StarTalk Radio - Baseball Physics, with Bill Nye

Episode Date: October 23, 2020

Bats, gloves, home runs, and… physics? Neil deGrasse Tyson explores the physics of baseball with Bill Nye the Science Guy, co-host Gary O’Reilly, and DJ Price, assistant coach at Barry University. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/baseball-physics-with-bill-nye/ Photo Credit: Keith Allison from Hanover, MD, USA / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0) Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Sports Edition. And for this installment, we're going to talk about the physics of baseball. Physics of baseball. You probably don't often see those two words in the same place. Now, I know a little bit about physics, but I don't know as much about the physics of baseball

as my good friend, Bill Nye. Special guest today, Bill. Neil, greetings. Welcome to StarTalk Sports Edition. And I got my co-host, Gary O'Reilly. Gary? Hi, Neil. Not that you're chopped liver.

Sorry, I had to introduce Bill. No, no, no. Bill takes priority. I'm building that. And where did you send Chuck today? Did you banish him somewhere? No, we haven't banished Chuck. Chuck has found gainful employment.

Oh, wow. Okay. He's a comedian. He's got to tell jokes when he can. Doing his thing, man. and good luck to him. Especially during COVID. Well, Bill, not many people know that you, we may know you're a fan of baseball,

but you've actually studied it on almost a sabermetric level. And so we, almost. In our conversations, it's kind of smelled that way. And so I didn't want to do this show without your expertise just lacing everything that Gary and smelled that way. And so I didn't want to do this show without your expertise just lacing everything that Gary and I talk about. But then I realized, okay, to do this right,

I mean, I played Little League, but we need somebody who's actually in the sport. And if we couldn't get an MLB person, let me get the next best thing. I got a college baseball coach who also happened to be my trainer, DJ Price. DJ, welcome to StarTalk. Hey, what's up, Neil? How you guys doing? Long time, DJ Price. DJ, welcome to StarTalk. Hey, what's up, Neil?

How are you guys doing? Welcome back to StarTalk. This is not your first appearance. Yeah, it's my second time. Second time here. And look, he's fine. He's fine. So where are you a coach right now?

Barrett University. I'm an assistant coach there. Assistant coach. In Florida, North Miami. And they're Division II? Division II, yes. Division II. And you said, like, where did they rank in that in recent years? I mean, last year before the COVID hit, they were up in the top 15 in the country.

And 9-0, they were undefeated. They were going through a pretty good time, and then everything hit. But they were leading the country in most offensive categories, which is a big deal. Yeah, yeah, okay. Very cool. Well, glad, okay. Very cool. Well, glad to have you on this. We're going to tap you for, in case something, in case Bill says something that doesn't feel right,

we're going to get your reaction to it, okay? It's not often I get an opportunity to override Bill Nye. Well, no, you're a street view of what Bill Nye says, because Bill's going to hand us some science. And Bill, lately, I haven't caught up with you lately. You've got a new podcast, Science Rules. Great title. So what's the format of that?

It's one of my oldest turns of phrase, Science Rules. So the format is we have guests on and we talk about science. We had Jennifer Duden on just the other day. Wait, wait, wait. Who's the we? You say we have guests. Me and Corey. It is I.

Corey S. Powell and I. Corey. So he's your co-author on a couple of books. Yeah. So if you're students of Corey S. Powell's, he helped me edit books that I've written. And he's a very funny guy. And we co-host the podcast. And he also is one of the co-producers.

He does the pre-interviews, finds people we argue about, discuss. So you just show up for the recording, is what you're saying? Well, I mean, yeah, I guess. That's the word you're looking for, Bill. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. And are you going on 20 years now as the CEO of the Planetary Society?

Ten years, Neil. Ten years. Tempest Fugit, but not quite that. Well, this is the organization co-founded by Carl Sagan and two others. So quite the mantle to be ascending to there. Well, just congratulations on all of that. So in this first segment, we're talking about baseball as a contact sport. And normally it is the last thing ever mentioned

when people give the list of contact sports. But of course, as Bill is introducing here, ball hits bat, pitcher hits batter. There's contact. Well, the other, apparently the worst- Play at the plate, there's contact in many ways. The worst contact in sports is the play at the plate, where one guy has almost no pads on.

The other guy is trying to find the ball while this other human is hurtling toward him at 15 miles an hour or whatever the heck. And if you play catcher, people, if you play catcher. Which I used to do, yeah. Be sure to have your left foot or whatever it is, your back foot parallel to the third baseline. So when the guy slides into your leg, you fold at the knee.

And you don't bust up your knee. You don't go sideways across your knee. I was bigger than all the people sliding into me, so I never, they fell backwards. Back in the day, they used to call the catcher's equipment the tools of ignorance. I'm pretty sure they still do, DJ. Wait, so let's start organizationally here.

So, Bill, if someone is throwing a 100-mile-an-hour fastball, because lately they've been clocking the speed, the exit speed, exit velocity of the ball, or at least the ball upon leaving the bat, and all the home runs seem to be 103 106 107 miles an hour is that all i need if i just make sure the ball leaves my bat at that speed and at the right angle am i basically getting a home run no matter how big and bulky and strong i am yeah but you just threw in offhandedly, oh, and at the right angle. Okay. Excuse me.

