2011-2012 Offseason Thread

[seabeachfred]

Here's the trick: start when you're 7 years old, using a thin broomstick as a bat and a tennis sized pimple ball. Fast pitch against the wall of building, with the strike zone chalked out.

Switching to a baseball diamond when you're 8-9 with a thicker bat and a bigger baseball is easier. And softball is a piece of cake. Like hitting a grapefruit.That's how a lot of major leaguers did it.

 

I don't disagree hitting a 90 mph fastball is tough. But it can be timed, as long as it doesn't move. Some players find a curve harder to hit--or anything that changes speed.

 

Sox Sport, when I was a youngster living in Queens that's how I learned to hit--by playing stickball. Not the one bounce variety with teams but against a hand ball wall with a zone from the knees to the shoulders and using a broom stick and either a spaldeen ( a pink rubber ball or a tennis ball). I became a decent hitter but when I moved to California when I was 14 I didn't hit well because I missed stickball which helped my timing. I started playing it with my brother and friends when I was 15 and was one of the top players in the local league I played it . It really helped me. Alas, by the time I was 16 all the bad players had dropped out and I was playing against the best from other cities and when I was 17 all the mediocre players dropped out. As Clint Eastwood put it in "Magnum Force", "A man has to know his limitations." That was the end of my dream in baseball.

 

When I coached I recommended stickball to some of my players and some played it and it helped their hitting. I'm told they no longer play it in New York and they sure as hell don't play it out here in California.

[VA Sox Fan]

Isn't it just a poll?

 

The part UN? was talking about was a poll. The rankings were not.

[a700hitter]

The part UN? was talking about was a poll. The rankings were not.

I thought the rankings were based on a survey. Where's the scientific backup on this?

[User Name]

Data's in the link. Your problem if you're too lazy to take five minutes and read it.

[VA Sox Fan]

Isn't it just a poll?

 

Yeah I guess it is.

 

I guess it could be an Old Wives Tale about hitting a baseball being the hardest thing to do in sports. Have always heard that though. Nothing scientific.

[User Name]

Yeah I guess it is.

 

I guess it could be an Old Wives Tale about hitting a baseball being the hardest thing to do in sports. Have always heard that though. Nothing scientific.

 

Actually, no:

 

In his book The Physics of Baseball, retired Yale University physics professor Robert Adair writes that the moment of contact when a bat strikes a ball lasts just 1/1,000th of a second.

 

But the skills required to execute that at the highest levels require years and years of training. You'll get a multimillion-dollar contract if you can pull it off successfully anywhere near three out of 10 times.

 

"Players like Ted Williams and Barry Bonds are absolutely extraordinary athletes and can do things that other people can't," says Adair, who published his book at the suggestion of his late friend, former baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti.

 

"What's remarkable about them is not their muscles or anything like that. It's in their brain. Their brain really works better than yours and mine at this."

 

Consider that a fastball thrown at 95-100 mph reaches home plate in about 0.4 seconds. Adair notes in his book that it takes 0.15 seconds for humans to voluntarily blink their eyes in response to visual signals. When a big-league fastball is on the way, you must do far more than just blink. You must swing the bat to precisely the right spot at precisely the right time.

 

"If a person from another planet was told what's involved ... they would say it's impossible," says Porter Johnson, a physics professor at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.

 

It becomes even more challenging when pitchers throw curveballs and other breaking pitches. They also can throw the batter's timing off by mixing their fastest pitches with the slower changeups.

 

But skilled batters can be tipped off by the motions of pitchers. They can make split-second assessments of how the seams on the ball are spinning (indicating various pitches) and gauge its path toward the plate.

 

"It takes good eyesight, years of practice, good concentration," Johnson says. But in the final analysis, he says even good hitters are simply making well-educated guesses. "You've already committed yourself to swing at a particular point and a particular time. It's just a question of whether the ball happens to be there."

 

Adair says that when a fastballer such as Randy Johnson throws a pitch in the high 90s, the hitter has only about two-tenths of a second from the time the ball leaves his hand to process "the last information that does you any conceivable good whatsoever" — and then swing.

 

"After two-tenths of a second, they can turn out the lights in the stadium," Adair says, "and it won't affect your hitting him at all."

 

There are more in-detail explanations within the link from players such as Torii Hunter and athletes from sports. The only thing everyone agrees on is that.

