#ICYMI - Baseball - Home Run Physics

Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice learn why it’s so hard to hit one out of the park, Guests: Geoff Blum, the Chicago White Sox legend and announcer for the Houston Astros, and Alan M. Nathan, Professor Emeritus of Physics. Don’t miss an episode of Playing with Science. Subscribe to our channels on: TuneIn: http://www.tunein.com/playingwithscience Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/playing-with-science/id1198280360?mt=2 Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/startalk/playing-with-science SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/startalk_playing-with-science GooglePlay Music: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Iimke5bwpoh2nb25swchmw6kzjq 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.

• 0:11Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 0:12Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 0:13Gary O'Reilly?

  And this is Playing with Science. Today, we take a look at the science behind the moonshot. The kind that's powered by the bat rather than a Saturn V.

• 0:23Chuck Nice?

  Yes, and guess what, listeners? Today, it's all about the home run. The physics of the bat, the ball, the brain.

• 0:30Gary O'Reilly?

  And letting fly with the science will be physics professor Alan Nathan from the University of Illinois.

• 0:35Chuck Nice?

  But first, you know, if you've ever wondered what it's like.

• 0:38Gary O'Reilly?

  I have.

• 0:39Chuck Nice?

  You have. Well, you know what? But you haven't wondered like too much because you're a professional athlete.

• 0:44Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, yeah, but there's certain things you want to do in your life.

• 0:47Chuck Nice?

  That's so true. And one of them is probably the hardest thing they say it is to do in all of sports, which is hit a Rome run.

• 0:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes. Yeah. Actually, take a bat. You hit it that far, it goes to Italy.

• 1:01Chuck Nice?

  Go to Rome. Find a guy who was jogging, whack him with a bat. That's called a Rome run.

• 1:09Chuck Nice?

  Of course, we're talking about a home run. But then take that.

• 1:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 1:12Chuck Nice?

  And then put it in the setting of a World Series. And then put it in the setting of, I don't know, the last inning? Maybe the 14th inning? What do you get? Well, we're going to find out today.

• 1:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, yeah, because with us in the studio is none other than the Chicago White Sox legend, the man with his own bronze statue. Yes, Jeff Blum.

• 1:34Chuck Nice?

  Welcome to the show, Jeff.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  Oh, good to be here. Thank you for having me.

• 1:38Gary O'Reilly?

  Did we embarrass you?

• 1:39Speaker 02

  Not enough, yeah. Well, I've got plenty more.

• 1:41Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, yeah, okay, we're going to lay it on.

• 1:43Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, man.

• 1:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, that's just something else. Okay, so here we go. When you go up on deck, do you know this one is leaving the park? Or is it just in the hands of the gods?

• 1:52Chuck Nice?

  Or do you have a sense like, I feel like, like I feel it? I feel really good.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  You know what? It's kind of funny that you talk about that because they had me mic'd up in batting practice before the game.

• 2:03Gary O'Reilly?

  Really?

• 2:04Speaker 02

  And I know that we're in a National League ballpark where the pitcher's going to hit, and I know there's potential double switch, pinch hit, all kinds of issues that will create, that get me in the game. And they had me mic'd up, and I'm taking batting practice, and I'm yelling at the batting practice pitcher. I'm like, would you please give me better pitches so I can try and hit them out of the ballpark? You know, I'm trying for home runs. And who would have thought, you know, five and a half, six hours later, I'd have the opportunity and follow through? Yeah, I'm not saying I called it, but I'm saying I had a pretty good, pretty good feeling about it.

• 2:30Chuck Nice?

  So, you know, we're actually making the assumption that those who are listening and those watching us on StarTalk All-Access know that we're talking about the fact that Jeff is a former Major League Baseball infielder. Uh, he's a current announcer for the Houston Astro Astros Astros. Shit, let me say that again.

• 2:51Chuck Nice?

  He is a currently the announcer for the Houston Astros and an analyst for MLB at the Plate on TuneIn Radio. But specifically what we're referring to is that as a World Series champion uh, for the Chicago White Sox in 2005. And Jeff, in the 14th inning of the longest game in Fall Classic history, came to the plate and knocked a ball out of the park to win the game. So why don't we take a look at that?

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, might I add, that doesn't get old.

• 3:44Chuck Nice?

  No, it doesn't. And I love the look on the pitcher's face when he's like, this much.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  I don't know if they'll have the clip of it, but the best part was the manager, Phil Garner, for the Houston Astros, literally picked up his bar stool he was sitting on and fired it into the tunnel. So there was a lot of anger and aggression. How slow can you run the bases once you've dinged?

• 4:09Speaker 02

  What's crazy is I was on the Astros team two years prior.

• 4:13Chuck Nice?

  Yes, yes.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  I mean, a year and a half prior. So I knew a lot of guys on that team. So there was a little bit of, oh, hell yeah. And then at the same time going, oh, man, my boys are in the other dugout. So it's kind of ironic that I had to hit it against them. Did you already have the read on the pitcher? Did you know what he was gonna die up next? I had a pretty good idea. Well, you know what? In, in knowing that I played for that team, I knew they had the scouting report on me. So I knew what, what they were gonna avoid. And that place where he threw the baseball is the last place you want to pitch me. Cause one place where I don't have to think and I can just react is that down and in fastball. Do you think he read that report? Yeah, and I think that's why everybody in the dugout snapped when I hit that homerun because they knew exactly where it was going as soon as I put the ball on it.

• 4:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. It was a bad pitch.

• 4:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. And here's what's funny.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, go ahead.

• 4:57Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry.

• 4:59Chuck Nice?

  You made it look so pedestrian. You know, it's down and in pitch and the way you just, it was like a day at the office.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:07Chuck Nice?

  You literally went down, scooped this ball and it's like, this is like, it's almost like it was a script for you.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  I appreciate, maybe it was. I didn't write it, but I know somebody out there did and I'm grateful for it, but no, that's what I mean. It was just a reaction for me. I was, I was actually mentally thinking on the outer third of the plate because I know that's where they wanted to pitch me.

• 5:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  But as soon as I recognized down and in, it was an easy reaction for me to go there.

• 5:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, so you recognize this. It's some, it's sub four tenths of a second, hand to bat.

• 5:37Gary O'Reilly?

  What are you looking for and what, and that, as that information transmits itself to you, what are you calculating and what part of the pitch do you get that information before you're into the swing and the connection?

• 5:48Speaker 02

  There's a lot going on there, but it's also repetition and experience. You've, I've stood in that box thousands of times. I mean, I hate to bring up all the outlier stuff, but the 10,000 times you've done it before.

• 5:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  You know, it becomes a reaction and as a hitter, you recognize spin, you recognize release point.

• 6:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  It, it's a little bit harder to pick up speed sometimes, but the scouting report and a lot of the, the tendencies that we have on pitchers and a lot of the video we watch can give us enough information to kind of prepare us for that. And it was a 2-0 count, so I went in there with the intention of taking at least one pitch because I'd never faced Ezekiel Estacio. So I decided to take a pitch so I could recognize ball out of hand, his delivery, the timing and try and get all that.

• 6:28Chuck Nice?

  You played him.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I mean, you try to.

• 6:31Chuck Nice?