That's like a thing. So everybody, a non-apocryphal story from the story of Neil and Bill. One day, Neil's going musing, blah, blah, blah, assuming a level swing. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, hold it. There's two different things in hitting, DJ. There's hitting and there's hitting for power. So hitting, you're aiming the ball someplace,

trying to get it around defenders, over the defender's head, down the line so the defender has to run towards you while you're running past him and things like that. But then hitting for power, you have to hit it at an angle that is going to take it up over the fence. Yeah, but Bill, does that mean I don't have to be big and burly to do that? No, that's the mystery of, for example, from my Seattle fandom days,

Ichiro Suzuki, who went on to play, they all do, went on to play for the Yankees. But this is a pretty small guy who could hit home runs. Wait, wait, so DJ, you're a burly guy, right? You have girth. And so when I think of you holding a bat, I think this guy is powerful. I should back up. But then, like Bill is saying, you get Ichiro, you get Altuve,

you get people who are little. Red Sox had a few little people who hit. Who's the guy with the Red Sox? Mookie Betts, who's now in the Dodgers. But also the second baseman. Dustin Pedroia. Dustin Pedroia. Okay.

These guys can punch the ball, hit triples, hit doubles. I don't care if there's a green monster out there. So, Bill, is it just some kind of mythology that you need to be big, or do you just have to move the bat with precision and with speed? Well, that's all you have to do is move it with precision and speed. Yep. Thank you. Okay. We're done here.

In general, big guys can wait, guys who are stronger, can wait a little longer to bring the bat around and direct the ball. If you're strong, you can muscle the bat around later in the pitch. That's not muscle, it's just speed. It's just reflexes, right? Okay, but the bat has mass, and so you're going to overcome its inertia with strength. Okay. And I think it was Isaac Newton who said that.

A lot of little guys actually have some incredible bat speed. Tremendous bat speed, yeah. Which adds to that. You know, I mean, Altuve has got some incredible bat speed. And, you know, with his size, you would think that most balls probably would be high to begin with. And, you know, because he's getting such good,

you know, good bat speed and a little bit of angle upwards because not to say that he's short, but he is a little shorter. Given him the right ball, he could definitely send it a long way. By the way, so Bill, how about at the point I make contact with the ball,

how important is my musculature? I don't think it's that important. It's the mass of the bat. It's the mass of the bat that's going to. So you're saying if I use a lighter bat, but I can get high speeds. Well, this is the great controversy. So furthermore, also in addition to continue, what's happening is people are selecting thinner and thinner bat handles

so that the bat has a springiness. If you were somehow allowed to play baseball with some magical tennis racket, some racket that could handle, I guess that's a pun, that could deal with more flex, accommodate, you could really launch the ball much, much farther than is currently possible. Compare and contrast jumping up and down off a sidewalk with jumping up and down off a trampoline. So a bit like a hockey stick, a bit like an ice hockey stick where it's got that, it's composite, but it's got that flexibility in there. Is that the sort of thing you're talking about? Yeah. So if you're allowed to do that, then so furthermore also. But you're saying the spring would give it a little extra push.

Yeah. Yeah. But so what happens then, another not fornothing effect is people are wearing batting gloves, and so they have a thickness. The pads on the gloves have a thickness. So then people are selecting even narrower bat handles and able to get more flex. Wait, is this why the bats are breaking? Then you get bats breaking. You look at Babe Ruth's bat from back in the day. It was a tree trunk. Yeah, it's a hickory. Well, it is. Then you get bats breaking. You look at Babe Ruth's bat from back in the day.

It was a tree trunk. Yeah, it's a hickory. Well, it is. It's a so-called hickory stick. Yes, but Dan. And you had to be quite strong to bring that bat around. They definitely match the bats to the player now too. In what way?

What do you mean by that? Well, I mean, you know, based on size, weight, you know, what the bat speed of the individual is, you can kind of gauge what kind of bat they can handle before they break it or the ball breaks it and how they can get maximum amount of speed. They cut the tops out to give it a little bit less ounces, more ounces. Why not just go all the way and cork them?

Right. Corking doesn't work. That's a myth. I agree with that. It doesn't. No, no. It would take away some of the mass of the bat. Well, here's the problem with corking.

Our perception might be cork is springy, so if you put springy material in the bat, then you would get some of that spring, some of that energy storing to the ball as it left the bat. But it doesn't work because the ball is in contact with the bat for such a short amount of time, barely a thousandth of a second. The energy doesn't have time to get into the cork and back out. And plus, you lose a tremendous amount at the interface where the cork would touch the wood. So for people out there trying this, it doesn't work.

When I remembered the corking back in the 70s... Well, it's been going on since the 1800s, apparently. Really? Okay. Okay, in my day, okay? One of the rationales was that you still have sort of the bulk of the bat, but you made it lighter. Well, you can drill all the freaking holes in the bat you want, but then you weaken it

and it will shatter in another way. But then why not just use a lighter bat? So, if you get it too light, then it fails. It breaks. This is the magical thing about baseball, everybody. This is what everybody loves about it, is after a century and a half of dinking around, things are just dialed in where it just barely works. It just barely doesn't work. And it's a game of thousands of inches. And it's just, every pitch is a statistic. It's a game for nerds. So the thing about the bats that makes me a little crazy, how about this rule, DJ?

