#ICYMI - Baseball Physics Mashup, with Ron Darling, Geoff Blum, and J.P. Arencibia

In case you missed this episode on the Playing with Science channel… Home runs, World Series winners, pitching physics, and more – enjoy our baseball mashup featuring hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly, astrophysicists Neil deGrasse Tyson and Charles Liu, physicist Alan Nathan, Holden Kushner, and former MLB greats Ron Darling Jr., Geoff Blum, and J. P. Arencibia. Photo Credit: AlbertoChagas/iStock.

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

• 0:01Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 0:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 0:03Gary O'Reilly?

  And this is Playing with Science.

• 0:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  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 who do we have with us? Ron Darling.

• 0:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 0:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of the New York Mets.

• 0:25Speaker 02

  The one and only.

• 0:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The one and only. And so what I always want to know, 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?

• 0:38Speaker 02

  No, 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.

• 0:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 0:54Speaker 02

  The better pitch it's going to be. So you try to maximize that.

• 0:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Better as in more confusing to the batter?

• 0:59Speaker 02

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

• 1:04Neil 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 is it crosses the plate.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the break.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 1:28Speaker 02

  That's right, that's right.

• 1:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? So go on. So 12 to 6 would be top to bottom.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  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 pitch breaks. One thing I tried really hard to do, and I never could do it, 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, 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."

• 2:14Speaker 02

  It had carry. So it would stay on that line and the hitter 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?"

• 2:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 2:25Speaker 02

  That's what they call a rising fastball.

• 2:26Neil 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.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  9.8 centimeters per second squared.

• 2:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Somebody has some physics 101.

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, it'd be 980 centimeters per second, 9.8 meters per second squared.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  Okay, thank you.

• 2:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stupid.

• 2:57Chuck Nice?

  Who's the resident astrophysicist?

• 2:59Neil 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. We handed him the ball earlier and it has not left his hand since.

• 3:12Speaker 02

  I know, I know.

• 3:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 3:17Speaker 02

  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."

• 3:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 3:29Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 3:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "We played in the snow uphill."

• 3:32Speaker 02

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

• 3:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It looks a little slicker.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  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.

• 3:57Neil 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.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  But you'd know what count it is. So if it's a 3-2 pitch where you need to throw a strike, you wouldn't pick at the seams to get more action. But if it was an 0-2 pitch where you needed the guy to swing at a ball in the dirt, you want as much action as you can get.

• 4:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You guys are so evil.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Look at that, man.

• 4:20Chuck Nice?

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

• 4:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Basically sticky gloves.

• 4:33Chuck Nice?

  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?

• 4:45Speaker 02

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

• 4:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what that is.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  I've heard a suntanning solution that they use. I used to use because I figured I got to a point where I knew where the ball was going.

• 5:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Confess to us here.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  No one's listening. I wore long sleeves and I would wet the sleeves so that I always had the moisture from the sleeves. Now, 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.

• 5:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that why pitchers always touching their body?

• 5:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I never figured that out.

• 5:24Chuck Nice?

  They're trying to get some grip. That's funny because you see them lift up their cap and, you know.

• 5:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 5:33Chuck Nice?

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

• 5:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what they're doing, of course, so now, I don't know if they thought this through. If you get brow moisture put 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.

• 5:48Chuck Nice?

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

• 5:50Speaker 02

  You already knew this? No, I didn't. I did not know that.

• 5:54Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  But you know, there was a pitcher in the day, some of our older guests might remember Gaylord Perry, Hall of Famer. He was known for cheating all the time and he threw. He wasn't a Yankee, was he?

• 6:07Speaker 02

  He threw, he was at some point, right? 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 pitchers 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.

• 6:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With a 12 to 6 action.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  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 going to hit me in the head? That's their first thought. The 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.

• 6:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And for most of us, by the time we have that fourth thought, the ball's already in the catcher's mitt. Or it has hit you in the head. And you are dreaming the rest of that conversation.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 7:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, a couple 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, um...

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Kevin Costner?

• 7:24Neil 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 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.

• 8:05Neil 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.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  You know, what's interesting is that people ask me all the time, um, do you remember pitches you threw in a game? And, um, 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, um, I've ever thrown in a game. If you tell me, uh, Wrigley Field in 1984, you faced the Cubs, you gave up three home runs, um, 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, where the...

• 8:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 8:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell us about all 116 of your losses.

• 8:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm still trying to get to, to understand this. No run support, atmospheric.

