‘Biological Baseball’ at the Exploratorium

Posted on November 16, 2011 by admin

It doesn’t take scientists to play baseball.  But they can be very helpful when it comes to gaining a better understanding of the Great American pastime.

“Baseball is a game played at the edge of biological time, just within the limits of a human’s ability to react.”

That’s the opinion of the experts at the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco, who take an approach to the game through the science of ethology—the study of animal behavior with emphasis on the behavioral patterns that occur in natural environments.

We were recently in the city by the bay and we took some time to visit the Exploratorium, an endlessly fascinating place offering more than 475 participatory exhibits that mix science and art, and all of them made onsite.

The Exploratorium recently received the National Science Board 2011 Public Service Science Award for its contributions to public understanding of science and engineering.

So, of course the Exploratorium would have an exhibit on the Science of Baseball, including a “Bat Marimba.”

This musical percussion instrument consists of various size bats with attached mallets for striking the bats to evoke sounds.  The exhibit is an engaging way to demonstrate nodes and anti-nodes and how they relate to the “sweet spot” of each bat.

‘Biological Baseball’

The Exploratorium has developed information on what it calls “Biological Baseball.”

A major league pitcher can throw a baseball up to 95 miles per hour – some can move it even faster.  At this speed, it takes about four-tenths of a second for the ball to travel the 60 feet, 6 inches from the pitcher’s mound to home plate.  There, the batter, with muscles as tense as coiled springs, like a predatory animal about to pounce, waits for the precise moment to swing at the ball.

By the time the ball has traveled a dozen feet from the pitcher’s mound, the batter has a good visual fix on it. In a thought process much too quick for deliberation, he has decided whether or not the pitch is a fastball, curveball, slider, knuckleball, screwball, or whatever – yet a good deal of data has gone into this instantaneous and non-verbal decision.

During the entire middle portion of the pitch, the batter must time the ball and decide where to swing. If the batter decides to swing, he must start when the ball is approximately 25 to 30 feet in front of the plate. The ball will arrive at the plate about 250 thousandths of a second later – about the limit of human reaction time.

The bat must make contact with the ball within an even smaller time range:  a few thousandths of a second error in timing will result in a foul ball.  Position is important, too.  Hitting the ball only a few millimeters too high or too low results in a fly ball or a grounder.

Exactly how humans are able to estimate the expected position of a quickly moving ball is unknown.  Obviously, this remarkable skill is learned through long practice.  Eye-brain-body coordination is acquired only by going through the motions over and over again.

Even so, the batter misses most of the time. Getting a hit three times out of ten at bat is considered an excellent average. It’s interesting that George Schaller and other ethologists have observed that lions and cheetahs are also successful only about a third of the time in capturing their prey.

Nonetheless, if you “cats with bats” are looking for an edge to improve your hitting performance, try The Hitting Jack-It™ System– Swing the System!

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