If your bat breaks, you're out. How about that? If you break your bat, you're out. That sounds like a pretty good rule. I mean, it'd be interesting. That sounds like an angry parent, Bill. Well, you broke that bat. You got to go and sit on the naughty step. Well, and you know, that's why we can't have nice things. Hey, take a step back, Bill. You know, you talked about Altuve, and I'll do the Aaron Judge comparison. For them, the strike zone is in a different place because one's five foot five, the other's six foot five.

Seven, yeah. Seven, even. different place because one's five foot five the other's six foot five seven yeah seven even um does el tuve have an advantage because he can get his bat below a possible ball that's coming in books have been written as i like to remark the answer is absolutely without question it depends good so the reason both of these guys are having success at the major league level is they have compensated for the large strike zone by being a huge guy who can bring the bat around really fast and for having a small strike zone by being a smaller guy who can bring the bat around really fast.

But it also sounds like, Bill bill that if you're small then um that shrinks the strike zone so then the pitcher has to be more accurate and you don't have to be able to swing in more places than the big guy except you can't reach as far as the big guy so the pitcher then has a bigger strike zone but it's a bigger guy swinging a bigger bat. Yeah, away and stuff like that. And, you know, as we say, we're getting into where the gray area is, where it depends. And I just want to go on and on about these kids today and the bats. Okay?

So on a baseball bat is a label, a brand. So on a baseball bat is a label, a brand. And skilled craftspeople in Kentucky making bats put the brand so that the grain is oriented to strike the ball edge on. And so back when I was a Seattleite, lived there for 26 years, big Mariner fan, big Seahawks fan. I met with none other than Chuck Armstrong, who was president, not CEO, not owner, president of the Mariners organization to give a little talk to these kids, these kids today about branding a bat. So I had this very demonstration. So the grain of the bat is oriented that way. They put the label there so that you strike the ball edge on.

If you hit the ball this way, the bat will flex and ultimately fail because the grains will be moving against each other. They'll be sliding in sheer, as it's called. Can I show that to some of my college players? Absolutely. moving against each other. They'll be sliding in sheer, as it's called. So, for fun... Can I show that to some of my college players? Absolutely. For fun. But they don't know the DJ.

No, it's something... It's something I'm trying to explain to them for years. Wait, could it be that they came out of high school with aluminum bats, and so they don't have to think about this at all? So the reason we can't have... It's something that needs to be explained, for sure. So, Gary, you made reference to parents

getting arms akimbo about these kids breaking their toys. Mm-hmm. If you're a parent, breaking bats is expensive. You have to go buy bats. If you're running a Little League team or the next level up high school team and you're breaking bats,'s just like a it's too expensive so that's why they we it went to aluminum bats now you can engineer an aluminum bat to have

a tremendous amount of flex yeah and i played softball with a guy who got hit in the face with a ball that was just scream a third third baseman, because it was just screaming because there was a few years of sort of lack of regulation in the springtivity, the springiness of the bats. And so... But he got hit in the face with a ball that was hit by an aluminum bat. A guy with an aluminum bat playing softball where you're sitting... It wasn't hit in the face with an aluminum bat.

Not the bat. That would be very troubling. So anyway, that's why all the way through college, people play with aluminum bats. Then if you're an outstanding player and you get an opportunity to play in the majors with a wooden bat, you're not familiar with this notion of branding the bat and taking into account the mechanical properties of the wood. DJ, what do your players use? We use aluminum at the level. But most of the mechanical properties of the wood. DJ, what do your players use? We use aluminum at the level. But, you know, most of them use wood during the summer, you know, just so that the, you know, scouts and coaches can get an opportunity to see what they're capable of doing with

an actual bat. In a real situation. Yeah. Okay. But even at that level, you're talking to, I mean, it's dangerous. I mean, it's super dangerous. You know, I think all college balls should go to wood, to be honest with you. Why is it dangerous? What's dangerous?

The speed you can get off the bat or to pitch ball. So the pitcher has – I mean, think about it. There are pitchers in the major leagues that are getting hit in the head, and the ball is coming fractionally slower than it would be in college when they're using metal, and they're all prospects to that level so you you got a guy that's equivalent to uh an aaron judge at 6667 that's 260 and he hits a ball with an aluminum bat at a pitcher that he's got no reaction time there's no way that he's getting so bill back to your original point if baseball has been has become or has always been this game of inches and microseconds and and so the slightly better bat will kill the pitcher right well just that the pitcher stands

that close has always been marvelous because when you see them catch a ball that is back to them, it's like, oh, my gosh. Any fraction of a second faster or they're slower, the ball faster, they slower, they lose their head. You got to wave at it, as they say. Yeah, so anyway, aluminum bats can be tuned or engineered so that they don't have this crazy springiness, but then they get un-aesthetic. They get heavy.

They get heavy in the wrong way. And so this gets into the whole wooden bat controversy. By the way, Gary, there's a guy in cricket called the silly mid-off. Yes, it's a fielding position. Yeah, it's also, what are you doing? You're standing right in front of a guy with a wooden club and a ball's going 100 miles an hour. The clue is quite simply their silly position.

Yeah, and so he doesn't wear gloves in cricket. They haven't thought of that. Oh, no, we thought about it, and we just said no. No, the only guy, the wicketkeeper, is allowed to do something. That's right. And you asked, a bowler in cricket can reach over 100 miles an hour because you are using the ground as another part of the question. Well, we're going to get to that. In the next segment, we're going to talk about the making of a pitch.