• 9:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just trying to, you know, keep you honest up there.

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let's move forward into, you're a sports commentator now.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And 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.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 9:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's your reaction to it? Does that add to the game or take away from the game, from the old days?

• 9:26Speaker 02

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

• 9:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Same data.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  We're same data. We're all gonna apply it, uh, 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 the better teams.

• 10:18Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 10:19Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 10:20Gary 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.

• 10:29Chuck Nice?

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

• 10:36Gary O'Reilly?

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

• 10:41Chuck Nice?

  But first, you know, if you've ever wondered-

• 10:43Gary O'Reilly?

  And I have.

• 10:44Chuck Nice?

  You have?

• 10:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 10:45Chuck Nice?

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

• 10:50Gary O'Reilly?

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

• 10:53Chuck 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, hit a Rome run? Yes.

• 11:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 11:05Chuck Nice?

  Actually, take a bat.

• 11:05Gary O'Reilly?

  You hit it that far, it goes to Italy.

• 11:07Chuck Nice?

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

• 11:14Chuck Nice?

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

• 11:17Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 11:18Chuck 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 gonna find out today.

• 11:32Gary 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.

• 11:40Chuck Nice?

  Yay. Welcome to the show, Jeff.

• 11:42Speaker 04

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

• 11:44Gary O'Reilly?

  Did we embarrass you?

• 11:44Speaker 04

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

• 11:47Gary O'Reilly?

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

• 11:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, man.

• 11:49Gary O'Reilly?

  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?

• 11:58Chuck Nice?

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

• 12:04Speaker 04

  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.

• 12:08Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 12:09Speaker 04

  And I know that we're in a National League ballpark where the pitcher's gonna hit, and I know there's potential double switch, pinch hit, all kinds of issues that'll 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.

• 12:31Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 12:32Speaker 04

  I'm not saying I called it, but I'm saying I had a pretty good, pretty good feeling about it.

• 12:35Gary O'Reilly?

  Immonition.

• 12:37Chuck Nice?

  So you know what? Before we go any further, because we're taking it for granted that those 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. He is 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 for the Chicago White Sox in 2005, Jeff, in the 14th inning of the longest game in Fall Classic

• 13:14Chuck Nice?

  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?

• 13:37Speaker 04

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

• 13:39Chuck Nice?

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

• 13:46Speaker 04

  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.

• 13:58Gary O'Reilly?

  How slow can you run the bases once you've dinged?

• 14:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, a homer.

• 14:04Speaker 04

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

• 14:08Chuck Nice?

  Yes, yes.

• 14:09Speaker 04

  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.

• 14:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Did you already have the read on the pitcher? Did you know what he was going to dial out next?

• 14:23Speaker 04

  I had a good idea. Well, you know what? In knowing that I played for that team, I knew they had the scouting report on me. So I knew what they were going to avoid. And that place where he threw the baseball is the last place you want to pitch me. Because the one place where I don't have to think and I can just react is that down and in fastball.

• 14:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Do you think he read that report?

• 14:40Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I think that's why everybody in the dugout snapped when I hit that home run, because they knew exactly where it was going as soon as I put the bat on it.

• 14:46Chuck Nice?

  Right. Yeah.

• 14:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:48Chuck Nice?

  It was a whoops. Yeah.

• 14:51Gary 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?

• 15:01Speaker 05

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

• 15:03Chuck 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 home run.

• 15:23Speaker 05

  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.

• 15:54Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 15:55Speaker 05

  So the batter's job is to get the bat in the right place at the right time.

• 16:03Speaker 05

  At the right location on the bat itself with a high bat speed. Bat speed is basically the thing that matters most 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 time to react. It might take something like four tenths of a second from release until the ball gets to home plate.

• 16:45Speaker 05

  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? Now, if I am 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 0.15 seconds. I mean typically, I mean sort of on average for a major league hitter. So, you know, you take, you subtract that 0.15 from the 0.4 that you have altogether. You don't, you know, you got 0.35.

• 17:24Chuck 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?

• 17:30Speaker 05

  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 really have to process that information very, very quickly. And basically, I think that's what batters are doing there. 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 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.

• 18:10Chuck Nice?

  Well, you know what, let's hold on for one second because this is fascinating and we have a Major League Baseball, uh, home run World Series hitter in the room.

• 18:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Legend.

• 18:22Chuck Nice?

  Legend, Mr. A man who has a bronze statue of himself.

• 18:25Gary O'Reilly?

  We like the idea of that.

