StarTalk Radio - #ICYMI - Baseball Physics Mashup, with Ron Darling, Geoff Blum, and J.P. Arencibia

Episode Date: May 17, 2018

In case you missed this episode on the Playing with Science channel… Home runs, World Series winners, pitching physics, and more – enjoy our baseball mashup featuring hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O���Reilly, astrophysicists Neil deGrasse Tyson and Charles Liu, physicist Alan Nathan, Holden Kushner, and former MLB greats Ron Darling Jr., Geoff Blum, and J.P. Arencibia.Photo Credit: AlbertoChagas/iStock. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Nice. And this is Playing With Science. You're listening to Playing With Science, a new spinoff of StarTalk. And I'm your interloper host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your resident astrophysicist. But we've got Gary O'Reilly and Chuck Nice.

You're the main dudes here. And who do we have with us? Ron Darling of the New York Mets. The one and only. The one and only. The one and only. And so what I always want to know, you as a professional baseball player, were you ever thinking about the science of the pitch at all? Or was it just kind of you're feeling it and you're just going with the flow?

No, I think you think about the science all the time. I mean, it depends on, I guess, who you are and what you like out of the game. I mean, you're trying to, at some point, spin a baseball. The more revolutions it has, the better pitch it's going to be. So you try to maximize that. Better as in more confusing to the batter. More confusing to the batter, more break. You're not only full with that.

Break is, just in case we have new listeners, break would be there's the trajectory you think the ball has coming in and where it actually lands as it crosses the plate. Yes. That's the break. Yeah, the break. And also you can change the break by your grip. So if you want it 12 to 6, you're more on top of the baseball getting the seams to turn over 12 to 6. And if you've only used digital clocks before, no one will have any idea what that says. That's right.

That's right. That's right. So go on. So 12 to 6 would be top to bottom. Top to bottom. But if you change your position on the ball, you can have it more where it goes from, I can't say the clock now, but from 2 to 8. So you can change how the pitch breaks. One thing I tried really hard to do,

and I never could do it, is the thing that we called carry. When you throw a fastball, four seams, just by gravity alone, the ball at some point is going to fade. It's going to start to work its way away from the intended target. You worked on carry so that the ball would, if you finished your pitches, the ball, instead of fading, which the hitter is going to see and say, boy, that ball's going to fade out of the strike zone, it had carry. So it would stay on that line, and the hitter would be fooled,

take the pitch for a strike, and it would be a strikeout. And they'd look at you like, how'd you do that? What the hell did you do? So is this what they call a rising fastball? That's what they call a rising fastball. Because they don't actually rise, they just simply don't fall as much as they could. So your perception, since you,

we all have a native, because we grew up in Earth gravity, we have a sense of the rate at which things fall. Even if we're not calculating that, you just have a sense of it. 9.8 centimeters per second squared. Somebody has some physics 101. Actually, it'd be 980 centimeters per second, 9.8 meters per second squared.

Okay, thank you. Stupid. All right. Who's the resident astrophysicist? I know, right. But you know what? That ain't a bad thing when Neil deGrasse Tyson calls you stupid.

That's right. I'm like, thank you. Stay in your lane, buddy. We handed him a ball earlier, and it has not left his hand since. I know, I know. I would have just put it down and went on with my life. But you can't put down a baseball. You know what it is?

I'm just manipulating it and feeling it and thinking to myself, the ball is different than when I played. The seams are not as high as when I played. They always say this. It's not like it used to be. No, no, no. The game, we played in the snow uphill. No, I'm saying it probably had an advantage when I played.

The ball's slicker. It looks a little slicker. It does. And in the day, you used to be able to pick at the seams and make them rise. And if you picked at them enough while you're waiting for the sign from your catcher, you can make it rise so you've got a little more grip on the ball. Can't do that. And does that also give you a little more action?

Gives you a little more action. It's probably not 100% legal, but that's kind of what you do. 92.5% legal. So action, well, it would give you action that you then wouldn't necessarily be able to predict, but that's okay because then neither can the batter. But you know what count it is. So if it's a 3-2 pitch where you need to throw a strike, you wouldn't pick at the seams to get more action.

But if it was an 0-2 pitch where you needed the guy to swing at a ball in the dirt, you want as much action as you can get. You guys are so evil. Look at that, man. When you talk about technology, let me ask you this. With respect to equipment, so in football, wide receivers are allowed to wear gloves that are specially designed to help them catch the ball. Basically sticky gloves.