And I've had long conversations with Bill about this, and I still don't understand. You want to throw it with your legs. So when we come back, StarTalk Sports Edition, The Physics of Baseball with Bill Nutt. We're back. Startup Sports Edition. The physics of baseball. Got Gary O'Reilly.

Gary. Hey, Neil. Yeah, we lost Chuck. He's on a gig. Yep. You tell me. so that's good. Yeah, it's good for him. Good for him. Check him out on the next round.

I've got with me my trainer, I guess former trainer, because he moved to Florida, DJ Price. DJ. I have you on not because you were my former trainer, but because I know you are baseball crazy man. Every day, all day.

Every day, you bleed baseball, right? And just to have a ground truth on this conversation we're having with Bill Nye, who's sharing with us his sort of life's thinking and expertise on baseball. And Bill, you and I have had conversations about what pitchers do when they throw the ball, right? They're not just throwing the ball. Some other kinematic, biophysiological thing is going on. So could you just lay this out for us, what's going on on the mound?

Oh, yeah, sure. I'm an expert on that. No, everybody, Gary. Yes. You're of British descent, and so you grew up playing cricket kind of yes yeah and well he's on here because he's a former professional soccer player but i'm familiar with i have held a bat and had things thrown at me yeah so in cricket not necessarily at the same time. At the same time, right? Go on, Bill. Sorry.

No, it's all good. In cricket, they, you all, allow the bowler, as he's called, to, I presume there's some she-bowlers, to bounce the ball off the ground. Yeah. Although you can bowl a full toss. So it gets to the wicket or the batsman without touching the ground. But generally, they incorporate the ground and this then adds another layer of physics

to the whole affair. Well, here's the thing that happened. I'm sure early on, cricketeers discovered that the bowler could just overwhelm the batter, could just do anything to the batter. A batter, a batsman could not routinely handle the bowled ball. Yeah.

So they made a rule that the bowler has to keep his elbow straight. Okay. Oh, to reduce the range of damage they can commit. Yeah. Okay. Let's do another. Okay, to reduce the range of damage they can commit. Yeah. Okay. Let's do another. Okay, fine. But what the bowler can do is run, use his legs.

And so there's an old saying, and DJ, let me just see if this is a true fact or what I whimsically call a false fact, ha, ha, ha, that you throw with your legs. Agreed. Totally agreed. legs. Agreed. Totally agreed. What you want to do in the, so to deal with this in U.S. baseball, originally U.S. and baseball, they allowed you to push off a fixed object, which is traditionally called the pitching rubber. Also in the rules, it's called the pitcher's plate. You push with your back leg while you throw, but you're allowed to bend your elbow. So it's the different rules for throwing. But in all of this, the key to it is how you grip the ball. Or a key, a very important aspect of it, rather, is how you grip the ball.

Relative to the stitches or how you grip the ball no matter what? With respect to the stitches, right. So this is the four seam where you see all four seams. Then you can hold it here and you see two seams, one, two. One, two. Or you hold it a little crooked, and you get the curve ball, you get the slider, and then people who spend hours and hours at this throw it with hardly any spin on it with the fork ball,

and then with hardly any spin, the stitches catch the air in spectacular ways and make it fly funny. So it's in between a fork ball and a knuckle ball. You can grip the fork ball much more tightly. When you're trying to throw a knuckle ball, you're barely hanging on. And so you just can't throw it as you can't snap your wrist with the same oomph. So it's a faster knuckle ball.

It's a much faster knuckleball. So they hold it all these ways. The whole goal is for the batter to not hit the ball, right? Yes. That's the entire goal. So you want to fool the batter, right? So you are using certain aerodynamic principles in your favor to help you fool the batter because the batter's brain sees it as just

this this this object coming towards them that might do normal things that gravity would do to it but you are now exploiting what the air could do confusing my newtonian expectations for the ball is that a fair uh characterization sure i i, DJ, how many times as a coach have you mentioned, okay, listen, people, we want to confuse our Newtonian expectations. I'm going to use that today. It's just an old baseball expression. Can you zoom me in for that one because I want to see how that goes down. I can't wait to see how everybody looks back at me.

What? That's something new. And so consider the following. These are pictures from one of my favorite books, an album of fluid motion. And you talk about fun. That was on the bestseller list recently, I saw. Yeah, sure it was.

Anything that flows is a fluid. So here is a sphere and a fluid. The fluid is going by. It's a ball in water. And you see these pulses, poo, poo, poo, poo. It's shedding vortices just like a whistle. Oh, you can't whistle on Zoom. It's shedding pulses.

a whistle. Oh, you can't whistle on Zoom. It's shedding pulses. But if we affix a trip wire, this little wire, then you see how much more smooth the flow downstream is. A trip wire to make texture to the surface. Yeah. And what it does, the way I describe it, is it causes molecules to tumble. And when they tumble, they shear. They go past each other and their interaction changes and they flow more smoothly. So then, in the ultimate amazing ultativity of great amazingness, whoa, whoa, whoa, where is it? Here we go.

We put a baseball in a wind tunnel with streams of smoke, and you see where the stitches, the stitch has tripped the boundary layer. It sticks to the ball much more smoothly. Where the stitch is downstream of the boundary layer of the free stream, it causes the tumble. So this interaction of smoothness versus tumbling causes changes in pressure on each side of the ball, and it flies funny, and it's hard to hit. And pitchers and bowlers exploit this. They go crazy for this. Okay, we have to assume that the inventors of baseball didn't have fluid dynamics in mind at the time. They just tried to stitch a freaking ball together. So what you're saying is that...