  That's what you do.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  But I took, in a 2-0 count, and that's another thing, know, understanding that a 2-0 count is typically a fastball count. So what you're trying to do is narrow down, say the guy has three pitches and you've got, the first pitch, you've got 33% chance of being right. In a 2-0 count, it goes, you know, 80 to 100% chance of being right. So I lucked out in the fact that I got ahead in the count 2-0 and he was going to try and throw me a fastball. It just so happens that he missed his spot. So I had the pitch, but then when I recognized location, it just made it that much easier.

• 6:59Chuck Nice?

  It made it that much easier. So, uh, talk about the chess match because now you're talking about when you're facing a pitcher and... The the the actual count means a great deal to you as a hitter. Because I think the count gives you the advantage, you know, when you're ahead in the count as a batter. I think that's very much your advantage. So talk about that as a hitter. When you're ahead in the count, what that does to the chess match and what that does to your your anticipation.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Well, oh, oh, counts are a little bit different, but it, you know, after that first pitch, you kind of get an idea of what's going to happen next. Because a lot of guys do have tendencies and I know in my career and my personal experience, that's something else you have to take into account. If a pitcher facing me gets into a one ball, no strike count, I know I'm going to get an off speed pitch.

• 7:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Just through experience, because they're anticipating and mentally that I'm sitting on a fastball. So they're anticipating me gearing up for 92, 95 miles an hour. What they want to do. Change speed, change spin, get a little break on the baseball and maybe a swing and miss. Or I ground out, pop out, something out, you know, something negative.

• 8:01Gary O'Reilly?

  How does it take you as a major league player to get to that level of data? In your own mind to be able to just dial it up and bring it forward?

• 8:10Chuck Nice?

  And are you storing that data on each pitcher that you face? Like, are you going to your own mental reservoir?

• 8:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know what's crazy is, I mean, I'll I'll refer to some things. I remember that A B, you know, pitch by pitch. Um, we had Jeff Bagwell in our booth the other day. He's going to the Hall of Fame, but he hit 449 home runs. And literally we showed a video of two or three home runs back in 1989 and he recalled the at bats. So the the memory on these guys is unbelievable. Obviously, it's a positive outcome.

• 8:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, do you remember, do you remember the strikeouts as well?

• 8:43Speaker 02

  No.

• 8:44Gary O'Reilly?

  On the other end of this equation is the pitcher and we did a show with Ron Darling, the former Mets pitcher. He, he's like an elephant.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  It is, it's amazing.

• 8:53Gary O'Reilly?

  He he just goes through every, he broke down several pitches from years back and I'm looking at him thinking.

• 8:57Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's amazing.

• 8:59Chuck Nice?

  You just never, so and is that because of the experience of being in there? Is it such a a hypersensitive experience that it's just kind of burned into your mind indelibly? Or is that kind of like a muscle memory type deal where you're so highly focused on what you're doing? That it makes it easy to recall those things like.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  Um, I think it's a little of both, but you gotta remember at the same time, this is our job. You know, this is my life, not my life, but my career is on the line. So in order to me to continue in this career, I've gotta be pretty good at it. So there's different mechanisms. I know guys that have gone through at bats, gone back and have a notebook in the, in the dugout. They'll write down pitch by pitch.

• 9:36Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  What's going on. You don't have to do that anymore these days because of the.

• 9:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, you've got a team of analysts to do it for you. Yeah.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Literally they do. They, they travel with four or five video guys who are tracking every single pitch and you can recall it on the computer just like that. So that's kinda nice, but it is experience. Uh, you know, you need that knowledge. So in going into the at bat, obviously if you're facing a guy for the first time, you, you have an idea, but you're gonna start locking away some of that stuff in your memory bank because you know you will face these guys four to 20 times throughout your course of your career.

• 10:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Supposedly the most difficult single act in sport.

• 10:11Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. They say it's the hardest thing to do.

• 10:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Round ball, round bat, and am I right? You hit it square.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  Well, that's, that's the phrase.

• 10:16Gary O'Reilly?

  That's the whole phrase. That's the whole thing. Now, is it something that is as difficult once you're on the plate as it looks and we're told it is from way back in the stadium, way back at home on TV?

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Well, it's so hard that you can fail 70% of the time and be considered a Hall of Famer. There you go. How many jobs out there can you screw up 70% of the time and they pat you on the back and go, great job? So that gives you an idea right there, but yes.

• 10:41Chuck Nice?

  That's just getting a hit.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's just.

• 10:43Chuck Nice?

  That's just hitting, making contact with the ball.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Actually, yeah, being safe just 30% of the time. Yeah, you're right. Cause you can, you can literally do everything right and hit it right at somebody and get nothing to show for it.

• 10:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. So there's a lot going on, but it is one of the hardest things and you talk about the timing.

• 10:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. I mean, I asked Ron Darling this question. I said, no matter what you threw, was there one guy had your number every time?

• 11:04Chuck Nice?

  Every single time.

• 11:05Gary O'Reilly?

  He said, yes. So the, the reverse of that is, was there one pitcher always threw you the kryptonite?

• 11:11Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. No, Kevin Brown.

• 11:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  Kevin Brown for me was an absolute beast and it was kinda funny cuz it was my rookie year, I believe in 99 and he threw me a sinker at about 94, 95 miles an hour. And I hit a bullet through the, or at the shortstop and he lays out, makes a great play on me. And I, from that A B on, he threw me nothing but split fingered fastballs.

• 11:32Chuck Nice?

  Oh my god.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  And I did, I could not square him up for the life of me. I couldn't figure him out.

• 11:36Chuck Nice?

  Besides the fact he was angry as hell on the mound. You say besides the fact he was angry as hell on the mound.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  Oh man, yeah.

• 11:41Chuck Nice?

  Does that actually play into the psychological back and forth when you see?

• 11:45Speaker 02

  It does a little bit. You know the Randy Johnsons, there was Darryl Kyle was an extremely angry guy on the mound, but Kevin Brown for me, I mean, he was literally snorting smoke coming out of his ears kinda.

• 11:54Gary O'Reilly?

  How do you deal with a guy? How do you deal with a guy that brings that temperament to the mound as a hitter?

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Uh, there's a lot of psychology. You gotta step in and kinda trick him into the sense that you're not afraid of what he's bringing.

• 12:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  Uh, but that, that's sometimes the hardest part.

• 12:06Chuck Nice?

  And when you do that, can you get him maybe to throw a different pitch cuz he's just like, "Oh, you think you're so damn hot shit?" Oh, sorry.

• 12:14Chuck Nice?

  I don't know where I just went there. Yeah. I don't think you can say hot on a podcast like this.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  That's it, yeah.

• 12:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but can you get a guy kinda get in his head and he's like, "Oh, really, Mr. Hot Stuff? Really? Well, watch this."

• 12:25Speaker 02

  You know what's funny is you have A Bs against guys that own you and you foul one, you see a guy foul a ball straight back and the, the fan at home and some of the analysts, even I do sometimes go, "Wow, he just missed that."

• 12:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  But what they don't realize is I grabbed the, the middle part of my bat where it hit off the pine tar and I'm trying to cover up the fact that if I actually would've hit that thing, he would've shattered my bat into a thousand pieces.

• 12:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  So I'm trying to play it off like, "Man, I just missed that pitch."

• 12:51Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  I missed that pitch, you know, and then it makes him think, makes the catcher think and they're going, "Wow, he was on that pitch. Maybe we'll go to something else."

