I, I was just thinking that the sheer numbers probably it's tough to be a supermodel, but as far as professional athletes are concerned.

• 29:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fewer supermodels than professional baseball players.

• 29:28Chuck Nice?

  They don't have to practice.

• 29:29Speaker 03

  This is.

• 29:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, yeah, that's they do. I see them in the gym. They're there.

• 29:33Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 29:34Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm not walking.

• 29:35Speaker 03

  What gym do you go to?

• 29:38Chuck Nice?

  I like, I like the way you think.

• 29:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What gym do you go to?

• 29:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Hands up if anyone else had that thought.

• 29:47Speaker 03

  The, the, the point you make is great, and I think the, the great preparation I had for it is, um, I went to Yale in New Haven. And I was the best student at my school. Everyone I went, in high school, everyone I went to college with was the best student in their high school, their hamlet, their town, whatever. Baseball's the same way.

• 30:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:07Speaker 03

  Baseball, you were the, the best player from Oklahoma. I was the best player from Millbury, Massachusetts, a small town. And what happens is you're thrown into the scrum and you kind of have to.

• 30:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice rugby reference there. You're on it, on it, on it.

• 30:22Speaker 03

  And you kind of have to just survive, somehow survive through all, all of this talent. And it's not only the, it's not always the most talented who make it through and, uh, it's, it's.

• 30:33Chuck Nice?

  That's exactly, that's exactly why I went to community college.

• 30:38Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so. I was a star.

• 30:42Gary O'Reilly?

  So I think we go back to Winston Churchill when he says, many are called, few are chosen. That would be why the elite are exactly that, the elite. If we go back to.

• 30:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gary, that's why we have you on the show to get Winston Churchill quotes.

• 30:55Gary O'Reilly?

  I know. Stick around. Between midday and one would do Shakespeare.

• 31:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Stick around and that's your thing.

• 31:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Quoting your people.

• 31:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, so the, the other thing is, it's, it's okay to have all of these statistics and all these numbers. But is it not more important, the question you ask of them, that will make the big difference?

• 31:13Speaker 03

  Well, I think, Neil, what you were talking about before with Love of the Game is

• 31:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The film, yeah.

• 31:19Speaker 03

  The film with Kevin Costner. That is kind of where it's all separated. It's that you're able to process all of this information, but process it very quickly.

• 31:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he pitches the best game of his life, and he's not in his youth.

• 31:33Speaker 03

  He knows that it's the last chance for him to pitch a great game.

• 31:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 31:39Speaker 03

  And all the factors that have kind of worked during the movie, put him in this position of maybe being able to do something really special for the last time.

• 31:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you're saying is, that quote is really correct, that 90% of the game is half mental.

• 31:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:55Speaker 03

  That's Yogi Bear.

• 31:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, you've invoked one of my heroes.

• 32:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, more of StarTalks, Playing with Science. And Ron Darling.

• 32:05Speaker 03

  Yes!

• 32:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, Playing with Science, and our special guest today, Mets star Ron Darling.

• 32:19Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 32:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pitcher in the 1986 World Series. We handed him the ball earlier, and it has not left his hand since.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  I know.

• 32:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would've just put it down and went on with my life, but you can't put down a baseball.

• 32:31Speaker 03

  You know what it is? I'm just manipulating it and feeling it and thinking to myself, "The ball is different than when I played. The seams are not as much as high as when I played."

• 32:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They always say this. "It's not like it used to be."

• 32:42Speaker 03

  No, no, no.

• 32:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The game, we played in the snow uphill.

• 32:45Speaker 03

  No, I'm saying I probably had an advantage when I played. The ball's slicker.

• 32:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It looks a little slicker.

• 32:50Speaker 03

  And in the day, you used to be able to pick at the seams and make them rise. And if you picked at them enough while you're waiting for the sign from your catcher, you could make it rise, so you got a little more grip on the ball. And does that also give you a little more action? Gives you a little more action. It's probably not 100% legal, but that's kind of what you do.