Oh, but they discovered the properties of this like that. My goodness. But what if, Neil, and I think we've had Meredith Wills, who's a physicist herself, did a little bit of an investigation, and the thread they used in the stitches was something like 10 or so percent thicker. Yeah, she was accounting for the higher baseball, the higher home run rate. That's right. Yeah. Yes. So Bill, what's up with that?

Yeah. So different leagues are allowed to use different stitches. Ooh. In general, the younger the players are, the higher the stitches. You mean the more raised they are? Yeah. I mean, maybe that's absolutely true. The younger the players, the higher the stitches, the thicker the thread, which enables the pitchers to learn to exploit this more readily.

Then in the major league, the stitches get quite thin, and this demands more of the pitcher. He has to have more skill. And when I've hung out with these guys, and DJ, you must know more, they just walk around the clubhouse all day, snapping their fingers to get the strength. Absolutely. And testing to see how the ball moves

when they do it too so you know they can get different angles and and uh you know they're trying new things all the time putting pressure on one finger will give you one effect putting pressure on another finger will give you another completely opposite effect just like that but you're also talking about length of fingers you know know, like Mariano Rivera, for example, had one finger that was longer. A Yankee, by the way. Yeah. Just saying. And he picked that up because one day one of his coaches was telling him just to, you know, throw it with a little bit more pressure on another finger.

And he was getting, he wasn't getting as much run. And then he told him, just throw it the way you normally throw it. And then all of a sudden his ball started running because he wasn't putting the pressure on the finger that was longer. And he was just using it, and it was staying on the ball longer and then creates the best pitch in baseball, the cut fastball. Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean he had a long finger?

Like his finger was abnormally longer than most. Wait, wait. You sound like he only has one finger. So which finger are you talking about? The fingers he puts on the ball. So, he had two fingers on the ball. His one finger, his middle finger, may have been a little bit longer than most pitchers.

So, he gets to stay in contact with the ball as it rolls out of his hand longer and, therefore, give it a little extra push. Right. And that's where he got his cut fastball from. And it was just by accident. DJ, tell us about the cut fastball. Yeah. Yeah. What is that? It's relative to where, like where you have release on the ball and pressure on the ball. So what we're doing is fastball is always over the top, right? There's no, you're not trying to go

to one side or the other side. You're trying to get over the top, but usually the fingers are close together. All right. And some guys throw it right down the middle where they have the small end of the horseshoe. Some guys put a little bit more curve on the outside. All they're doing is throwing it just like a fastball, but the ball would come off a little bit left or right. So DJ, am I right in saying that that is considered possibly, probably the most difficult thing or skill to execute in the world of sport? Based on Mariano Rivera, I would totally agree. Because he was, he had-

So that's what they call the cutter. That's what they call the cutter. Yes, the cutter. He had two pitches. He had two pitches. He had a cutter was, he had. So that's what they call the cutter. That's what they call the cutter. He had two pitches. He had two pitches. He had a cutter and a fastball. And it was hard to dictate which one was coming because his release point was identical. So he always let go of the ball at a certain place.

So that's where hitters are trying to get a little bit of an idea of where the ball's coming out based on release point, angles of the hand, what part of the hand you see. He always let go of his fastball like this. So he came over the top and off, but it depended on which pressure he had given more to that finger, and then the ball would run. You're not going to read that from the plate, are you? No. You don't read it until it's too late,

and that's why you broke a massive amount of bats. I mean, like you would watch him and he would be breaking bats left and right because you're seeing fastball in your brain. And normally with breaking pitches and change ups and slower pitches, there's like a light that goes off this emergency. Hey, that's not the same. Stay back. Right. So then you, you, you know, you, you fight it off, you do something different. But when his fastball was literally a mile per hour slower, I mean, his cup fastball was a mile per hour slower. You're registering that too late. And all of a sudden it's, it goes from the middle of the plate to your knuckles. And you're now like, all right, if I don't get my hands in now, I'm going to get hurt. Not even just like, am I going to make contact? My life is in danger. I have to do something to stop it from happening. And guys were taking crazy swings because they were just trying to fight it off. I mean, guys were going through bats, two, three bats in a bat because of that fastball.

And that's what made him so devastating because the ball was going. It was an identical pitch, an identical release point, but the last second is where you get that little cut, a little break, and it's hard to register if they're coming at the same speed. Well, wait, Bill, Bill, how can the ball do something different partway through the arc that it's taking? How's that even possible? Well, so, the description... The ball doesn't just stop.

I mean, there was a Bugs Bunny where... One of the all-time sporting legends. Where the pitcher throws, like, the slow ball, and the ball just kind of wiggles and jiggles and stops and continues. So that's, of course, a cartoon extreme of this. But is DJ describing something, an impression of what the ball is doing rather than what the ball is actually doing? So to give credit where credit is due, Robert Adair of the physics of baseball talked about this being the same phenomenon observed by two different

people. So your point of view is what's producing this. So as the ball is coming toward the plate, not only is it, as soon as you let go of it, it's slowing down because of air, the air is slowing it down, but it's also falling. And so if you can get it to slow down and fall in a different way by changing how fast it's going when it leaves your hand and changing where you aim it, it appears to the batter to be moving across the plate. But it's moving across the plate. Yeah, yeah, sorry.