[VA Sox Fan]

Actually, no:

 

 

 

There are more in-detail explanations within the link from players such as Torii Hunter and athletes from sports. The only thing everyone agrees on is that.

 

Excellent. I'd knew you'd come through Richard Millhouse.

[User Name]

Excellent. I'd knew you'd come through Richard Millhouse.

 

In the tennis section, they explain the physics of returning a serve. The reaction time is higher, and the tool used to hit the ball is much more forgiving.

 

Besides, who are we to argue with Andy Roddick's expertise?

[a700hitter]

Yeah I guess it is.

 

I guess it could be an Old Wives Tale about hitting a baseball being the hardest thing to do in sports. Have always heard that though. Nothing scientific.

There is no scientific study coming to any conclusion. From the article:

 

there is no single scientific formula for comparing the degree of difficulty from one sport to the next.

[User Name]

There is no single, because there are many.

 

Reaction time, hand-eye coordination and size of the tool used as well as control of the object thrown all favor baseball as the most difficult.

[Bellhorn04]

There is no single, because there are many.

 

Reaction time, hand-eye coordination and size of the tool used as well as control of the object thrown all favor baseball as the most difficult.

 

I believe it's reaction time that is tipping the scales in favor of hitting the baseball. And that's fine. I accept that it's an extremely difficult thing to do. But on the other hand, all you are attempting to do is hit something. Can you compare this to other difficult sport tasks that require skill and accuracy? Such as hitting the green on a 250-yard par 3 or nailing a 50-yard field goal? Apples to oranges maybe.

[jung]

I have always thought these comparisons are meaningless.

 

People are all different with different inherent skill sets that they can choose to hone to an extremely high level. The baseball player has lightning reflexes, hand eye coordination and an ability to process the information about the spin of the pitched ball that he is absorbing and processing at an extremely high rate. The degree to which he is willing to study opposing pitchers will help him determine what is likely coming allowing him to swing at the pitches he has the best chance of hitting if he chooses to approach his hitting that way. Ask him to run a marathon at anything like marathon runner's pace and he will likely be gassed within the first 2-3 miles.

 

The marathon runner likely can't hit a baseball worth a lick. Nothing about what he does involves lightning reflexes and the ability to absorb and process visual information rapidly.

 

There are even subsets that divide inherent skill sets. Marathon runners can't sprint worth a darn and sprinters can't keep pace with the marathon runner over distance.

 

The tennis player may not be able to hit the pitched baseball but can the baseball player hit a tennis ball employing the various spins required to play at a competitive level and can he exhibit the side to side and side to front speed and quickness of the tennis player without having his ankles crumble right underneath him?

 

If we were out there scouring the countryside for these lighting fast processors of visual information if that is the basic skill set required to hit a pitched baseball, how many of them would we find? Maybe there are many more of them than we think there are. the premise is flawed in that regard alone. As usual we assume that since we love baseball anybody that could do it would be doing it.....wouldn't they? How many people zigged instead of zagged and are tennis players instead of baseball players or maybe they are now doing something that is not an athletic pursuit at all.

 

All these variables prove is that people have different inherent skill sets that they can choose to hone to a very high level, so much so that if either tried to cross over to a sport's activity that favors the other's inherent skills he would do well not to embarrass himself let alone succeed at the highest competitive levels. I am reminded of the number of "athletes" that have tried to cross over to golf at a professional level, most with embarrassing results. I think John Broady had the most success in that regard and he still basically failed but at least did not embarrass himself. What about throwing a football would have suggested any success at all playing golf at a high skill level?

 

What does seem apparent is that at any given time, there are very few people that both possess an inherent skill set particular to a sports activity and have honed those skills to the highest level. We have about 500 or so highly skilled baseball players that are just the best there is with thousands more trailing behind them. We have about 1,000 highly skilled NA Football players at the top of their skill set with thousands trailing behind them. At any one time there might be 300 or so male tennis players in the world that can actually win a tour tournament with thousands more trailing behind them. Their might only be 200 or so marathoners in the world that could actually win a marathon should they choose to enter it at any one time with thousands more trailing behind them. There are probably even fewer sprinters that can sprint at the highest competitive levels at any given time. In any case any attempts at cross over at the very highest levels proves for the most part embarrassing regardless of which sport you want to consider.