• 33:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  92.5% legal. So action, well, it would give you action that you then wouldn't necessarily be able to predict, but that's okay, because then neither can the batter.

• 33:18Speaker 03

  But you know what count it is. So if it's a three-two pitch where you need to throw a strike, you wouldn't pick at the seams to get more action. But if it was an O-two pitch where you needed the guy to swing at a ball in the dirt, you want as much action as you can get.

• 33:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You guys are so evil.

• 33:31Speaker 03

  Wow, look at that, man.

• 33:33Gary O'Reilly?

  See, what you just witnessed here with Ron holding that ball, and I'm a former professional soccer player, and the most powerful thing in the world is a soccer ball in an empty room. Am I right with that?

• 33:44Speaker 03

  Oh, so true.

• 33:45Gary O'Reilly?

  He can't let it go because it just evokes so much of what's been wonderful in your life. So you just, when he's sitting there holding it, it's not like a comforter, it's just, something's going off mentally, isn't it? You're getting a little bit of something from years gone by.

• 33:58Speaker 03

  It's not like that.

• 33:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Are you having, are you having flashbacks right now?

• 34:00Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no. Yeah, because I'm reminded of all the 116 losses.

• 34:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  116 losses, there gotta be at least some bad flashbacks in there.

• 34:07Speaker 03

  Exactly, yeah. You know what I was thinking when I was holding the ball? I was thinking that in my youth, uh, my hands were thinner, uh, my hands.

• 34:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I shook your hand, you've got some pudgy hands.

• 34:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I, so I felt like, like my ability to manipulate the baseball felt a lot different than it does now. It feels like the ball kinda manipulates me.

• 34:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that, okay, so these are nightmares.

• 34:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's for another show, I guess.

• 34:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let me ask you something. In, in your day, uh, so I, baseball and maybe golf are the only sports where for many, in, in baseball, there are many positions where you can still have a pouch, a belly pouch.

• 34:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're still, and you can still be good at what you're doing. That's not, maybe a lineman in, in football perhaps, but most other sports, you, you can't carry around that much body fat. All right. So, I, I don't have a problem with that. What that says is you carry a skill that doesn't only emanate from your physical fitness. And I get that. And as they say, Babe Booth hit 714 home runs on beer and hot dogs.

• 35:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not on steroids. So, I get that. But today, you know, there's so much.

• 35:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Physiology technology that goes into training. And has that made players better or just has it has if that makes everybody better than no one really has an advantage anymore? And is there training you can do as a pitcher?

• 35:34Speaker 03

  Well, well, certainly is and it's really changed in my 30 years of playing and now and now watching the game. When I was a kid, you were told not to drink water during a workout. You were told not to lift weights. That would hurt your arm.

• 35:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a pitcher?

• 35:52Speaker 03

  As a pitcher. Pitchers were only told to do two things, throw and to run and not to and not to stop running.

• 36:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did they also tell you to smoke cigarettes a lot?

• 36:02Speaker 03

  Uh, you know, you know, it's funny, my generation of player, almost everyone smoked. I mean, I didn't smoke, but almost all of the players that I played with smoked and now I think nobody smokes, which is which is a good thing. Um, I think it's like anything else. There's, there's a third of the guys that are working out like you've never seen people work out. There's some of the guys that sometimes work out and then there's a third of the guys that are really doing nothing.

• 36:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But now, now they can monitor things like your oxygen uptake and and measure, you know, your carbon dioxide exhalations and know exactly physiologically what's happening in your body and and their athletes getting instructions that are so fine tuned to their to their physical fitness. And I'm saying, okay, you're getting physically fit, but does that make you better at this sport? That's what I kind of what I'm asking.

• 36:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think I think over over time.

• 36:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause there was, I'm saying, keep interrupting. There was Michael Jordan at the top of his game. He goes to play baseball and he's a 217 hitter or whatever it was. So just because you are at the top of your physical fitness doesn't mean jack. And I, I visit, I'm still talking here.