Well said. And so it's always doing that. It's just changing the rate at which it's doing that. And you guys, when you start getting in the most difficult thing ever in sports, I mean, I don't know. I watch hockey players do what baseball players do backwards and on ice skates. So I'm open-minded. No, except, wait, wait, wait, Bill.

Most of the time the puck is on the ice. So that reduces one of the degrees of freedom of how and where you find it before you hit it. Oh, it's the most of the time. Whereas the ball being pitched can move in all dimensions. Neil, it's the most of the time that makes that really difficult. No, modern players, modern hockey players lift the puck all the time. Yeah, they lift the puck. But you're hitting a spherical object with a round

bat. So as the saying goes, if you're a soccer player, the ball is round. The ball is round, the bat is round. I would use a larger surface area, a flatter area, whether it's the side of my foot, either outside or inside, or the instep,

which is a larger surface area to make contact with the ball. But isn't it an old saying that the ball is round, anything can happen? Well, let me get to that. Just before we take a break, Bill, give me your most succinct comment on what fraction of an inch difference contact with the ball makes? Well, certainly.

For the fade of the ball after it leaves the bat. It's on the order of a few sheets of paper. Really? Yeah. I mean, you're talking five or six thousandths

of an inch, yeah. So, you know, you can, if you're a human, and a lot of your viewers are, you can feel the difference between two thousandths and four thousandths without much difficulty. But that much difference will make a tremendous difference in the flight of the ball.

So it's an exaggeration to even say a fraction of an inch. It's even like a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of an inch. Yeah, yeah. This is the charm. But think about this, people. This is something you always... Wait, wait, wait. But that means the big sluggers,

the successful home run hitters, can decide in a fraction, a little fraction of a second, whether they're going to swing. Swing a round stick, make contact with a round ball, and hit the ball 450 feet. That's spooky.

Yeah, it's weird. But don't forget, Neil, you're adding history of their one-to-one confrontations into the mix, not just what's this guy dialing up in this moment. What has this guy dialed up to me in the past at certain moments in a match, in a game? So there's a whole lot. I mean, DJ trashed me down on this one.

I'll add to that. A lot of educated guessing. So it does come down to they have books on everybody. Usually rookies have a good go the first couple times through because they don't know what the ball looks like when it comes off. When you start getting used to seeing somebody throw a ball, and that's why nowadays most starters don't make it through three rounds of nine. So they usually only go two, two and a half,

because by that time, that third time, I've seen him. I know what his pitch is. I know where he's throwing me. I know what he's trying. I know his plan. So, you know, like the good pitchers nowadays don't make it nine innings because of the fact that the hitters are actually, there's so much more, um, you know, math and they're coming in there. Trust me. I'm not, I'm not trying. I'm an athlete as well, but they're not coming in going, I got it. And it's the fact that there are people down there actually giving them information, like books of it. Like, Hey, you just, you know, last time he got you out on this watch for this first pitch. Okay. Now I have, I'm looking curve ball first pitch. I know curve

ball is coming. If it's in my hitting zone, I'm going to take the best swing possible and see how hard I can hit this thing. You know, and that that's, that's where you preload the precision of what you're doing. And of course, even great home run hitters strike out more often than they hit a home run. Right. Because of the bat angle that they're taking. But that's besides the point. I think a lot of the guys are striking out now because of the bat angles and how they're changing it. Their degrees of upward swing is changing how consistent people are hitting the ball. And I don't know why. it doesn't make any sense. I mean,

back when I was growing up in the eighties and nineties, it was, you know, 300 was the, was it, you wanted to bat 300. Now you got guys that are in the lineups batting 217 with 40 home runs and they're all right. Well, he's, he's a home run and every kid wants to be him. But what about the guy that's batting 340, like a DJ LeMayhew, you know, that he hits the ball out of place, but then he hits a little dribble up the middle, scores two runs, and everybody's like, well, he could have hit it out, you know,

but he didn't. You know, like that's not baseball. I mean, by average, he's a player. Yeah. So when we come back, more StarTalk Sports Edition, The Physics of Baseball with Bill Nye. We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition.

The physics of baseball. Got my longtime friend, Bill Nye, who thinks, if you didn't know this, this man thinks and breathes baseball. He's a student of baseball, as we might say. And I also brought in someone from the trenches, DJ Price, a former trainer of mine who moved to Florida to coach baseball. In fact, he coached while he was here in New York. And so he knows some insides and outs. And each of you are here to keep each other honest

about what you say about the sport. But I want to take this segment and start thinking about the air, the texture of the air, the humidity in the air, the air pressure, and how do these other factors, these climactic factors, influence either the pitch, the hit, the fielders? And so, Bill, what can you tell me about humidity in baseball? Well, consider the following. Air is mostly nitrogen, and nitrogen is what, everyone? Diatomic, exactly.

So it has nitrogen travels around. I concur. Nitrogen travels around with two nitrogen molecules hooked together. And two. You got it. I'm with you. I guess two in Greek is di, so diatomic. Deuce.

It's Latin. Deuce. Deos. It's two. All right. So that means there's seven protons, seven neutrons. That's 14 atomic units, mass units for each atom. And you end up at 28.

