OT: What a batter sees.....

I loved playing baseball as a kid.

But I sucked at hitting.
It could have been my myopia, poor depth perception, my color blindness.....or maybe I just sucked.
But to quote Billy Bragg: 'There is no real substitute, for a ball struck squarely and firmly.'
That feeling of coming around on a pitch and feeling and hearing the bat connect with the ball is a simple but grand pleasure.

Maybe that's why I love to watch baseball now; any level: from the Bigs to my youngest son playing rec league. I get to watch with enthusiasm, in hope of hearing the bat 'crack' as the ball is put into play.

At VT, a large portion of my physics course was based upon projectile motion using baseball as a study. This kept my interest and I have read as physicists debate if and how a breaking ball has movement.
The Mechanics of a Breaking Ball

For years, the questions were whether a breaking pitch actually curved or whether it was just an optical illusion, or even simply a matter of trajectory. But now, with the availability of a laser-based, computerized optical system such as Supervision (see sidebar), it has been proven that the ball actually changes its flight path on the way to home plate.

But its one thing to throw it......another thing entirely different to hit it.

Look at this video breaking down the Yankees' Rivera's Cutter ball:

And so, finally, from reddit, an image showing what hitters actually see in the less than 1/2 second that they have to decide whether to stay or swing and where to place the bat based upon the expected motion from the recognized pitch:

I hope some of the other baseball nerds will find this interesting in our non-football season.

(Article from popularmechanics.com, video from YouTube.com, image from reddit.com.)