• 18:27Chuck Nice?

  They liked him very much in Chicago, but Jeff, can you speak to the things that Professor just told us?

• 18:33Speaker 04

  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 at and they can instantaneously look at, uh, 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.

• 19:07Gary O'Reilly?

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

• 19:10Speaker 04

  That's what's crazy is 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.

• 19:29Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that's insane.

• 19:31Gary O'Reilly?

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

• 19:36Speaker 04

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

• 19:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:42Speaker 04

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

• 19:48Gary O'Reilly?

  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 tell me when you connect and you hit it on the sweet spot, you don't feel any vibration. It's almost an invisible hit.

• 20:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. So what is the sweet spot?

• 20:05Speaker 05

  Okay, so the bat is not a rigid body. It can vibrate. And, you know, when the ball, 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, it hurts sometimes. And nowadays with high-speed.

• 20:38Chuck Nice?

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

• 20:42Gary O'Reilly?

  In nodding mode.

• 20:42Chuck Nice?

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

• 20:45Speaker 04

  We call it a handful of bees.

• 20:47Chuck Nice?

  A handful of bees.

• 20:48Speaker 05

  I like that. It probably doesn't feel very well. And nowadays, in Major League games, oftentimes you have high-speed video. And 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, there are many definitions of the sweet spot, but they all amount to about the same thing. It's the place where the vibrations are the least, so it feels best. It also is the location, 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. So it's also the best place in terms of exit speed,

• 21:31Speaker 05

  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 coincide.

• 21:39Gary O'Reilly?

  That's why it's the sweet spot, but now you have the science as to why. We are going to take another commercial break. Stick around, we'll be back shortly.

• 22:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back.

• 22:05Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 22:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you, yes. We are here at South by Southwest and we are privileged to be here with some really rather special guests. Holden Kushner from iTunes and JP Allen Sibia, former Major League Baseball player and the one and only Charles Lu. Right, talked about pitching, Charles. I think JP's got a little bit of an interest in batting. Eighty home runs, by the way, this man here. Total envy.

• 22:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, eighty home runs.

• 22:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Total envy, eighty.

• 22:41Chuck Nice?

  But, but holds the record. Still, still holds the record for what, twenty-three home runs for the Toronto Blue Jays as a catcher?

• 22:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 22:50Chuck Nice?

  That still stands, right?

• 22:51Speaker 06

  Still stands, yeah.

• 22:52Gary O'Reilly?

  Twenty-three in one season.

• 22:54Chuck Nice?

  Not bad.

• 22:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Incredible. And as Charles alluded to before the break, on his Major League debut, first ball, home run.

• 23:03Chuck Nice?

  Wow. What do you think when that's, when that happens? Like, okay, so it's your Major League debut, it's your first at bat, you get up there and you pop a home run. Do you just say to yourself like, "Damn, it is all downhill from here"?

• 23:19Speaker 06

  Yeah. No, I, I remember I was, I was not really nervous, I was just ready for the opportunity.

• 23:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, because it's been a long road to get to a Major League game.

• 23:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, the minor leagues and, and all these different stops that we have in, in baseball that...

• 23:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 23:37Speaker 06

  Fortunately, unfortunately, people only see the Major League, there's a lot of great...

• 23:39Gary O'Reilly?

  The New Hampshire Fisher Cats springs to mind.

• 23:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, let's talk about, well, let's not talk about, but Las Vegas was where I was at the longest and that's where I almost died a few times, but it was, it was worth it, it was pretty fun.

• 23:51Gary O'Reilly?

  It's been a long journey.

• 23:52Chuck Nice?

  Totally worth it.

• 23:53Gary O'Reilly?

  What about that? Anyone have that dream? First ball, home run, Major League? Because if, if I was a baseball player, hand up, I would have had that dream. That's the reality, it's incredible. Now, you talked to us during the break about density of wood?

• 24:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 24:07Gary O'Reilly?

  And, all right, pitch that question, no pun intended, it was really, to Charles, go for it.

• 24:12Speaker 06

  All right, well, when I went through my struggles, I started struggling a little bit and I actually thought that I would use a lighter, smaller bat, that it would help me. And a hitting coach told me, you're a power hitter.

• 24:23Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:23Speaker 06

  The bigger, harder, heavier, more dense wood would be more, uh, useful for you.

• 24:31Chuck Nice?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 24:34Speaker 06

  I knew that was coming.

• 24:36Chuck Nice?