• 12:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  It actually works out to your favor.

• 12:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, you mentioned the bats and, you know, the fact that they will split if, if they've hit in the wrong. Not knowing, and this is a very naive, innocent question on my behalf, when you pick a bat up, will the sweet spot or the balance in the bat be different to the next one you pick up? Are they very, or is it all just standardized?

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Oh, no, it's completely different from model to model. So not every guy in the lineup, not every guy on every team around the major leagues will swing the same exact model bat.

• 13:26Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  Because the, the, the shape of it's different, the weight of it's different.

• 13:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  The length is different.

• 13:31Chuck Nice?

  And am I correct in this? I've seen actually, just speaking to what you just said right there, and maybe I'm seeing this, but I've seen guys actually take two bats in the same, I mean, in different hands, and then put one down and pick the other one up. Is, is that for show? Or are you, I mean, what's going on there?

• 13:46Gary O'Reilly?

  That's a sponsorship deal. That's what that is. He throws the one he's not sponsored by and he's like, this one.

• 13:52Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Uh, it depends. Am I four for my last 10 or am I oh for my last 20?

• 13:57Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  So, I mean, the psychology gets in there because am I going good? Am I going bad? Because when you're going good, you could pick up, uh, could pick up a microphone stand and go out there and get a hit. But, uh, you know, there are differences and it's funny because you will order, you know, I was a B392 guy. I had my own bats made. So I would pick up two different bats out of the same box and I could tell which one was heavier or lighter.

• 14:18Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 14:19Gary O'Reilly?

  That, that for me, so you're, it's never one of those things because the guy will intuitively go, he knows exactly what he wants, he knows exactly what the play scenario is, so he's going to choose a bat that gives him a little bit more advantage in that. I mean, was it Babe Ruth had the big heavy club?

• 14:34Speaker 02

  All those guys back in the day. It was amazing.

• 14:36Chuck Nice?

  Swung lumber.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  You hear stories and I mean, literally swinging tree trunks.

• 14:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  They were massive.

• 14:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, everybody thought that, uh, you know, the bigger the bat, the bigger the hit. That, that seemed to be the...

• 14:46Speaker 02

  You get it going, yeah, you get it going towards the zone. If you use something that large to make contact, it's gonna go.

• 14:50Chuck Nice?

  It's gonna go.

• 14:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Talk about exit velocity, and that's got to come out of the swing. So, you know, that from, from your point of view, what was your asset on?

• 15:01Chuck Nice?

  Hitting this one out the ballpark.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  You know what's crazy is when I played, it wasn't, they didn't talk about launch angles. They didn't talk about exit velocities. It was how do I get the barrel of the bat to the baseball as fast as I can?

• 15:11Chuck Nice?

  It's all about contact.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  It was everything pre, it was everything pre-contact. Now, everything is post-contact that creates the home run supposedly. So, the, the, the psychology and the thought process of, of hitting is completely changed. And I, it, it's great for me because now I can sit back and not worry about having to do it. I can actually learn and talk to it a little bit. So, it's, it's a lot of fun for me.

• 15:30Chuck Nice?

  Now, now that you say that, so that, I definitely want to know, who is it right now that you would hate to face?

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 15:39Chuck Nice?

  Right now, who's on the mound? And who is it right now that you would just love to face?

• 15:44Speaker 02

  I don't know about that. I haven't seen my swing in about four or five years.

• 15:48Chuck Nice?

  We're giving you the perfect swing.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  But I'm saying if, if there's a guy out there throwing 88 to 92 miles an hour, let me have a shot at him. Because there's a guy in the bullpen right now for the New York Yankees, Aroldis Chapman.

• 15:57Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  Averaging 100 plus miles an hour. I want absolutely no part of that.

• 16:02Chuck Nice?

  But he was, he was with the Cubs.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, last year.

• 16:04Chuck Nice?

  The three-digit pitcher and what was, what is, they clocked him at 106.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:08Chuck Nice?

  When he was in the, the AAA.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah. No, I mean, that, that does not make any sense to me.

• 16:15Chuck Nice?

  So now, is that, would that make, do you think that makes somebody unhittable? What makes somebody unhittable? Do you think like that sheer speed or is it movement? Like?

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Well, you can argue the fact that Greg Maddux was one of the greatest pitchers of all time.

• 16:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  And he threw 88 miles an hour consistently, but he had unbelievable movement. So, if you can create velocity and movement, I think you're going to be one of the few guys in all bases.

• 16:35Chuck Nice?

  So, what about a guy like Mariano? Uh, you know, he's retired now, but like, yeah, is that, yeah?

• 16:40Speaker 02

  No, that was a guy you anticipated and think about what he did. I mean, he's going to the Hall of Fame, but he had one pitch.

• 16:45Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Like literally, you sat down on the scouting report and it said, he's going to throw a cut fastball 92 to 95 miles an hour. Go get him.

• 16:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  And you can't. He would blow me up every time hitting left-handed. I could, I could not get the barrel out fast enough for, to make a good contact on the sweet spot because he created so much good late movement.

• 17:03Chuck Nice?

  Late movement.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  I couldn't anticipate it. You'd see it in one spot, start your swing and it would immediately change and blow you up.

• 17:09Chuck Nice?

  That's the whole gunslinger, this high noon thing, which is.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  Oh, how about that for intimidation, saying, I can, I can tell you what I'm doing.

• 17:15Chuck Nice?

  Got one pitch, do it. Ever have a favorite ballpark for you and the home runs?

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Um. Or just hitting period. Uh, Colorado.

• 17:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  I mean, and I was playing before the humidor was brought into play.

• 17:26Gary O'Reilly?

  We'll get into that with our, with our.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm kinda curious about that too, cause I mean, there, there are some, uh, some questions about how does humidity affect the baseball and things like that.

• 17:35Chuck Nice?

  We're getting into that. Look at you setting us up with the awesome segues for the rest of the show.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  I'm just trying to do my part, man. That's all I'm trying to do. But no, Colorado had no friction in that thin air. And I mean, there were plenty of ti- there were a couple of times I missed getting a sack bunt down and it was an O2 count. And I thought I got jammed on a ball and it went out of the ballpark. Everybody's high fiving me and I'm like, you guys have no idea how bad I just hit that ball and it went out of the ballpark. So I loved hitting there.

• 18:00Chuck Nice?

  Now, that's great. That's great.

• 18:01Gary O'Reilly?

  A homerun by mistake.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, those were the best.

• 18:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Aren't they? Freeze. Free homeruns.

• 18:06Chuck Nice?

  That's so great.

• 18:07Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, we will take a break up next. Well, yeah, the physics behind the homerun. Stick around. As Jeff said, he needs to know. I'm sure you do too. See you shortly.

• 18:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back. I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 18:24Chuck Nice?

  I'm Chuck Nice.

• 18:24Gary O'Reilly?

  And this, of course, is Playing with Science. Today, we're talking homerun science. And to give us the players' perspective, we have former Major League infielder and White Sox legend Jeff Blum.

• 18:35Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 18:35Gary O'Reilly?

  And joining us now by video call to help us wrap our heads around the physics is Professor Alan Nathan. Alan, welcome to the show. How are you, sir?

• 18:45Speaker 03

  I'm very fine. Thank you. Glad to be with you.