 

I think the most foolish of the quotes from the piece was this one:

"If a person from another planet was told what's involved ... they would say it's impossible," says Porter Johnson, a physics professor at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.

 

Really......suppose this hypothetical "person from another planet" simply possessed more of the inherent skill required to hit a baseball than your average earthing has. Suppose that our hypothetical alien can process visual information at such a rate that a thrown baseball just looks like a slow moving grapefruit coming up to the plate and he can hit it in between reading lines of poetry. Amazing what smart people can convince themselves of at times.

 

Our hypothetical alien might say...."what are you earthlings talking about......nothing hard about this at all. But have you ever tried to hagnart a flinsnard before?"

[a700hitter]

I believe it's reaction time that is tipping the scales in favor of hitting the baseball. And that's fine. I accept that it's an extremely difficult thing to do. But on the other hand' date=' all you are attempting to do is hit something. Can you compare this to other difficult sport tasks that require skill and accuracy? Such as hitting the green on a 250-yard par 3 or nailing a 50-yard field goal? Apples to oranges maybe.[/quote']Hitting a baseball is really really hard to do, but the whole "hitting a round ball with a round bat squarely is the most difficult thing to do in sports" thing is balderdash. There is no way to prove that. It was a Ted Williams thing. I first read it in about 1970 in his book, "My Turn At Bat." It was great copy, and everyone ate it up, because Teddy Ballgame was a compelling character. I ate it up and spewed it out too. However, hard it is, there is no way to compare the overall difficulty to skills needed in other sports. The so-called scientific study linked to in this thread was just a survey. Big whoop.

[Dojji]

I believe it's reaction time that is tipping the scales in favor of hitting the baseball. And that's fine. I accept that it's an extremely difficult thing to do. But on the other hand' date=' all you are attempting to do is hit something. Can you compare this to other difficult sport tasks that require skill and accuracy? Such as hitting the green on a 250-yard par 3 or nailing a 50-yard field goal? Apples to oranges maybe.[/quote']

 

More like apples to orangutans. In both of your other cases you're talking about hitting a stationary object (or at least we are if your placekicker is any good). Sure, the area you have to hit it to is smaller, but you're hitting an object that's holding still. Lining up a good slapshot in ice hockey is harder than either of your examples, since you and the puck are both moving and the net is moving relative to you. Both of your examples are a lot more analogous to making a pitch than they are to hitting one.

 

With the baseball example not only do you have to hit an object moving at high speeds, you have to hit a round object with a round object (rather than a flat object like a hockey stick, cricket bat or tennis racket) and in baseball, you also have to hit it fair. This isn't cricket where as long as you hit it away from the wicket it's all good. Foul balls are strikes, and you have about 90 degrees to hit the ball correctly to. You also have to beat defenders, which makes the golf example particularly ludicrous. No one's out there with a glove trying to stop your ball from finding the green.

[a700hitter]

More like apples to orangutans. In both of your other cases you're talking about hitting a stationary object (or at least we are if your placekicker is any good). Sure, the area you have to hit it to is smaller, but you're hitting an object that's holding still. Lining up a good slapshot in ice hockey is harder than either of your examples, since you and the puck are both moving and the net is moving relative to you. Both of your examples are a lot more analogous to making a pitch than they are to hitting one.

 

With the baseball example not only do you have to hit an object moving at high speeds, you have to hit a round object with a round object (rather than a flat object like a hockey stick, cricket bat or tennis racket) and in baseball, you also have to hit it fair. This isn't cricket where as long as you hit it away from the wicket it's all good. Foul balls are strikes, and you have about 90 degrees to hit the ball correctly to. You also have to beat defenders, which makes the golf example particularly ludicrous. No one's out there with a glove trying to stop your ball from finding the green.

What about a centerman skating in front of the net trying to use the blade of his stick or his skate to redirect a 100+ mph slapshot to an open part of the net. The disc shaped puck moves very unpredictably as compared to a baseball.

 

Edit: The guy is on ice skates and he is taking hits from defenders while doing this.

[User Name]

Still a longer reaction time, and the velocity and general movement of the puck are more predictable.

[Bellhorn04]

With the baseball example not only do you have to hit an object moving at high speeds' date=' you have to hit a round object with a round object (rather than a flat object like a hockey stick, cricket bat or tennis racket) and in baseball, you also have to hit it fair. This isn't cricket where as long as you hit it away from the wicket it's all good. Foul balls are strikes, and you have about 90 degrees to hit the ball correctly to. [b']You also have to beat defenders, which makes the golf example particularly ludicrous. No one's out there with a glove trying to stop your ball from finding the green.[/b]

 

The fact there are no defenders doesn't mean it isn't difficult.

