MARCO'S BASEBALL
BLOG-O-ROONIE 2017: DANGER- BASE AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS
1/
DANGER-BASE!...the ridiculous prehistoric attachment to hard bases.
Mike Trout just tore
his thumb ligament sliding headfirst into second base. The
Alpha-Star of the game is sidelined for two months. Earlier this
year, Adam Eaton, newly acquired by the Washington Nationals, was
severely injured when his ankle turned as he raced down the line and
planted his foot sideways on an unforgiving first base bag, tearing
his ankle and knee ligaments and threatening his career.
These are just two
of the innumerable injuries past and present and future that have
been and will continue to be sustained in base path accidents caused
by runners and fielders attempting to transfer momentum from a flat
dirt base path to a huge lump of cloth and plastic incongruously
secured to a no-give base clamp and planted like a land mine in
various strategic places around our beloved baseball diamond.
This carnage must
end! Our players shouldn't be expected to risk dismemberment just for
trying to record an out or be called safe when they are moving with
maximum effort on their appointed rounds.
Well I am here to
tell you...FEAR NOT BASEBALL FANS! I CAN FIX THIS!
Very simply,
replace the hard square base of baseball tradition with new, safer
technology. Go to any toy store and pick up something made of the
space age material called “memory foam”. It's that squishy stuff
they make toys out of that you get for your grandkids so they can
squeeze it in a pleasing, psychotically obsessive manner.
“In the early 1960s, an aeronautical engineer named Charles Yost
worked on technology designed to make sure that the Apollo command
module and its astronauts could be recovered safely after landing.
That experience came in handy four years later, when Yost was tapped
to help NASA's
Ames Research Center develop airplane
*seating that could absorb the energy of crashes and increase
passengers' chances of survival. Yost
created a special type of plastic foam that had the seemingly
miraculous ability to deform and absorb tremendous pressure, then
return to its original shape.
Researchers discovered that the "slow springback foam," as
it was called initially, not only made passengers safer, it also made
sitting for hours on long flights more comfortable because it allowed
for a more even distribution of body weight.”
(*bold italics are mine)
Hey! If it's good
enough for John Glenn...right? Thank you Charles Yost! Thank you
NASA!
Take the memory foam
and sew it up in a square sack made of something FLEXIBLE but tough
that will resist being torn up by baseball spikes landing on it's
surface. Attach it to the same base clamps currently in use set into
the middle of the base and secured at the bottom.
Now practice sliding
into it. Ram into it with your extended foot. Go headfirst and hit it
with your hand. Now practice running down the baseline and planting
your foot on it. Hit it at an angle as you turn for the next base.
Pretend you are a fielder and stab at it with your toe as you try to
record an out by beating the runner to the base.
In all these
experiments, I predict you will discover that the bag will give in
such a way that you won't jam your appendages in the same way that a
hard base will when suddenly retarding your momentum, thus sparing
you from serious injury.
And after you remove
your finger or foot or shin or knee or neck from the base, it will
rapidly recover its original shape and docility, awaiting the next
collision with its cohesive and pleasantly receptive squishiness.
Voila! Base Path Salvation!
(applause...applause...Thank
You! Thank You!)
So now let me hear
from all you hard-headed baseball traditionalists who think it will
somehow desecrate the game by making bases out of something new. You
guys that think it's somehow good for the game for players to have to
step on what is essentially a big rock with all their weight as they
bravely try to do their sacred baseball duty and touch the base in
the prescribed manner.
I pity you!
And let me hear from
you, Mike Trout and Adam Eaton! Think you'd still have some working
ligaments if you had hit a memory foam base? And keep hustling, by
the way….you guys are great. (Send me your autographs, please…)
DEATH TO THE
DANGER-BASE!!!
2/RADAR GUNS... and
the Great Phony Fastball Conspiracy.
If modern radar guns
are to be believed, about 50% of current major league pitchers can
throw the ball at least 95 mph. That's faster than all but the
greatest superstar pitchers of yesteryear. Only guys like Walter
Johnson, Rube Waddell, Smoky Joe Wood, Lefty Grove, Bob Feller, Sandy
Koufax, Bob Gibson, Jim Maloney, Sudden Sam McDowell and Nolan Ryan
were purported to reach such velocities in the former generations of
pitchers. Most pitching staffs featured a few men who could bring it
at 90mph or above, but only two or three guys in the league could
reasonably claim to throw the ball at upwards of 98 before the
current era. Now it seems that dozens can and nobody gets excited at
velocities below 95. There must be 15 pitchers in the majors who hit
100mph regularly. It's' not even news anymore.
Well. Are we to
believe that modern training techniques, diet and Evolution have
upgraded baseball arms? Has scouting improved that dramatically? Is
everyone on PEDS again?
To the first four
conjectures I answer a resounding “YES”. (I really don't think
that many pitchers are currently using PEDS...at least I sure hope
not.)
Training techniques
are much better. Diet has improved and humans are taller and
stronger.
Scouting is better
and talent is recognized and hunted down much better.
Evolution is
certainly having an effect. In most sports we see a dramatic
improvement in physical performance. Dash times in Track and Field,
swimming records...almost everywhere you look you find hard evidence
that we are bigger, faster and stronger. Why not baseball pitchers?
(Although there may be evidence of diminishing returns as increased
musculature puts strain on ligaments which haven't correspondingly
adapted in their ability to absorb torque. Thus the prevalence of
Tommy John and shoulder problems amongst our Mound Marvels.)
The truth is,
pitchers today are actually throwing as fast as the radar guns
say...95,98,103mph. It's a Resounding “Wow.”
The radar guns are
right. Aroldis Chapman's fastball is moving at up to105mph as he
releases the ball which is measured by the radar gun 6 feet from his
pitching hand.
Whoops! What was
that again?
That's right….modern
radar guns measure the ball at a point about 6 feet from it's point
of release. At that point Chapman's fastball can occasionally be
perceived to be moving at 105mph . By the time that same pitch
reaches home plate, however, it is only moving at about 98mph. Still
very fast, but not a world record.
“So what?” you
say. Well ...this what.
In the early days of
radar guns, the gun picked the ball up at about the moment it crossed
home plate. Various models timed the pitches at various points on the
way to the plate and thus recorded slower times than the pitches
currently being timed by the modern radar guns at their fastest point
of velocity just as they leave the pitcher's hand. And of course, in
pre-radar days they tried to time pitches by matching bob Feller's
pitch with speeding motorcycles and other cumbersome techniques.
Feller's fastball was measured at 98.6 AS IT CROSSED HOME PLATE at
the same moment that a motorcycle traveling at that speed crossed the
same point. This was after Feller tried about 100 pitches to get the
synchronization the day after he pitched a complete game. That puts
him at about 104 (at least) if the modern radar gun had been in use.
So modern pitchers
are getting about 6 to 8mph added to their fastball velocities with
the modern radar gun as opposed to pitchers of the past. That's how
much a pitch will slow from the time it leaves a pitchers hand until
it gets to the plate.
The simple truth is
that although there are undoubtedly more pitchers today who can
“bring it” as opposed to past generations, the best of the
famous Old Timers were throwing it just as fast or faster.
If you doubt me, I
suggest you watch the documentary “Fastball” (available on
Netflix) for more data.
According to that
film, Nolan Ryan was timed with an older radar gun model back in the
day when he was pitching for the Angels. They didn't get a clean
reading of the ball until his last of 159 pitches during
a complete game he was pitching in Anaheim. The ball was measured at
about ten feet in front of the plate traveling
at 100.8mph. That means the
pitch was traveling at approximately 108 mph as it left his hand.
Nolan….you
will always rule!