All right. Because you have two atoms. Two atoms. H2O, oxygen's eight. That's 16 atomic mass units each there. And then just one atomic mass unit with hydrogen. The air is less dense. Just to be clear, you're not, I mean, I hate to be sort of pedantic.

Bill, you're talking so fast about it. You're displacing it rather than replacing it. Because that other molecule is still there somewhere. Oh, yes. It's in another part of North America or Japan or Venezuela. So it wedged its way in to create the humidity. On a humid day, some water molecules are nudging aside some nitrogen molecules. Well, they're nudging aside some argon and xenon and all these other happy molecules

or atoms in some cases. But water molecules are less massive than nitrogen molecules. And most of air is nitrogen, 70% or so. So when a ball is going through the air that's humid, it's pushing aside atoms that are less massive. It can travel faster and farther through a humid air day than a cold, dry day. And this is so not trivial. This is so noticeable in baseball, especially in cricket, especially where you're hitting the ball

and it's flying at 100 miles an hour, pushing aside air molecules. If they're less massive, it goes farther. And so, and now that seems like, if we follow this line of reasoning, that if you go to a mile-high stadium where there's just simply less air because air pressure is lower, that doubles down on this effect, presumably. Yeah, it's a true fact, not a false fact, as I whimsically remark. So you should be able to plot home runs per altitude of stadium,

and it should go up. So Coors Field in Denver, right? Yeah. The home of the Rockies. They, I think, beginning of the 21st century, introduced a humidor, the sort of thing you have for your cigars. Yes. All my cigars are in a humidor.

They don't. So that then, because of the yarn inside the ball, allows the yarn to absorb a little more moisture and therefore kind of damps it down. Is that what you're thinking there? Wait, what you're saying, they put the ball in a humidor, not the stadium in a humidor. Correct.

Right. That's a rather large humidor if you start with that humidor. So Bill, right, the humidity gets into everything. So if I have a crisp ball moving through humid air, I get it. But if my ball is kind of mushy because it sat in a humid environment, then what? So the ball doesn't go off the bat as strongly, as fast. The height would bounce as well. Okay, so it's a mitigating factor on the humidity

that would otherwise make it go farther. Yeah, yeah. So when the Rockies first started playing, it was just home run, home run, home run. Long hit, long hit, long hit. But they had this innovation. They get the balls humid, and it slows them down a little bit. Why is that?

Why do they want to do that? Everybody likes home runs. Well, the game became complicated in that all the strategy, all the tactics that a pitcher, where infielders would stand, the batter's approach to the ball, everything was changed

by the ball traveling so much farther, swinging it about as hard. Also, the pitchers had much more difficulty causing the ball to curve or change, but then they could throw it faster. So these two things. So the thing about baseball that everybody's kooky for is every pitch is a statistic. Every pitch is a datum in the great pantheon of baseball record keeping. I don't know if that's a pantheon, the great record books of record keeping.

And so they made adjustments. Annals of record keeping. Annals. They made adjustments to make the statistics more meaningful when you're playing in Denver. And, you know, people, when you play baseball. I see what you're saying. Otherwise, it's just a free-for-all.

Well, the word free-for-all, it changes the statistics for the home team. It changes the statistics for the visiting team in a way that— Well, the Yankees had all these great left-handed sluggers, and they made the right field fence 296 feet. Yeah. So that's— So how many Babe Ruth home runs dropped in at 298 feet on the right field line?

Wait, wait. DJ, do you guys actively know that humid air, the ball goes farther when you hit it? Is that an actively known thing? It's not something that I'm thinking from a scientific perspective, but I'd rather hit a baseball in June and July than in September and October. That much I do know. Oh, okay. So somehow it's in the psychology of what you would do. Okay. It's worked its way into you. I always say baseball players are probably the smartest

physicists that don't know it because we're always thinking about stuff like that, but we don't know what we're thinking about from a scientific perspective. Because naively you would think, you know, humid air is heavy and you're thinking, but Bill Nye just explained that away, right? It's not a matter of how heavy it is. When you hit a ball in October, in September, late September in the north, it's uncomfortable. And it doesn't feel the same way in July. And most of the places you go to in July and June, it's's pretty hot so you know like i love down here reggie jackson mr october was such a significant it was more than just it's it's world series season it's october yeah the air is is cold and crisp and and all that goes with the autumn.

It's a different game. I mean, even like looking from a west coast, east coast kind of thing, even down south in Florida. I mean, we would come down here for spring training from New York, and it was like, oh, wow. You just feel it. The ball's going to go further. You're going to throw it a little harder.

You're going to run a little faster. You just feel it. So you're the unsuspecting physicist, just like you said. That's great. I love that. So, Gary, offline you were telling us you had a question about global warming. Yeah. Why don't you hand that to Bill?

Okay, Bill. So we've seen record temperatures in Death Valley this year, something like 130-plus Fahrenheit. But I think we should build a stadium in Death Valley, which is very, very high air pressure because it's very, it's very low elevation. And then curveballs

would be amazing. Yeah, there might be a problem in the field. Also, you know, the game depends not this year, but generally on fans coming to the stadium.

Okay. And if it's 105 degrees, that's another drawback. Yeah. I get that. But holding aside those complications, that would be a curveball thrower's dream, a stadium in the bottom of Death Valley. The ball player from 29 palms, 29 guys.