• 18:47Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we're glad to have you. Of course, Alan is Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Illinois. And he spent a decade studying the physics of baseball. Check him out at baseball.physics.illinois.edu. So let's just get into the anatomy of a homerun. And for you, Alan, this is what I want to know. Are there any parallels between experimental nuclear physics and hitting a homerun?

• 19:17Speaker 03

  Well, back, back when I was actually, uh, on our, on the regular faculty, I'm retired now, I used to tell people that because that way I could tell people that I was, uh, studying physics and, and still really doing my job. Uh, so look, there, there are, uh, there are some analogies in the sense that. The ball bat collision is basic physics. I mean, and the same physics applies to the ball bat collision as applies to the collision of subatomic particles. So in that sense, there is, there is some overlap and, you know, the same kinds of laws of physics apply. Of course, the context is very, very different.

• 19:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Jeff, this doesn't mean you're a nuclear weapon, just in case you're worried about it. There you go. Put that one to rest. All right. Professor, can you break down the anatomy and the aerodynamics of the before and after of a homerun so we can get some real nitty gritty science?

• 20:14Chuck Nice?

  In terms of, you know, what needs to happen, you know, going to the bat towards the plate and then what needs to happen at the plate and then what needs to happen afterwards?

• 20:25Speaker 03

  Okay, sure. So the ball is coming in, if it's released, let's say for the sake of argument, it's a really good fastball released at maybe 95 miles an hour, 94 or something like that. By the time it gets to home plate, it's going a bit slower. It's probably going more like 85 miles an hour because air drag slows it down. And it's falling. It's descending at maybe, for a fastball, it probably is coming into home plate at maybe a six or seven degree angle. It's descending.

• 20:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 20:58Speaker 03

  So the batter's job is to get the bat in the right place at the right time, at the right location on, on the, on the bat itself with a high bat speed. Bat speed is basically the thing that matters most in, in terms of how hard that ball will be hit. And of course, how hard that ball will be hit, along with the launch angle, is what determines how far that ball will go and therefore whether it's a homerun or not. So the batter's job is a pretty difficult one, at least for me, it would be difficult for major league players is maybe not as difficult because you don't have a lot of

• 21:40Speaker 03

  time to react. It might take something like four tenths of a second. From release until the ball gets to home plate. And not all that time is available to the batter in terms of observing the pitch. I mean, you have to decide by roughly halfway through that, you know, roughly two tenths of a second, you have to make a decision, am I going to swing or am I not going to swing? If I am going to swing, how am I going to swing? Is the pitch going to be, you know, on the low side, high side, inside, outside? The swing itself takes something like .15 seconds. I mean, typically, I mean, sort of on average for a major league hitter. So, you know, you take, you subtract that .15 from the .4 that you have altogether.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  You don't, you know, you got .35.

• 22:26Chuck Nice?

  So you've got plenty of time, basically. You've got plenty of time to make up your mind about how you're going to go about this thing, right?

• 22:32Speaker 03

  You can probably have a cup of coffee, you know, and friends a little bit. And then, oh yeah, and here comes the ball. So, you know, you, you, you really have to process that information very, very quickly. And basically, I think that's what batters are doing. They're, they're, you know, they see the pitch, they see the pitch at release, they observe it. They essentially transmit that information to their brain and they have some memory lookup table. They're, they're comparing it to pitches, similar pitches that they've seen before and using that to make their decision about what that pitch is going to do and therefore whether they should swing it or not.

• 23:13Chuck Nice?

  Well, you know what? Let's hold on for one second because this is fascinating. And we have a Major League Baseball home run World Series hitter in the room. A legend, Mr. Jeff, a man who has a bronze statue of himself. We like the idea of that. They liked him very much in Chicago. But Jeff, can you speak to the things that Professor just told us?

• 23:37Speaker 02

  No, I think what he's talking about, and I actually appreciate it. I should have put him on my PR team because trying to explain how hard it actually is. But, you know, I have a whole new appreciation now watching what these guys do. But a lot of what Alan is talking about now is actually provided by Major League Baseball for us to actually look. And they can instantaneously look at, they don't necessarily look at bat speed, but they can give you the exit velocity, launch angle, and they can calculate hit probability, number one, and then they can go ahead and estimate the distance because of adding those two things together. So it's a lot of fun for me to look at.

• 24:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Would you change the launch angle depending on which park you're playing in?

• 24:14Speaker 02

  That's what's crazy. You could probably put Alan in a batting cage right now and tell these guys, you want to try and hit a launch angle. And again, the pitch is coming downhill. So you've got to change your bat angle almost into an uppercut to make contact with this. But these guys are talking about how to create a launch angle that will deliver a long fly ball that Alan is talking about. It's incredible.

• 24:34Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that's insane.

• 24:35Gary O'Reilly?

  But does the theory translate into the bat in your hands? Does it really work?

• 24:40Speaker 02

  I don't know, because I grew up in an age of swing down on the ball to get the ball in the air.

• 24:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  You know, and they're not, they're kind of shifting away from that because of the launch angles that Alan's talking about.

• 24:51Gary O'Reilly?

  So is there more, Alan, Professor, maybe if I call you that, with a lot of the spin?

• 24:56Speaker 03

  Probably Alan.

• 24:57Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, Alan, Alan, it is, sir. So now, there's a lot of spin going on on a pitch, and will a batter like Geoff use that backspin to his advantage to maybe create that, that angle, that trajectory that we're looking for?

• 25:11Chuck Nice?

  And does it make a difference as you change the spin on a pitch to, to what happens to the ball when it comes off the bat?

• 25:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, that, that's actually a very interesting question and something that I've actually spent some effort trying to study. It turns out that when you do careful measurements in, in the laboratory of ball bat collisions, and you sort of ask the question, how much does the spin of a batted ball, which is really what matters in terms of the trajectory, the flight of the ball, the carry of the ball, how does that depend on the pitch of the, of the, of the, of the spin of the pitch ball? It turns out not all that much, okay? It turns out not all that much.

• 25:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Interesting.

• 25:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is. And it's, in a way, it's a little bit of a surprising result. But when you look into the physics of it, you can sort of make sense of it in terms of collision models and things like that. But it's, it's, it's for sure not an obvious result, okay? And so, you know, for example,

• 26:16Speaker 03

  it was thought, you know, maybe a decade ago, that a You know, a curve ball has topspin, a fastball has backspin.

• 26:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:27Speaker 03

  And that would lead to some difference in the spin of a batted ball. And there was speculation about that. People even wrote papers about it, but it was all speculation. There wasn't any data that you could use to verify. But now we have data that seems to suggest that that's that the spin of the batted ball really is not greatly dependent on the spin.

• 26:49Chuck Nice?

  So you know what, and please forgive me if what I'm about to say makes no sense at all.

• 26:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Will it take us off the air?

• 26:55Chuck Nice?

  I believe what it will do is just end baseball as we know it. If what I'm about to say is not right. But what I just, what just popped into my mind was a point of contact. So where you have the spin on the ball that will change the trajectory in flight as it comes towards the bat. The point of contact is going to just be this one single point of contact on the ball and one single point of contact on the bat. And then with, it's almost as if that writes an entirely new chapter for the flight of the ball leaving the bat. As a result, the spin of the ball on the way into the bat would not have that much of an effect because that point of contact is going to be the same no matter what.

• 27:40Chuck Nice?