• 37:05Speaker 03

  No, no, no.

• 37:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I gotta, I gotta get this out of me. So I think I mentioned this on another, on another episode. Uh, I love that when MLB brings around their trucks and the, and the, you know, it's they celebrate the sport and you, you know, you can buy baseballs and they have a pitching cage and this sort of thing. So I go there to see how fast I could throw the ball. I'm a physically fit guy. All right. I didn't play baseball, but I used to wrestle and I rode. I did stuff.

• 37:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I got the ball. I said, I got this. And they got the, the, the, the, the speedometer. What do you call it? Radar gun.

• 37:35Chuck Nice?

  Radar gun.

• 37:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The radar gun? Speedometer. Yeah, that'd be great if the ball had its own speedometer in it.

• 37:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so I said, I got this. And I threw the ball as hard as I could. And it was like 78 miles an hour. And that's like a slow pitch in your world. And I thought to myself, whoa, you guys are doing something I don't even know about, and I will never know about. And so I just want, that's just, I'm just want more props to what you guys do, and how you do it. If my fastest pitch is your slow ball.

• 38:03Speaker 03

  It, it's, it's a, it's, it's such a combination of things. Um, in a wind-up, there's probably 25 things that have to all click and go right for you to be able to throw the ball 95 miles an hour.

• 38:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's your top fastball?

• 38:17Speaker 03

  Uh, when I, when I played, I threw 95, 96 miles an hour. By the end of my career, around 90 mark.

• 38:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 38:23Speaker 03

  Um, but, uh, to give you an example, Dwight Gooden, one of the greatest pitchers in the history of the game for the Mets, used to throw 96 plus. Darryl Strawberry, who was our right fielder, who had one of the best arms in the game, he used to always kid him that he could easily throw over 90 miles per hour. We had a radar gun in Montreal. Darryl has had one of the greatest arms, got on the mound, he threw five pitches, none of them broke 80.

• 38:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Broke 80?

• 38:49Speaker 03

  None of them broke 80.

• 38:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 38:51Speaker 03

  So there's, there's, there's.

• 38:52Chuck Nice?

  Is that, is that the mechanics? Because you're standing still, you're on the mound, you have to do a wind-up. Whereas when you're in the outfield.

• 38:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can give a running.

• 39:00Chuck Nice?

  Grab a ball, you run, you throw with your entire body.

• 39:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it does, and you're not trying to hit the inch.

• 39:05Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly.

• 39:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're trying to get in, in the cross-sectional area of the catcher's mitt, you know, as they can try to recover the ball.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 39:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so I don't feel so bad if I threw the same speed as Darryl Strawberry.

• 39:15Speaker 03

  So, you're good.

• 39:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not quite, brother. Don't start putting yourself in the. No, I said, I threw, I thought I threw 78 miles an hour. I barely broke 80, and, and I was with the same with Darryl Strawberry.

• 39:25Speaker 03

  You're good. You're good with him.

• 39:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, well, I feel better now.

• 39:28Speaker 03

  Do you?

• 39:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's end the show.

• 39:30Speaker 03

  All right, okay. I wouldn't take batting practice with him if I were you, but you gotta feel good the way you're throwing.

• 39:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, so how much are pitchers today touched by technology?

• 39:39Speaker 03

  I think they're, they're touched in every single way, from, um, pitch tracks and other things that track every single part of their mechanics, break down every single second of what they do, and they can tweak things as they go along. Um, I think it's. I don't think everyone has the mental capacity to be able to take what they see and make it work for them in game.

• 40:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what, that's what practice does. It makes it, it makes it motor, what's the term?

• 40:08Gary O'Reilly?

  It's acquired history.

• 40:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, it's just motor, motor memory of something you practice.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  Muscle memory?

• 40:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Muscle memory.

• 40:16Gary O'Reilly?

