October 17, 2003

curveball : is a fun little applet.

posted by oliver_crunk to baseball at 09:29 AM - 6 comments

more here

posted by oliver_crunk at 09:29 AM on October 17, 2003

Some scientists are just crazy. Thanks for the link, it's neat!

posted by therev at 09:51 AM on October 17, 2003

Not crazy, mad. Mad scientists.

posted by Samsonov14 at 10:30 AM on October 17, 2003

I bet the best pitchers in the world couldn't even begin to try and explain how they do it in these terms. Not that I know anything about baseball - living, as I do, somewhere other than the "World" implied by the expression "World Series" I do know that when I throw a cricket ball or a tennis ball (or indeed, I'll confess, a baseball) it always arcs with a big fade. Maybe I'm a natural curve ball pitcher and I'm missing my vocation.

posted by JJ at 10:35 AM on October 17, 2003

That's fun to play around with! Nice link. I'll use it as an excuse to ask something that bothered me while watching the playoffs. It seemed like at least once a game, at least one of the announcers would praise the "rising fastball" as an especially nasty pitch. I thought that had been shown to be a myth. Then, of the announcers tried to explain how the pitcher could get the ball to, in his words, "tumble towards the batter," with what a tennis player would call topspin. His explanation didn't make sense, and no amount of thought experimentation has helped me imagine how a pitcher could do such a thing. Any ideas?

posted by Uncle Toby at 10:56 AM on October 17, 2003

Toby - they can't. Stupid physics.

posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 12:48 PM on October 17, 2003

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