  Am I crazy for making this hypothesis right here on the spot?

• 27:45Speaker 03

  No, actually, what you said makes a lot of sense. It's, you have explained, you know, in a lot of words, sort of what I have observed experimentally. I wouldn't have tried to say it any better myself. You did a nice job.

• 27:58Chuck Nice?

  All right, guess what? Here's the deal. I quit, I'm going off to become a scientist, that's the end of it.

• 28:04Speaker 03

  Well, you want to take my class next week?

• 28:05Chuck Nice?

  I would love to take your class.

• 28:07Gary O'Reilly?

  That is something I would pay money to watch.

• 28:09Chuck Nice?

  Oh, teacher class, no, I don't want to do that.

• 28:13Speaker 03

  You explained it very well.

• 28:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, Alan, we talk about the bats, the batter hitting with the sweet spot. And we've spoken to a couple of batters in Major League. And they say when you connect and you hit it on the sweet spot, you don't feel any vibration. It's almost an invisible hit.

• 28:29Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 28:30Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, looking at that, from that point of view. And this is something, remember we spoke to J. P. Aaron Sibbia?

• 28:36Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 28:36Gary O'Reilly?

  He said when he hit the seams. On the ball, not only did it indent into the wood into the bat, but he got a harder contact.

• 28:46Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 28:46Gary O'Reilly?

  Of it. So firstly, Alan, if you can talk to that, and then Jeff, I'm gonna come back to you and see what you think about the same question.

• 28:52Chuck Nice?

  So first, and before you, and before you get into that, can you just tell us, what is the sweet spot? And then answer the question.

• 28:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:59Chuck Nice?

  About what, um, what Gary just asked.

• 29:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay, so, uh, uh, the, the bat is, is not a rigid body. It can, it can vibrate. And, you know, when, when the ball, so the, the sweet spot is the location, I mean, the simple way to say it is, it's the location along the length of the bat where when you, the ball hits there, there's essentially no vibration. You don't feel it in your hands. And you know it really, if you hit, you know, on the tip of the bat, or you hit way on the inside part of the bat, you know that that can sting. I mean.

• 29:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:34Speaker 03

  Sometimes. And nowadays with high speed.

• 29:37Chuck Nice?

  Jeff, by the way, Jeff, Jeff is in studios. Shaking his head like.

• 29:41Gary O'Reilly?

  In nodding mode.

• 29:42Chuck Nice?

  His head and shaking his hand like you have no idea.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  We call it a handful of bees.

• 29:46Chuck Nice?

  A handful of bees.

• 29:47Gary O'Reilly?

  I like that.

• 29:48Speaker 03

  It probably doesn't feel very well. And nowadays, uh, in, in major league games, you, oftentimes you have high speed video. And you, you, it's, it's dramatic, the kind of vibrations that you actually see in the bat. When the ball is not hitting on the sweet spot of the bat. So the sweet spot is, it's, it's, there are many definitions of the sweet spot, but they all amount to about the same thing. It, it's the place where the vibrations are the, are the, uh, are the, uh, the least. Uh, so it feels best. It also is the location, you, whenever the bat vibrates, that represents energy that the ball transferred to the bat and therefore less energy for the ball to have on its way out.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  So it's also the best place in terms of exit speed, to get the highest exit speed, you want the sweet spot. So those two points on the bat or regions of the bat pretty much, pretty much coincide.

• 30:42Gary O'Reilly?

  That's, that's why it's the sweet spot, but now you have the science as to why.

• 30:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:46Gary O'Reilly?

  That's it. So Jeff. If you hit the seams on a ball as opposed to the leather between, how much of a difference? And for your point of view, why?

• 30:54Speaker 02

  I'm actually pretty impressed that he knows that he's hitting the seams. I had no idea when I was hitting the seams.

• 30:58Gary O'Reilly?

  I think he looked at his bat and he's just sort of, indentation.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  It is the indentation, but at the moment, I don't, I have no idea that that's happening. All I'm trying to do is get that barrel to go through the zone as, as fast as I possibly can. And that's, as a hitter, the idea, you are focused on that sweet spot. And that's how do I get that through the zone as quick as I possibly can? But with the, with the seams hitting the barrel, you know, the, I know we're going to get into the maple wood, ash wood. But the grain, if you hit against the grain on a, on an ash bat, you're also going to hit the hard side of the bat. So you're trying to create a, a connection, but I like the word collision of the sweet spot of the bat with the hardest piece of the bat. So along the grain with the seams on the baseball is going to increase your chances.

• 31:39Chuck Nice?

  That is fascinating. I mean, just the fact that all these variables are coming together at one single point to create this event is just mind blowing.

• 31:49Gary O'Reilly?

  You need to be an expert in, in timber and lumber and grain.

• 31:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  And amazingly enough, ballplayers actually do know a lot about the, the actual wood itself.

• 31:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 32:00Chuck Nice?

  Cool. Well, we'll get into that a little later. So let me ask you this, uh, both of you.

• 32:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 32:05Chuck Nice?

  Okay. Professor, you and Jeff, um, there is, and I've heard this myself. There is a certain crack of the bat. Now, I don't know if it happens because you're in the ballpark at the time. I don't know if it's, happens because you make the association because the ball leaves the park. And now you make the association that that was a different sound that you heard because you just saw a home run. But there seems to be a certain sound that the ball and the bat makes that when you're in a ballpark, you're like, oh snap.

• 32:45Chuck Nice?

  That's a home run. See you baby. Like something happened. Am I wrong or can you hear a home run?

• 32:52Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 32:52Chuck Nice?

  Oh, snap.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  I can have my head down up in the booth and I, and you, and you hear it. And I immediately know that that ball is well struck. Whether or not it's going to go out of the ballpark depends on launch angles and things like that.

• 33:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  But instantly, even if a guy taking batting practice, I can have my back turned to the batting cage. And if I hear a certain crispness of, of the ball off the bat, you definitely know that a guy got a hold of one.

• 33:12Chuck Nice?

  Wow. So, uh, Professor, is there a reason why there's a certain sound that, that a homerun makes?

• 33:20Speaker 03

  Uh, yes.

• 33:22Chuck Nice?

  And we're done. Like, yes, Chuck, and, and we're out of time. Thank you. No, go ahead.

• 33:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. So although I haven't personally studied this, I, I've read a little bit about it. So, uh, the, the basic idea is this. So the, the sound you're hearing, it's, it's not necessarily a homerun, but it's a well-hit ball. Okay. Meeting a high exit velocity. Of whether it's, as, as Jeff pointed out, whether it's a homerun will depend on the launch angle. But certainly a hard-hit line drive is going to sound just like, you know, it's not going to sound any different than a hard-hit homerun.

• 33:54Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 33:55Speaker 03

  And it, so it, it, it's, it's partly a signature of the fact that the ball, the bat hit the ball with high speed. On the sweet spot of the bat.

• 34:05Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 34:05Speaker 03

  When you're, so partly it's the high speed of the bat, which gives rise to a high speed of the high exit speed for the ball. And the, the fact that it's on the sweet spot is important because when you're off the sweet spot, uh, the sound is really, is different because of that vibration.

• 34:23Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 34:24Speaker 03

  You get sound, low, lower frequency sound. See, this crack that you hear.

