Keep Your Eye On the Ball: Curve Balls, Knuckleballs, and Fallacies of Baseball [Paperback]

Robert G. Watts (Author), A. Terry Bahill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 27, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0716737175 | ISBN-13: 978-0716737179 | Edition: Revised and Updated

"Keep your eye on the ball!" may be good advice--but it is impossible to do. The batter can track the ball until it is about five feet in front of the plate, but then he falls behind because the ball is moving too fast.

In Keep Your Eye on the Ball, Robert G. Watts and A. Terry Bahill--engineers by vocation, baseball fans by avocation--have devised a series of experiments that put some of baseball's most cherished myths to the test. By applying physics, psychology, physiology, and other scientific principles to baseball, the authors have resolved, once and for all, some of the controversial issues that have intrigued fans for decades, including:

* Do curveballs really curve? Do fastballs rise?
* How do knuckleballs and spitballs work?
* What exactly happens when the ball hits the bat?
* Does corking the bat really help a hitter?
* Are aluminum bats more dangerous than wooden bats?
* Can certain physiological factors help predict success for a hitter?
* Why are more home runs being hit than ever before?
* Are today's players better than yesterday's?

Completely revised and updated to include recent statistics, new research, and additional historical commentary, Keep Your Eye on the Ball is a highly informative and entertaining guide to the science of baseball that all fans of the game--regardless of scientific background--will enjoy.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Engagingly written" -- Sacramento Bee

"New get your calculators and slide rules handy. Baseball isn't brain surgery, it's physics..." -- BookPage

"The authors explore the fascinating gaps between physics and perception that make hitting a baseball such an interesting challenge. Their book provides the layman with entertaining explanations of some of baseball's most cherished assumptions-the curvatures of pitched balls, the behavior of batters and their bats, the overall improvement of players through the years. It can make an old ballplayer slap his forehead and say, 'So that's what was going on!'" -- David Baldwin, Ph.D., Enterprise Data Solutions

About the Author

Robert G. Watts teaches in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Tulane University. Having more than a mere theoretical interest in the game, he pitched as a young man for the semiprofessional Bayou Latanache Baseball Club--where he gained first-hand knowledge of spitballs, fly balls, and a healthy familiarity with insider-baseball lore.

A. Terry Bahill has been Professor of Systems Engineering at the University of Arizona in Tucson since 1984. He has been investigating the brain's motor functions since 1971. Actively pursuing experiments in the science of baseball for many years, he has developed a measuring device that strengthens a player's ability to follow the pitch, as well as the Bat Chooser, a system that computes the Ideal Bat Weight for individual hitters.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: W. H. Freeman; Revised and Updated edition (March 27, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0716737175
• ISBN-13: 978-0716737179
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #308,675 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Using science to understand baseball, November 20, 2000

By 

Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Keep Your Eye on the Ball: The Science and Folklore of Baseball (Paperback)

When asked if he was an athlete, a recently retired professional baseball player replied, "No ma'am, I'm a ballplayer." However, as this book clearly shows, if the question was, "Are you a practicing applied physicist?," the answer would have to be yes. While fascinating to read, this work points out how little science has contributed to the understanding of the game. And given that baseball is a billion dollar industry, this is surprising.
The most interesting and astounding point made throughout the book is that to play baseball you must reason very quickly with estimates. For example, it is impossible for the human eye to track the path of a pitch thrown in excess of 90 miles per hour. To track a ball moving at 100 miles per hour as it crosses home plate, the body must respond at a rate in excess of 1000 degrees per second. And yet, studies are consistent in showing that the human limit is on the order of 90 degrees per second. It turns out that batters loose track of the ball as it nears them and extrapolate the data to actually hit it. Students lost sight of the ball when it was 9 feet away from them and professionals when it was 5.5 feet away. The absolute limit is on the order of 5 feet.
The explanation of why a pitch will curve and what makes a knuckleball dance are truly works of art. And the physics of the best choice of bat in case you actually hit it should be required reading for all those who think they know baseball, players included. All are done using equations and example numbers rather than text. It is gratifying to find authors who ignore the adage about sales declining in direct proportion to the number of equations.
Science and mathematics teaching is often(justly) criticized for lacking practicality. Well, what could be more practical than teaching someone to hit a baseball? This is one of those books where learning is fun. It could be used as a textbook for any course that deals with the physics of motion and force. And if class gets boring, you can always go out and hit a few.

Published in Journal of Recreational Mathematics, reprinted with permission.