  Of course, come on. You can't say all those words together and not expect me to do something with it.

• 24:42Speaker 06

  And so, honestly, I started using it, but mentally, I couldn't adjust and say, man, if I use a heavier bat, I always thought it was gonna slow down my hands, it was gonna do this. And so, I wasn't able to...

• 24:53Chuck Nice?

  So, you're thinking, let me, let me get around on the swing quicker, and a lighter bat will help me do that. I'll get around on the swing quicker, I can meet the ball faster, but then your pitching coach is saying, no.

• 25:07Speaker 06

  Hitting, hitting coach.

• 25:08Chuck Nice?

  Hitting coach, sorry, is saying, you, see how much I know about this sport. Uh, he's saying, you need a heavier bat, cuz you're a power hitter.

• 25:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, so what happens is, you said lighter bat, since it's lighter, your body, you try more. When it's a heavier bat, you try to do less. But also, when a heavier, and this is my question, is when a heavier billet of wood, so when they start making a wood bat, there's, it's, it's a piece of lumber, and they move it down. So, it's, there's heavier billets, there's denser wood, there's harder wood.

• 25:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:36Speaker 06

  So, if you use a heavier bat, when it hits the ball, the ball's gonna go further. And so, I got convinced, when I started struggling, started using this bat, first game I used the bat, I went home, I hit two home runs. And I was like, all right, this is pretty cool. And then, when I would hit balls on not the sweet spot of the bat, they were still leaving the park, and I was like, complete sold. And nowadays, and you, and, and older times, guys used to use much heavier bats, and... It was a big difference. Now everyone wants to use a lighter bat and I still try to convince guys like dude.

• 26:12Chuck Nice?

  You still know you should go with the heavier bat.

• 26:14Speaker 06

  The bigger heavier.

• 26:15Chuck Nice?

  Bigger heavier bat.

• 26:16Speaker 06

  Bigger heavier bat. Everybody knows wants to go bigger heavier bat.

• 26:20Charles Liu?

  Okay Charles, so that's our question. Okay, the thing is of course, the major leagues have the rules, right? Just like you, the NFL requires you to inflate your balls to a certain pressure, whether or not you want to.

• 26:33Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 26:34Charles Liu?

  Uh, the same is true with baseball bats. You can only have a certain length, certain width, certain amount of pine tar, certain density. Things like that. Okay. Uh, and uh, you may remember there was a controversy some years ago about people putting cork in your bats.

• 26:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:50Charles Liu?

  You open it up, you put some spongy stuff inside and you cap it off, and you make the ball bounce a little bit off, off of your um, bat a little bit more. So here's the physics, right JP? Uh, your bat, your batting coach was correct in that if you have a heavier bat, you swing it around and you are creating more momentum in your bat, so that when you transfer that momentum to the ball, when you hit it, it will go farther. The problem of course is that it requires more torque. You have to generate that extra turning of your wrists and your arms, elbows eventually, in order to move that bat head fast enough to transfer that momentum.

• 27:31Charles Liu?

  Right? The main issue is the matter of contact. If you can contact a ball pulling while swinging a thicker, heavier bat, your heavier bat is gonna work for you. If you can't get the bat around though, if you don't have the arm strength, if you don't have the wrist strength, then the heaviest bat in the world isn't gonna help you because that fastball is gonna blow on right by. Does that make sense?

• 27:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it does because that's what his coach was saying. You're a power hitter, therefore you need the heavier bat. It makes sense.

• 27:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, and and to his point, there's guys, I mean, there's different gifts, guys have their, I was always able to hit a ball far. And so, that was my gift. There was guys that can't hit a ball far, that's the, some guys can throw hard, some guys can't, it's just genetically whatever they have, but that was one thing I was, and so, when I was able to start using those heavier bats, it, it really made a huge, huge difference.

• 28:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, Charles, I think JP has another question.

• 28:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, so another thing-

• 28:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Activated your mind, your little squirrels getting really busy.

• 28:30Speaker 06

  Oh, no, I just, I love it. I love talking this, because, so then, some of the furthest home runs, some of the furthest home runs I ever hit, I realized in the barrel, the seams were indented into the bat. And so, it was, there's a miss, I don't know, they're always used to say, you caught a seam. If you hit a ball a certain, a super, super long distance, it was a difference between hitting it in the, I don't know, what would you call that?

• 28:57Charles Liu?

  White part of the ball.

• 28:58Speaker 06

  The white part of the baseball, or-

• 28:59Charles Liu?