• 34:29Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 34:30Speaker 03

  Has to do with the collision time. The collision time between the ball and the bat is something like a thousandth of a second. And the sound that you're hearing has to do with the fact that the, the air that's between the ball and the bat gets pushed out of the way. And it's that, you know, you're setting up vibrations in the air and that's what you're hearing.

• 34:48Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay. It's like a little mini thunder.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:51Chuck Nice?

  It's like little mini thunder.

• 34:52Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 34:52Chuck Nice?

  Announcement, this ball is about to leave the stadium.

• 34:56Speaker 03

  When you're, when you're off the sweet spot of the bat, there's two different things that goes on. First, the vibrations of the bat gives you some low frequency sound that you could hear. And second, the, because the bat is more flexible when you're off the sweet spot.

• 35:13Speaker 03

  The collision time is a little bit longer, so that frequency spectrum shifts to a bit lower frequency.

• 35:18Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 35:19Speaker 03

  And you don't hear that high-frequency crack.

• 35:22Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 35:23Speaker 03

  So what Jeff is saying is what I think I've heard from other ballplayers, that you can tell just from the sound. And I've even been told that if you're an outfielder, and you hear that crack, your first step is backwards.

• 35:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Makes sense.

• 35:44Speaker 03

  Because you, the ball is not high enough off the bat that you can actually see where it's going. So you have to make an instantaneous reaction, and then when you hear the crack, your first step better be backwards.

• 35:57Chuck Nice?

  Nice, nice. That is fantastic.

• 36:00Gary O'Reilly?

  And fabulous. Okay, we are going to take another commercial break. Professor will be with us, Jeff will be with us. When we come back, we'll get into balls and bats and their effects on hitting a homer here on Playing with Science. Stick around, we'll be back shortly. We're back, and it's Playing with Science, and we're looking into the science behind hitting the home run. With us in the studio, former Major League Baseball infielder and all-round legend in my book, Jeff Blum. And via video call, we have physics professor Alan Nathan, who spent the past decade studying the physics of baseball, so we couldn't have two better guests, really, could we, Chuck?

• 36:39Chuck Nice?

  No, we could not, especially, and this has been a fascinating show, I have to say. And my favorite part so far is the fact that my little theory on point of contact was correct.

• 36:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, Chuck's got a gold star. Chuck's got a gold star. All right, Professor, before we carry on, you have two photographs above your shoulder in black and white, and they are just wonderful. The one on the top, for people listening, just gonna have to use your imagination. The one on top is who, sir?

• 37:06Speaker 03

  It's Ted Williams.

• 37:07Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, and the one on the bottom is?

• 37:09Speaker 03

  Ted Williams.

• 37:10Gary O'Reilly?

  But the one on the bottom is a particular special moment in that man's career. Could you explain that to me, please?

• 37:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, so this is a photo taken September 28, 1960, which was Ted Williams' last game.

• 37:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 37:26Speaker 03

  At Fenway Park. It was against the Orioles. This was in the, I think it was the eighth or seventh or eighth inning, I don't remember now. But it was his last at bat as an major league ballplayer, and this is his last swing, and it went into the Red Sox bullpen for a homerun.

• 37:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Wow. No wonder you have that, sir. That's a glorious moment to capture. Right.

• 37:48Speaker 03

  It surely is.

• 37:48Gary O'Reilly?

  On with the show. Um, all right, Bat Mass versus Bat Speed. No Batman at all in there. But who wins this one? Bat Mass. Professor, let's go with you first. I'm sorry.

• 38:01Speaker 03

  That's an interesting question, a question people ask a lot. So it's, and it comes up in lots of different contexts. So if you, if you have a lighter bat, you're going to be able to swing it faster.

• 38:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 38:16Speaker 03

  And all other things being equal, you'll be able to hit the ball harder. However, all other things are not equal, because if the bat doesn't weigh as much, then there's less weight, if you like, behind that collision with the ball.

• 38:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 38:30Speaker 03

  Likewise, if you use a heavier bat, you're going to get a lower bat speed, and, but you're going to have a higher efficiency in the ball bat collision. And so there's an optimization, which one wins out. So this, the reason why this comes up in different contexts, for example, this comes up in the context of corking a bat, which, as you know, is illegal.

• 38:52Gary O'Reilly?

  I was just gonna bring that up, yeah.

• 38:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. So batters who cork the bat, they're, they're removing some of the weight in the barrel of the bat and just replacing it with cork. The cork itself doesn't do anything, but it's lighter than the wood. So you're, you're lightning the bat.

• 39:07Gary O'Reilly?

  You're lightning the bat.

• 39:08Speaker 03

  And you're you're you're you're able to get better bat speed, the higher bat speed. However, your collision efficiency suffers as a result. And the net effect, according to all the studies I've done and I've seen other people done, is that you you end up with a lower exit speed altogether for most batters if you do that. So if your goal in life is to hit the ball harder, making the bat lighter will not do it for you.

• 39:34Chuck Nice?

  So now, Jeff. Yes. Why don't you speak to us about, as a hitter in the major leagues, which which one is better for you? Do you want a lighter bat? Do you want a heavier bat? And remember that, uh, what was that movie? Was it called The Natural? Robert Redford. And so.

• 39:50Speaker 02

  Lightning Bolt.

• 39:50Chuck Nice?

  He had the Lightning Bolt. Wonder Bat. This Wonder Bat, you know what I mean? So what what what what does it for you? Does it? Is it? Is it the heaviness of the bat? Or is it the speed with which you want to swing it?

• 40:02Speaker 02

  It's kind of a it's it's an evolution of of guys thinking about bat speed, which is what the professor's talking about. And I think the growing theory in baseball now is the faster the bat, the quicker you are through the zone. That will create a better velocity off the bat.

• 40:15Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  Um, and Babe Ruth swung a big bat. A lot of these guys playing in the 50s and 60s swung big bats. But now currently you're seeing guys go with bigger barrels, thinner handles. And that's why you're seeing the bats break more often.

• 40:26Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  So but my I swung a bat that had a thicker handle and a thicker barrel because I wanted a more balanced bat so I could swing a heavier bat.

• 40:35Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  But it wouldn't.

• 40:36Chuck Nice?

  Stop bragging, Jeff, stop bragging.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  But it wouldn't create, you know, uh, uh, not a trampoline effect, but the bat wouldn't bend. I wanted a more firm, denser piece of wood that wouldn't give when the ball made when the ball made contact with my bat.

• 40:52Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay. Now, speaking of that, and and and The Natural, so this mythical bat that was so magical, um, you know, made out of this incredibly hardwood and. Forged by lightning. By lightning. The gods themselves delivered this bat. So Professor and and Jeff, um. Good Robert Redford made it in the majors. You're gonna ask that question? Are you gonna ask that question? The answer is yes, and I, because he's just dreamy. So no one would care if he actually got a hit or not. But does the. Would a softer wood or a harder wood make that much of a significance in terms of hitting the ball and where the ball will end up?

• 41:35Speaker 03

  I believe it would.

• 41:37Chuck Nice?

  Professor?

• 41:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Professor?

• 41:39Speaker 03

  Um, I, I, look, I hate to disagree with a professional, but No, please do. I think, here's where I think it makes a difference.