So, yeah, as the world gets warmer, the air gets warmer and less dense, and we will expect the ball to go farther. So, Bill, as the world gets warmer, warmer air is thinner. Right. There's fewer molecules per cubic meter or what have you. Okay, A. And B, if the world gets warmer, we are evaporating more moisture

and keeping more moisture in the air. Gets more humid. Is it true that the air in general would be more humid? Yeah. I mean, that's air in general would be more humid? Yeah. I mean, that's my certainly first cut at it. That's what I would expect. Yeah. Okay.

So we have two reasons why in a global warmed earth, baseball will have more home runs. Yeah. Yeah. And more extra base hits and also higher pitch speeds. And the faster the pitcher throws it and you make contact, the farther the ball would go. If you make contact. Let the pitcher do the work.

Many of us have seen sort of strobe photos of a golf ball getting hit. And you see the golf ball collapsing and then recoiling. Do you know how much a baseball... I remember when I was a kid and I unraveled a baseball, it was one of the happiest moments of my life. I'd say, wow, I just discovered that there's like rubber inside and then there's a little, there's like a candy thing in the center. It was just this...

A Tootsie Roll. A Tootsie Roll pop, right, exactly. I felt like I was the first person discovering this. And do you know how much a baseball deforms? So the ball compresses a surprising amount. Like imagine if you could grip a baseball and squeeze it with your index finger and middle finger so that your index and middle finger were fully submerged in the surface of the ball. That's about how much it compresses.

It's really surprising. So part of the distance is the ball restoring to its shape. So the ball is, in a way, propelling itself in the aftermath of that collapse. Well, when you jump off a trampoline, is the trampoline propelling you or is it you? Well, the answer is both. You're storing energy in the ball. Or the springs of the trampoline. So how long does it take?

What sort of timeline are we looking at here from impact, deformation, and then returning to its original shape? About a thousandth of a second. That long? Yeah. Not a hundredth. Much less, I mean, way less than that. If it were a hundredth of a second. That long? Yeah. Not a hundredth. Much less, I mean, way less than that.

If it were a hundredth of a second, Gary, I think you would see that in their high-speed replays. Yeah. A thousandth of a second, it's not catching that. It has to return quite quickly because it won't fly, obviously, as well. Right, the act of returning off the surface of the bat, it propels it forward, like Bill said, is the impulse, which is a physics term.

I think they've shown some pictures of that, like of contact where the ball gets deformed and almost envelopes itself over the bat. It's wild. It's really surprising. What sort of velocities are we talking about, DJ, for a bat? If we've got a real power hitter, what sort of speed is this bat meeting the ball? Well, let me ask that another way.

If the ball leaves the bat at 105 miles an hour, does that mean I hit the ball at 105 miles an hour? Is my bat moving at 105? Can the ball go faster than the speed with which I swung the bat? That's a question for Bill. Yeah, yeah. So the famous, you know this from a famous, wonderful science teacher demonstration. You get a basketball and a tennis ball. Oh, the double bump.

The double bump. I love it. Yes. So go ahead, Neil. Describe it to the listener. May I? No, but you started it, but I would so delight in describing this.

Okay? So if, and we have, we've actually had to calculate this in physics class because it's, the result is unbelievable. You see it and you say, I don't believe it. And then you calculate it. And then the calculation shows that's what must happen. If you take a large ball and a small ball on top of it. Okay?

So the large ball has to be much bigger than the small ball. So it could be a basketball and like a marble. Well, a marble is pretty good, but you can use a baseball or you can use a tennis ball is the traditional thing. Something much bigger than that ball. So take a basketball and a baseball, sure. So drop one by itself, it'll come up to a certain height. Drop the other by itself, it'll come up to a certain height. Take the smaller ball, hold it just above the big ball, and drop them simultaneously.

The other traditional thing is a little strip of double stick tape or a loop a loop of tape so that the ball is as you drop it it stays kind of stays uh right so there they are as they drop what happens is the bottom ball hits first recoils off the ground goes upward and hits the small ball which is itself coming in and then doubling back off of its own recoil as well as the basketball's recoil. And it goes up nine times as high. Yeah, so the traditional thing is a basketball and tennis ball. And so the basketball is so much more massive than the tennis ball.

When its momentum is transferred to the tennis ball, it changes into the, it is manifested as a high change in speed of the tennis ball. And it basically launched. Yeah, it's cool. It goes 50 feet in the air. I mean, it's a striking experiment that you do. Pun intended. Right, in beginning physics.

Okay, so I like that. Well, the baseball, you guys, is all so-called classical physics. There's no... That's what I said, Newtonian physics, and you got all mad at me for saying that. I didn't really get mad. I just, if you're a baseball coach, I don't know how much people

respond to Newtonian fluid. I'm using all of it today. All of it. All right, guys. We've got to land this plane. Thank you, Bill Nye. Do you still go by Science Guy, respond to I'm using all of this today all of it alright guys we gotta land this plane thank you Bill Nye do you still go by Science Guy or is that an occasional

moniker yes it's trademarked people don't make me come over there excuse me thank you Gary DJ Neil thanks for having me on

Gary always good to have you DJ it's great to have you back on this yeah man it's good seeing you again. I hope you enjoy Florida. I am.

It's crazy people. Stay well, DJ. Playing a lot of golf. It's very enjoyable here. You got it. All right, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. You're a personal astrophysicist. As always, bidding you to keep looking up.