 

If you want to do an apples-to-apples comparison of hitting a baseball to directly comparable activities, the problem is that there aren't very many.

 

One of the other difficult activities mentioned in the survey was pole vaulting. No defenders there either.

[Dojji]

What about a centerman skating in front of the net trying to use the blade of his stick or his skate to redirect a 100+ mph slapshot to an open part of the net. The disc shaped puck moves very unpredictably as compared to a baseball.

 

Edit: The guy is on ice skates and he is taking hits from defenders while doing this.

 

That's too many things to be one action and the redirection tends to amount to sticking your stick out there and hoping for a happy accident, so no, I'd say probably not.

[Dojji]

The fact there are no defenders doesn't mean it isn't difficult.

 

If you want to do an apples-to-apples comparison of hitting a baseball to directly comparable activities, the problem is that there aren't very many.

 

One of the other difficult activities mentioned in the survey was pole vaulting. No defenders there either.

 

The lack of defenders radically reduces the number of moving parts in a golf drive compared to getting a hit in baseball.

 

Doing what a guy like Marc Savard could do with a pass comes close just because of how much whole-body coordination it takes. Hockey is easily the most purely athletic of the major sports. But if we're talking sheer hand-eye coordination, sheer having to one extremely difficult thing at a very high level, hitting the baseball is still right there because unlike hockey you can't make up for doing one thing poorly by doing another thing well.

[ORS]

The fact there are no defenders doesn't mean it isn't difficult.

Not only that, but following his reasoning about the 90 degree arc where the player is trying to hit the ball, the arc of the target in golf is maybe 20 yards wide in your 250 yard example. That's a 4.6 degree arc.

 

And, I think the introduction of defense into the discussion is bogus. For one, players have very little control over where the ball goes on a hard hit ball. Two, the discussion about the difficulty of hitting a moving target hard/square was never about the result of where it landed in the field, but simply about the act of accomplishing that hard contact. Stating that there are no defenders in golf is a red herring.

[Dojji]

Fair enough, then you can't put where you hit the ball in golf into the equation either.

 

The fact remains that golf involves hitting a stationary object. And so *should* punting and field goal kicking. So that takes them right out of the running.

 

In my mind this is between hitting a baseball, returning a serve in tennis, and certain plays in ice hockey that require so much sheer athleticism that it puts them here if a player can do them consistently Hockey, though, suffers from a lack of discrete plays so it's hard to pinpoint which part of hockey is hardest.

[jung]

If we are going to focus on just the hitting of a baseball and compare it to other similar stick and ball sports then I would tend to agree that hitting a pitched baseball is likely harder but the only comparisons that are at all relevant in that case would be cricket and softball.

 

But the actual comment was that hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports and that is simply not something that can be proven true. You might be able to make that case if excellent hitters of the baseball could cross over to other sports and excel at the same high level as those participants in the other sport but there are not enough examples one way or the other to prove that point. I would be willing to bet that very good hitters of the baseball would rip a softball pretty good and protect the wicket very well and in short order would likely be the best players on the field.

 

So for my money "hardest thing to do in sports" is simply a throwaway line that sounds great but can't be proven one way or the other. There are to many things across the panoply of sports that are "hard" to do and they are to disparate one to the next.

[User Name]

So the degree of difficulty according to the physics aspects of it (reaction time, size of actual area of impact, and speed variations) aren't good enough indicators?

 

Also, on a poll of professional athletes from every one of the high-ranked "difficult sports" they all agreed that hitting a baseball is the hardest things to do in sports, as did a team of scientists, as did a group of average Joe's.

 

So many people have to be on to something.

[a700hitter]

If we are going to focus on just the hitting of a baseball and compare it to other similar stick and ball sports then I would tend to agree that hitting a pitched baseball is likely harder but the only comparisons that are at all relevant in that case would be cricket and softball.

 

But the actual comment was that hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports and that is simply not something that can be proven true. You might be able to make that case if excellent hitters of the baseball could cross over to other sports and excel at the same high level as those participants in the other sport but there are not enough examples one way or the other to prove that point. I would be willing to bet that very good hitters of the baseball would rip a softball pretty good and protect the wicket very well and in short order would likely be the best players on the field.