• 41:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 41:49Speaker 03

  So Jeff talked about using a thicker bat, uh, uh, and, uh, you know, and I think the one reason for using a thicker bat is that if, when the ball is, does not hit on the sweet spot, then you're less likely to have vibrations with a thicker bat. Okay. And with thicker, heavier bat. So I think, I think for balls hit on the sweet spot, uh, uh, the, the weight of the bat certainly matters, but, uh, the thickness of the handle probably doesn't matter very much, but it does matter for balls to hit off the sweet spot for how, for how it feels. Um, so I think a thicker handled bat will be more forgiving for balls hit off the sweet spot.

• 42:33Speaker 03

  Now, in terms of the hardness of the wood, that's an interesting question. Uh, again, I think that primarily matters when balls are hit off the sweet spot.

• 42:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:43Speaker 03

  Because the, the softer wood is going to vibrate more than the harder wood.

• 42:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Gotcha.

• 42:49Speaker 03

  Nowadays, I think you, you have, uh, ash versus maple. Um, maple, I think is harder than ash.

• 42:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 42:58Speaker 03

  But, uh, but, but the, the people have done really, really careful studies trying to compare the performance of ash to maple in terms of, ultimately in terms of exit speed.

• 43:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, I'm gonna say this. Aluminum. Aluminum. This, this is, this is just the most alien thing for me to say. Aluminum.

• 43:17Chuck Nice?

  And I'll say it this way. Aluminium.

• 43:20Gary O'Reilly?

  There you go. Which is, which is a nice twist, a nice twist on that.

• 43:23Chuck Nice?

  So how about, how about aluminium bats?

• 43:25Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 43:25Speaker 03

  Uh, aluminium is different. Okay.

• 43:31Chuck Nice?

  Sorry, sorry, go on, carry on professor.

• 43:33Speaker 03

  Okay, so, so, uh, uh, so there, the, the thing about an aluminum bat or a composite bat, which are basically used, uh, in amateur baseball, college, high school, whatever, um, is that they're hollow. And the fact that they're hollow plays an enormous role. First of all, the weight distribution of the bat, the bat is not so, is top heavy. If you took a wood bat and aluminum bat of the same length and the same overall weight, the wood bat would some, would sort of feel heavier because mu, uh, a larger fraction of that weight is in the barrel.

• 44:08Chuck Nice?

  In the barrel, right. You have a different weight distribution.

• 44:12Speaker 03

  It would definitely feel different. Uh, you would be able to swing the aluminum bat faster because, uh, the, less of the weight is in the barrel. But you also suffer the same problem, okay, that you would, you know, by reducing the weight in the barrel. But the really key to how an aluminum bat performs is Jeff alluded to it very briefly before, the so-called trampoline effect.

• 44:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:35Speaker 03

  So, and to appreciate what that is, you have to realize that that ball bat collision is very, very violent. And when the ball hits something that's sort of hard and rigid, sort of like a wood bat, that ball gets squished. If you look at high-speed video, that ball gets really compressed. And that compression, you know, the fibers of the wool that's inside the ball are rubbing together and creating heat, and that represents energy that's lost. It's a very inefficient collision. Now, what's different about an aluminum bat is that when the ball hits an aluminum bat, since the wall of the bat is thin, okay, the hollow, that bat can compress a little bit, okay?

• 45:17Speaker 03

  And so not all of the compression is taken up by compressing the ball, which is very inefficient. Some of it is taken up by compressing the wall of the bat, which is very effectively returned back to the ball again.

• 45:30Chuck Nice?

  So it's more like a, it's, it's more like a slapshot than it is because the, the bat itself is kind of, like in a hockey stick, the hockey, the hockey stick bends and becomes more like a catapult. So the bat, the bat actually acts like that in an aluminum bat.

• 45:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, in fact, with a slapshot in hockey, what you do is the, the, the, uh, the, the hockey stick hits the ice first.

• 45:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  And bends it and then it springs back to give an extra little push to that.

• 45:59Gary O'Reilly?

  A little kick point in.

• 46:00Chuck Nice?

  So, so an aluminum bat.

• 46:01Speaker 03

  Like a trampoline. That's a trampoline.

• 46:03Chuck Nice?

  That's the trampoline effect in hockey. So you kind of get the same thing with aluminum bat. Um, so, so Jeff, would you rather hit with an aluminum bat?

• 46:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  It'd be a lot more fun conversations about home runs if I was using an aluminum bat, but I would not want to be a pitcher and I would not want to be a third baseman because that ball would get on you so quick. I want to watch that game. That's the game I want to see.

• 46:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, so Jeff. You hear this term about baseballs, are they juiced? So what, what, what can you do? So I mean, you, am I right in thinking that the, the height of the seams have altered on a baseball over years or is it?

• 46:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, they have. I think they have, and I know they're different between amateur baseball and major league baseball, but it's because everybody gets better. So they're trying to even the playing field. And I know that the seams are flatter on a major league baseball. It's not necessarily how it affects off the bat. I think it's more or less how the seams react in the air to create a slider or a curve ball. Or, you know, have your fastball playing out, so to speak. Um, but I know that in a saying a juice baseball, it means it's wound tighter. I'm not sure what the, you know, how they, how they judge that, but that is, that was my impression of why baseball is juiced. It's just wound tighter.

• 47:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Gotcha. Professor, that would mean what in terms of physics?

• 47:20Speaker 03

  So the, yeah, it, it has to do with, there's a property of the ball that has the fancy name coefficient of restitution, which is.

• 47:27Gary O'Reilly?

  We like that.

• 47:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a technical term, but it's essentially the bounciness of a ball. Okay. You know, a baseball is really bouncy. A baseball is not. Okay. And so, and when, when people talk about a juice baseball, this property, uh, of the ball is actually regulated. I mean, there were major league rules. There are NCAA rules and whatever about the bounciness. It's a measurement you can do in the laboratory and, and test it. And when the ball is juiced, then it's, has a coefficient of restitution, which is higher than it ought to be. And as a result, it's bouncier and the ball comes off the bat faster.

• 48:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 48:06Speaker 03

  And every now and then, there is speculation, is the ball juiced? In fact, there's literally, in the last few days, there's been a lot of discussion about that. Uh, because there's been some articles written and my name is associated with some of those articles. Be some quoted in them, uh, because there was a big increase in home runs. Uh, in the 2016 season. And, uh, actually, in interestingly, it it sort of began around mid-season in 2015. And this, so there's been rampant, rampant speculation.

• 48:42Gary O'Reilly?

  A home run epidemic.

• 48:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 48:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 48:44Speaker 03

  A home run epidemic, yeah, and and so there's speculation about it. But Major League Baseball, um, uh, uses a laboratory, uh, at University of Massachusetts of Lowell.

• 48:58Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  And that laboratory employed by Major League Baseball.

• 49:02Chuck Nice?

  And and and. All I want to know is this, does Tom Brady run that lab? Because if he does.

• 49:09Gary O'Reilly?

  You cannot help yourself, can you?

• 49:11Chuck Nice?

  I'm just saying.

• 49:14Gary O'Reilly?

  We're not even talking.

• 49:15Chuck Nice?

  About juice balls here, we're talking about UMass. Is Tom Brady involved with this lab in any way?

• 49:21Gary O'Reilly?

  We're not even talking football and you brought your Brady hate here, didn't you? You got your Brady hate hat on and you're off again. All right, forget that one, professor. Jeff was interested in the use of hum- humid, humidors? No, that's something else. Humidors, uh, Coles Park, Colorado. Um, you got to talk me through that one because it sounds as if it's wrong, but there's definitely science involved.