  The space.

• 29:01Speaker 06

  Or the seam.

• 29:02Charles Liu?

  Or right on the seam.

• 29:02Speaker 06

  Because if I, because again, you know-

• 29:04Chuck Nice?

  So wait a minute, are you saying that you have actually looked at a bat after you've hit a homerun, and the seam of the ball is indented into the bat?

• 29:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, so in Maple, I mean, Ash, you can see it a little bit, but in Maple, if you hit a ball square, because guys always want to clean their bats too, another thing is, is guys always clean their bats, because you want to see where you're hitting the ball on the bat, because there's a sweet spot, so you want to be able, it's, it's all the things that go into it, but when, when you hit, since it's a clean bat, when you hit a ball good-

• 29:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:31Speaker 06

  I know exactly where I hit it, because you can see, especially the longer home runs, you see the seams, the indention of the seams on the bat. So I, I just want to know if that was, if that makes sense, if that's-

• 29:42Chuck Nice?

  And does that make a difference, Charles, the hitting the seam, or hitting the white space? Does that make a difference, and why?

• 29:48Charles Liu?

  Let me tell you two ways that it could make a difference, okay? One way is that the white part of the ball is slipperier than the seams. So if you catch the seams, you may be able to hit the ball with a more clean shot, without slippage. So that, like, you know, in a foul tip, what happens is you, you catch a piece of the ball, and it spins away. But if you hit it on the seams, you might be able to get a little more friction, so that even if it's not exactly square, you might be able to-

• 30:16Chuck Nice?

  So it's the same reason why the pitcher, it's the same reason why the pitcher grips the seams.

• 30:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 30:21Chuck Nice?

  And the bat is gripping the seams the same way the pitcher throws the ball.

• 30:26Charles Liu?

  Excellent point.

• 30:27Speaker 06

  Which creates more spin.

• 30:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Charles, I have a thought for you.

• 30:30Charles Liu?

  Sure.

• 30:31Gary O'Reilly?

  If we, if we sort of cut across all Major League Baseball rules, what would be the perfect material to make-

• 30:38Charles Liu?

  To cork a bat?

• 30:40Gary O'Reilly?

  A bat. So as a power hitter like JP could do his thing and not worry about it.

• 30:46Chuck Nice?

  Tell us from an astrophysics standpoint, how can we cheat best at this game?

• 30:50Charles Liu?

  If I want the perfect bat, I would actually use an aluminum bat.

• 30:55Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 30:56Charles Liu?

  JP, you probably remember from college, right? That ball would just fly off that aluminum bat.

• 31:02Chuck Nice?

  So why is that?

• 31:03Charles Liu?

  Okay, aluminum is very light for its, you know, it's still heavier than wood, right? Denser than wood, I should say. But you can make it kind of hollow. The typical aluminum bat isn't filled all the way through with aluminum. So you've got some space in the middle. So you've got this sort of ability to ricochet, bounce back and forth a little bit, that elasticity, right? That was the second point about hitting a ball in the laces that matters, right? Because as JP was saying, you hit the ball in the laces. What you're getting is a little extra compression, right? The laces are up by a fraction of an inch. And if you hit that lace just right, get a little extra compression, you have a little bit longer to transfer more energy from the bat to the ball. And therefore you can get a better launch of the ball.

• 31:48Chuck Nice?

  So it's basically a spring load is what you're saying?

• 31:51Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 31:52Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 31:53Charles Liu?

  And so if you have an aluminum bat that's got a little bit of give to it, a little bit of hollowness in it, you're just going to contact, have a longer period of time to transfer energy and therefore you get a little bit extra rebound off of that. I don't know if JP, that makes sense to you in terms of, I don't know if you ever can feel this, right? The contact with the ball is just a fraction of a second. But do you ever feel like when you hit a ball really, really well, it seems to hang on the bat just that little tiny bit longer than when you just get a piece of it?

• 32:20Speaker 06

  Honestly, it's almost the opposite. When you hit a ball super square with a wood bat, you don't feel it, which is, I don't know how to, I don't know how to.

• 32:32Chuck Nice?

  Well, you know what? I thought that's why they called it the sweet spot. It's because there's no reverberation in your hands through the bat.

• 32:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, when I hit a ball good, I knew as soon as I hit it, I was like, that was sexy.

• 32:44Chuck Nice?

  That was it.

• 32:45Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm Gary O'Reilly. I'm Chuck Nice. This has been Playing with Science. We'll see you all soon.