 

So for my money "hardest thing to do in sports" is simply a throwaway line that sounds great but can't be proven one way or the other. There are to many things across the panoply of sports that are "hard" to do and they are to disparate one to the next.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of baseball players throughout the years have been avid golfers. How many have been able to crack into their professional circuit?

[ORS]

Fair enough, then you can't put where you hit the ball in golf into the equation either.

 

The fact remains that golf involves hitting a stationary object. And so *should* punting and field goal kicking. So that takes them right out of the running.

 

In my mind this is between hitting a baseball, returning a serve in tennis, and certain plays in ice hockey that require so much sheer athleticism that it puts them here if a player can do them consistently Hockey, though, suffers from a lack of discrete plays so it's hard to pinpoint which part of hockey is hardest.

Accuracy is a skill just like reaction/timing is. Both, depending on the degree of magnitude required for success, are difficult, but for different reasons. You can't eliminate where you hit the ball in golf from the difficulty of golf. That's the whole point of golf, to hit the ball exactly where you want on command. You are simplifying the activities that require accuracy too much and trying to make this an argument about which activity is the most difficult to make contact in. Of course the answer to that is baseball. That doesn't mean the other activities don't have significant, but different, difficulties. Like was said earlier, it's an apples to oranges comparison.

[User Name]

Hundreds' date=' if not thousands, of baseball players throughout the years have been avid golfers. How many have been able to crack into their professional circuit?[/quote']

 

Asinine comparison. If those players decided to take up golf for a living and practice as much as they do baseball, why couldn't they?

[Bellhorn04]

A lot of star athletes from other sports have had dreams of becoming pro golfers. Only one has ever succeeded-former NFL quarterback John Brodie, who qualified for the senior tour and won a tournament.

[a700hitter]

Accuracy is a skill just like reaction/timing is. Both' date=' depending on the degree of magnitude required for success, are difficult, but for different reasons. You can't eliminate where you hit the ball in golf from the difficulty of golf. That's the whole point of golf, to hit the ball exactly where you want on command. You are simplifying the activities that require accuracy too much and trying to make this an argument about which activity is the most difficult to make contact in. Of course the answer to that is baseball. That doesn't mean the other activities don't have significant, but different, difficulties. Like was said earlier, it's an apples to oranges comparison.[/quote']What the golf pros can do is amazing even to really good golfers. My wife's uncle was really good golfer. During his working career, he played a couple of rounds every weekend. He'd play 9 during the week when he got the chance. He retired early and played every day. He was never happy with his game even though he was a scratch golfer with a ton of trophies. He told me a story about watching a pro practice. He told me that the guy's caddie stood 150 yds away and held out a club as a target. The pro hit a 7 or 8 iron and he hit dozens of balls. He said that the consistency of the accuracy was unbelievable. He was not a man prone to overstatement. He was the type of guy to tell you that he played lousy that day and then you'd find out that he shot a 78.

[ORS]

Asinine comparison. If those players decided to take up golf for a living and practice as much as they do baseball' date=' why couldn't they?[/quote']

It's a legitimate comparison. There are truckloads of guys who are very good ball strikers with a golf club, but they can't make the tour, for a variety of reasons. They either lack the ability to read the greens and putt well, or the ability to manage the course intelligently, or, or, or....there are a lot of things that separate the pros from the rest of the golfing world.

 

Check this guy out....

 

http://chuckthehitman.com/

 

He can toss a ball behind his back, turn around and hit it down the middle, before it touches the ground, with a driver, and he can do it consistently.

 

Can't make the tour.

[a700hitter]

It's a legitimate comparison. There are truckloads of guys to are very good ball strikers with a golf club, but they can't make the tour, for a variety of reasons. They either lack the ability to read the greens and putt well, or the ability to manage the course intelligently, or, or, or....there are a lot of things that separate the pros from the rest of the golfing world.

 

Check this guy out....

 

http://chuckthehitman.com/

 

He can toss a ball behind his back, turn around and hit it down the middle, before it touches the ground, with a driver, and he can do it consistently.

 

Can't make the tour.

Many baseball players have tried, but almost none succeed. My recollection is that Ken Harrelson retired from baseball to try golf. That didn't work out.