  The thing there is, that's what you were discussing when you said you're, you're clocking 95.

• 40:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:22Gary O'Reilly?

  And, and someone with the abilities of Darryl Strawberry comes up, he hasn't had the history of going through that and the muscle memory of pitching. He's throwing in a different action.

• 40:30Speaker 03

  Well, and it's not only that, you know, if you're a guy that throws 95 and you're a pitcher, you're going to do that a hundred times.

• 40:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  You know, not, not once, not twice.

• 40:39Gary O'Reilly?

  And you develop those strengths in particular key muscles. And that's what goes back to the point you were making about bespoke conditioning programs for certain positions in teams, no matter what.

• 40:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just a point about you throwing it a hundred times and that, of course, if you're playing right field, you only have to throw that fast.

• 40:56Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 40:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some of the time you get the ball. Cause it's, there's gotta be runner advancing to a base when the ball is hit to you. You're right, he, he does it three times a game, you do it a hundred times.

• 41:04Speaker 03

  That's right. And what, what you were talking about before and how to, how to get your body ready for whatever position you play, it's different for pitchers than players, guys who play every day, is that my body has completely changed from when I was a kid. You know, when I played for the Mets, I had a really big rear end, really big legs, because that's what you worked on in those days, because you were trying to transfer.

• 41:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You still have a big rear end.

• 41:27Speaker 03

  Oh, I didn't know you were looking. Hey, Rob Darling got that. I don't even know if it's true, but I think that what you were told is that somehow you're trying to transfer some of that energy that you're putting into your arm and trying to save that by transferring it. To your legs and other places.

• 41:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, of course, a batter does that as well. If you look at a professional swing, not a little league swing, the, of course, it's not just the bat that's turning, it's the torso is twisting and the back leg is pushing and all of these muscles conspire so that you have peak speed and peak force.

• 42:07Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 42:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right at the contact of the ball.

• 42:09Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 42:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you pop the ball 400, 400 feet.

• 42:12Speaker 03

  That's right. And then, and then that doesn't even include trying to have a swing that the contact meets in such a way that you have backspin on the ball because the backspin is going to keep the ball in the air longer. I mean, that's how far the science can go.

• 42:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 42:24Chuck Nice?

  When you, when you talk about technology, let me ask you this, uh, you know, with respect to equipment, so in football, uh, wide receivers are allowed to wear gloves that are specially designed to help them catch the ball.

• 42:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Basically sticky gloves.

• 42:39Chuck Nice?

  Sticky gloves. Quarterbacks are able to wear gloves that are specially designed to help them throw the ball. Would you be accepting of that kind of technology coming into baseball?

• 42:52Speaker 03

  Well, I, I think there are pitchers out there that use, um, the combination of the rosin bag.

• 42:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what that is.

• 42:59Speaker 03

  With, with, I've heard, um, a sun tanning solution that they use, uh, I, I used to use because, um, I figured I got to a point where I knew where the ball was going.

• 43:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Confess to us here. Yes.

• 43:11Speaker 03

  No one's listening. I, I wore long sleeves and I would wet the sleeves so that I always had the moisture from the sleeves. Now, um, I, I didn't want the moisture from my forehead or from the back of my neck because it wasn't always the same. But if I wet my sleeve, I was always getting about the same kind of moisture.

• 43:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that why pitchers always touching their body?

• 43:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I never figured that out.

• 43:30Speaker 03

  They're trying to get.

• 43:31Chuck Nice?

  They're trying to get that. That's funny because you see them lift up their cap.

• 43:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:34Chuck Nice?

  And, you know.

• 43:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, they're trying to get some on their fingers.

• 43:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah. They actually, and they're taking the moisture off their brow. That's.

• 43:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what they're doing, of course, so now, maybe, I don't know if they thought this through. If you get brow moisture put in on the ball rather than pre-wet sleeves, then that moisture evaporates and you're left with a salt residue and that could have an effect on the pitch. I'm just saying.

