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.

From Science Magazine:

“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!