• 49:45Speaker 03

  Oh, there's a lot of science involved and I'm I'm directly in the, in the, in the bull's eye on that one. Um, so, uh.

• 49:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the the the basic physics is the following. When a baseball absorbs water.

• 50:00Gary O'Reilly?

  Mm hmm, right.

• 50:01Speaker 03

  From the humidity, its coefficient of restitution, its bounciness, if you will.

• 50:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Mm hmm.

• 50:06Speaker 03

  It becomes less bouncy.

• 50:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Ah.

• 50:09Speaker 03

  It won't be hit as hard. So back, I think it was in the beginning in two thousand two or two thousand three. I don't remember the year. They uh they decided to store the baseballs in a humidor at Coors Field in Denver. Now Denver, you know, it's a mile high, the air is thin, balls carry much better there. So part of the reason for doing that was to sort of uh uh by redo, but so let me back up a second. Denver is very dry in the summertime. It's got a relative humidity, maybe uh thirty percent relative humidity.

• 50:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 50:41Speaker 03

  And so by storing the baseballs at seventy degrees Fahrenheit, fifty percent relative humidity, you're actually decreasing this bounciness. And it has a an effect, it had an effect on home run. Home run production dropped by something like twenty five percent as a result of that. Now, I I took it upon myself uh back in, I think it was two thousand ten. Uh I and my my colleagues did some measurements of the laboratory measurements of the effect of humidity on this bounciness factor.

• 51:15Gary O'Reilly?

  All right.

• 51:15Speaker 03

  And then use that to see if I could, I I I shouldn't say predict, I should say post-dict.

• 51:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 51:22Speaker 03

  Predict what happened as towards. And basically, you you could account for it perfectly. I mean, it it all hung together very, very well. Now, the reason why this has come up fairly recently is that now Chase Field in Phoenix is doing the same thing. In fact, it might, they may already have done it. Uh there was an article that came out a month ago that they are now going to store their baseballs in a humidor. And so I wrote an article that just appeared maybe two or three weeks ago, coming up using the same calculations that I did earlier, predicting a large decrease in home runs at Chase Field. So I'm here, I'm, it's not a post-diction, it's a prediction. So I'm sitting my net way out on that one.

• 52:06Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 52:06Speaker 03

  Uh so I predict somewhere between a twenty five and a fifty percent reduction in home runs.

• 52:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, this, the the the. I can say this. I can say it's. How old are you right now? You had a post-dict.

• 52:19Gary O'Reilly?

  How old are you? Right next to me, what age are you? I'm sorry. Sorry, Professor. I'm like seventeen, I can't help it. There's a naughty step over there, go and sit on it, take five. Every time he said post dick, I'm starting. Alright, so is this humidor available for both teams or is it only just for the benefit of the home side?

• 52:40Speaker 03

  Oh, no, no, no, it's all baseball's used.

• 52:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, fine, because that sounded like a lot of cheating going on there.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  That never happens in sports.

• 52:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, in principle, there could be some abuses going on, but in fact, this is looked over very carefully by Major League Baseball. Tim Linsickum complained a few years ago that they were using, that in Colorado, they were using different baseballs for the home team than they were for the away team. But there was nothing to that.

• 53:08Chuck Nice?

  Nothing to it.

• 53:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Not another conspiracy theory.

• 53:11Chuck Nice?

  Professor Alan Nathan, you are an absolute pleasure to have on, such an incredible reservoir of physics and baseball knowledge. We certainly appreciate you and we cannot wait to have you back for more of your post.

• 53:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh yes, please, would you grace us with your presence again?

• 53:27Speaker 03

  If you invite me, I'll be here.

• 53:29Chuck Nice?

  Fantastic, fantastic.

• 53:30Speaker 03

  I enjoy talking with you guys.

• 53:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, thank you so much. Thank you, that really was great, thank you, Professor.

• 53:35Chuck Nice?

  And Jeff, man, this was great.

• 53:37Speaker 02

  It was great. No, this is fun.

• 53:38Gary O'Reilly?

  You were at the sharp end.

• 53:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Would what the professor sort of opened up for you, does it kind of connect?

• 53:46Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, absolutely, I think, you know, physics and science is what baseball is all about and these guys are just trying to create ways to get better at hitting the baseball. And I think understanding what he's talking about is going to help these guys hopefully get a little bit better because the athletes are getting better and then you add the science to these guys, who knows?

• 54:02Gary O'Reilly?

  So, you talked about you coming out of the game and all of this tech, all of this big data coming in. Where do you see baseball evolving? Is it materials? Is it athletes? Is it the data? What do you see being the thing that pushes out and forward the most?

• 54:20Speaker 02

  Um, it's gonna be interesting. I know a lot of the, if I say data or technology in baseball, everybody's gonna talk about the umpires and strike zones. So I want to avoid that because there has to be a certain human element.

• 54:30Chuck Nice?

  And I'm with you. I never ever, so we, uh, when we talked to JP RNCB about what happens between, um, a batter and a catcher at the plate, and what happens between the batter and the umpire at the plate?

• 54:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:44Chuck Nice?

  And how like there's politics involved and there's human emotions involved and...

• 54:49Speaker 02

  Past experiences and relationships.

• 54:51Chuck Nice?

  Relationships, right? And I'm, I was, I said, I will never ever again advocate for a computer calling balls and strikes once I found that out. I mean, it's fascinating. I think it's, I think it's great.

• 55:02Speaker 02

  Well, you don't want to take the gamesmanship out of it because it's still a part of that involved in baseball. And that's what JP's talking about because there'll be a conversation. I've told plenty of catchers to shut the hell up.

• 55:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 55:12Speaker 02

  I'm like, that ball's off the plate. Don't argue with the umpire. He made the, he made a great call. Leave him alone.

• 55:17Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 55:17Speaker 02

  How dare you? You know, I mean, there's a lot of that going on.

• 55:20Gary O'Reilly?

  The other thing is if you take the human element out, what are guys like us gonna talk about?

• 55:24Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 55:24Gary O'Reilly?

  What are guys in bars, what are guys at home, what are guys in the stadium gonna talk about? If it becomes, it's a hundred percent definitive decision. We can't say, well, that guy got it wrong.

• 55:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:32Gary O'Reilly?

  So you lose a lot of really what binds everybody together on, on the non-playing side of the sport.

• 55:38Chuck Nice?

  Well, we'll see you on the post-it to find out if you're right.

• 55:41Speaker 02

  I'm not sure I want to see that.

• 55:43Chuck Nice?

  See, that's what I'm talking about.

• 55:46Gary O'Reilly?

  All right. See, this is, this is what I have to work with. It's great fun, by the way.

• 55:53Chuck Nice?

  I think we have to end the show now.

• 55:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you, Jeff Blom.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  Great being here.

• 55:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Wow, brilliant guest. Thank you so much.

• 55:59Speaker 02

  Such a pleasure.

• 55:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you to my young friend Chuck Nice.

• 56:01Chuck Nice?

  [laughing]

• 56:03Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 56:04Chuck Nice?

  I'm Chuck Nice.

• 56:05Gary O'Reilly?

  And this has been Playing with Science. We'll see you all soon.