• 43:54Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Is that, that's the case? Really?

• 43:56Speaker 03

  But you already knew this. No, I, I didn't, I did, I did not know that.

• 44:00Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 44:00Speaker 03

  But you know, there was a pitcher in the day, uh, some of our older guests, I remember Gaylord Perry, Hall of Famer.

• 44:06Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 44:06Speaker 03

  He was known for cheating all the time and he threw. He wasn't a Yankee, was he?

• 44:14Speaker 03

  He threw, he was at some point, right? Yeah. And he used to throw a spitball and the way the spitball was done, it's hard to show the people who are listening, but most pitches are thrown with the seams or across the seams. If you wet your hands enough, a spitball was thrown with no seams and instead of throwing it with this kind of action.

• 44:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With a 12 to 6 action.

• 44:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, you pinched it. And when it pinched, it came out with no spin. And hitters, when hitters see a bit, what they do when they stand in the box, their first thought is, is this ball gonna hit me in the head? That's their first thought. It's a good thought. Second thought is, it's not going to. Third thought is, does it have any spin? And the fourth thought is, where is it? Because I'm gonna put the ball where I think the ball's gonna be. Not where I know, but where I think the ball is.

• 45:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And for most of us, by the time we have that fourth thought, the ball's already in the catcher's mitt.

• 45:06Chuck Nice?

  Or it has hit you in the head. And you are dreaming the rest of that conversation.

• 45:12Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 45:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Let us put Ron Darling in 2017.

• 45:17Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 45:18Gary O'Reilly?

  And give him access, I'm gonna put you at the peak of your game, sir.

• 45:22Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 45:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Right, at the right top, and give you access to every bit of technology that's available to Major League pitchers now. How much better is Ron Darling in 2017?

• 45:33Chuck Nice?

  And more importantly, what technology would you want to take advantage of today?

• 45:38Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I think the technology of pitch tracks, I'd like to know how far my balls, the baseball is traveling. I would like to see how far it's staying true in the strike zone, how much movement I do have to, two inches or, and I think the other thing that I would like to know is the mathematical stats of each and every player and their tendencies.

• 46:08Chuck Nice?

  Hmm, yeah.

• 46:09Speaker 03

  That to me would be the greatest gift.

• 46:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if there's some, if there's some code that tells you, that contains a lot of information about that one, now generally you would rely on the catcher to know this. That's why they're telling you what pitch.

• 46:22Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 46:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if you knew it as well, oh my gosh, that'd be dangerous.

• 46:25Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. I'd like to know, guy on third, less than two outs, their slugger is up. He swings at the first pitch 78% of the time.

• 46:35Gary O'Reilly?

  Wow.

• 46:35Speaker 03

  That first pitch has got to be a good one then.

• 46:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:39Gary O'Reilly?

  How much better would Ron Darling be in a percentage?

• 46:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How many, how many?

• 46:42Chuck Nice?

  Only 115 losses.

• 46:46Gary O'Reilly?

  Do you think, do you think it's quantifiable? Would it make that much of a difference? Or would it be enough to give you the edge you require?

• 46:53Speaker 03

  I, I think it would, it would make a huge difference if I had the knowledge that you could have today. Um, did not have before.

• 47:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we got to start to land this plane. So I want to ask you some, a quick sort of lightning round here.

• 47:05Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 47:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who's the best batter you ever faced?

• 47:08Speaker 03

  Tony Gwynn.

• 47:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 47:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Look at that. Why?

• 47:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice.

• 47:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Why?

• 47:11Speaker 03

  He batted 452 off me. I, I know, I know the numbers, so.

• 47:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You probably know that to even more decimal places.

• 47:19Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 47:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  452.

• 47:20Speaker 03

  That's like pi.

• 47:20Gary O'Reilly?

  But why was he the best? What made him that special?

• 47:23Speaker 03

  Uh, any pitch, anywhere, he could hit. No way to pitch him and there was no, uh, there was no key to getting him out.

• 47:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Was it just you or did he read every other pitcher?

• 47:33Speaker 03

  You know, I think he won 12 batting titles or something.

• 47:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not just, don't see, I don't take, don't take it personally that he hit 452 on him.

• 47:40Gary O'Reilly?

  I don't want to say that. I want to hear the great man himself. That's what I was doing.

• 47:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, another quick one. Um, since you know how to throw the ball, how come pitchers don't make better batters?

• 47:51Speaker 03

  Oh, that's interesting. Um, pitchers don't make better batters because they're considered outliers on the team. No one really considers them part of the team. Very rarely do they get batting practice, especially in my day. So even though I was a good hitter in college, one of the best college hitters of my time, by the time I got to pro baseball, I was not even considered a part of the team.

• 48:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Honing is gone.

• 48:14Speaker 03

  So I went 15 years without taking any meaningful batting practice.

• 48:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay. And, uh, which, uh, what do the Mets look like this year for the 2017 season?

• 48:24Speaker 03

  This, this is their year.

• 48:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and my last question before we wind this up. In your book, Game 7, 1986, Failure and Triumph from the Biggest Gamer in Life, what's your takeaway, or what's the takeaway you want the reader to get from that? What's the deepest thing you can share with us?

• 48:45Speaker 03

  Well, I think for most folks, when they read a sports book, it's about some great accomplishment that happens. For a professional pitcher, being allowed to pitch game seven of a World Series is the greatest thrill you could ever have. But the takeaway on this book is, I had that, and I failed. And why did I fail? And I think what happened is, after the game was done, and the Mets won, but after the game was done, a couple of days later, I said, you know, I was at the top of my game, did not give up an earned run in that series, and I got knocked out in the fourth inning. How did that happen? I thought organically, it would go away. Thirty years later, it did not.

• 49:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're still thinking about it.

• 49:24Speaker 03

  And that's why I wrote it, and as soon as it was finished, I have not thought about that game once since. So it helped. So it was either $150 on someone's couch, write a book, or bourbon, I guess. Only three choices I had.

• 49:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the catharsis did great wonders for you.

• 49:41Speaker 03

  It got me through that the process is, is that when you're playing professional sports, the other guy is really trying to.

• 49:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 49:51Speaker 03

  Happens.

• 49:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very cool. Ron Darling, thanks for being on Playing with Science.

• 49:55Chuck Nice?

  This is a blast.

• 49:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My gosh, if you can...

• 49:57Chuck Nice?

  This is a blast.

• 50:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, you can find StarTalk on Sirius XM Insight channel, channel 121, I think that is, and we're on every day at 5 o'clock, I think. And Playing with Science, you can find at StarTalkRadio.net. And if you support that, we will bring many more of it to you, because sports is not only entertaining, but as we have come to know, it can bring some of life's wisdom to us as well. So, Gary?

• 50:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, sir.

• 50:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're good here?

• 50:30Gary O'Reilly?

  We are good. And like I say, everybody that is in this room right now, and if you have enjoyed what we've done today with Ron Darling, and you'd like to explore other sports as well as baseball... Please check out Playing with Science. We'd love to have you as listeners.

• 50:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Chuck, final word.

• 50:43Chuck Nice?

  Um, hey, this is great and you guys are great and make sure that you do spread the word. Don't just check out Playing with Science because what we're trying to do is, uh, bring science and sports together as, you know, the most awesome mashup ever. Hey, you got sports in my science. Hey, you got science in my sports, you know? So, it's like the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of, of sports.

• 51:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For anyone over 50 who might remember that TV commercial.

• 51:10Chuck Nice?

  But, but the fact is, uh, you know, th- this is a very unique show and so, uh, we need the support of the listeners and we need you to actually, um, help promote the show as well. That, that, that would really, really help us.

• 51:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and we are signing off here at the Sirius XM Universe Headquarters in New York.