Quarterbacks are able to wear gloves that are specially designed to help them throw the ball. Would you be accepting of that kind of technology coming into baseball? Well, I think there are pitchers out there that use the combination of the rosin bag. That's what that is. I've heard a sun tanning solution that they use. I used to use because I figured I got to a point where I knew where the ball was going. Confess to us here. And I'm confessing. No one's listening.

I wore long sleeves, and I would wet the sleeves so that I always had the moisture from the sleeves. Now, I didn't want the moisture from my forehead or from the back of my neck because it wasn't always the same. But if I wet my sleeve, I was always getting about the same kind of moisture. Is that why pictures are always touching their body? Yeah. I never figured that out.

They're trying to get some grip. That's funny because you see them lift up their cap and, you know... Oh, they're trying to get something on their finger. They actually... And they're taking the moisture off their brow. That's... So what they're doing, of course...

So now, I don't know if they thought this through. If you get brow moisture put on the ball rather than pre-wet sleeves, then that moisture evaporates and you're left with a salt residue. And that could have an effect on the pitch. I'm just saying. Wow.

That's the case. Really? You already knew this? No, I did not know that. Okay. But, you know, there was a pitcher in the day, some of our older guests, I remember Gaylord Perry, Hall of Famer. Yeah.

He was known for cheating all the time. And he threw... He wasn't a Yankee, was he? He threw... He was at some cheating all the time. He wasn't a Yankee, was he? He was at some point, right? He used to throw a spitball, and the way the spitball was done, it's hard to show the people who were listening, but most pitches are thrown with the seams or across the seams.

If you wet your hands enough, a spitball was thrown with no seams, and instead of throwing it with this kind of action. With a 12 to 6 action. Yeah, you pinched it. And when it pinched, it came out with no spin. And hitters, when hitters see what they do when they stand in the box, their first thought is, is this ball going to hit me in the head? That's their first thought.

It's a good thought. Second thought is, it's not going to. Third thought is, does it have any spin? And the fourth thought is, where is it? Because I'm going to put the ball where I think the ball is going to be. Not where I know, but where I think the ball is going to be. And for most of us, by the time we have that fourth thought, the ball

is already in the catcher's mitt. Or it has hit you in the head. And you are dreaming the rest of that conversation. That's right. So a couple more points here. If you allow me to reflect on this, one of my favorite films,

just because it was a head trip, just to watch and to experience, was For the Love of the Game. And it was like the 10th baseball movie by... Kevin Costner. Kevin Costner. How many baseball movies can the guy make? So if you're unfamiliar with the film, and I'll leave out many of the details,

he's an aging pitcher. And the entire movie is inside his head during a game that he's pitching. And he's pitching this game very well. And I did not appreciate what you guys do on the mound until I saw that film. Because you're in his head and he's saying, oh, hey, Joey.

In his head. Hey, Joey, it's been a while since we both came up at the same time. I remember you never, you know, you never swung

at the first pitch. You just never did. Okay, so, bam, threw a strike right down the middle, a meatball right down the middle

and he looks at it for a strike. So, I'm thinking, you're just trying to throw it, so bam, threw a strike right down the middle, a meatball right down the middle, and he looks at it for a strike. So I'm thinking, you're just trying to throw to, but no, the mind game. I finally appreciated deeply what this chess match really is. You know what's interesting is that people ask me all the time, do you remember pitches you threw in a game? And I try to explain it, if you have children, you remember everything about your child right because you're it's so dear to you i can remember every pitch um i've ever thrown in

a game if you tell me uh wrigley field in 1984 you faced the cubs you gave up three home runs um you're knocked out in five and a third a guy threw beer on you as you're coming off the field what did you throw to say in the third at bat boom i can tell you exactly every pitch wow where the ladies and gentlemen that's incredible by the way but absolutely tell us about all 116 of your losses to understand no run support atmospheric just trying to you know keep you honest up there. So let's move forward into you're a sports commentator now. Yes. And could you react to the role of the application of science to sports today,

to training, to the analysis, the statistics? Baseball has always had statistics, but now it's reached some other dimension of statistics. That's right. What's your reaction to it? Does that add to the game or take away from the game, from the old days? I think it definitely adds to the game. I think the analytics or sabermetrics of the game, the math of the game,

just adds to your knowledge of the game. That being said, numbers can be used in so many different ways. And how you use them, let's say we all get the same numbers about whatever we're doing. We're all going to apply. Same data. Same data. We're all going to apply it in a different way.

And I think the ones that can apply it, that have the combination of the data, also factoring the human factor, the ones that do it the best with both are the ones that are better teams. And this is Playing With Science. Today, we take a look at the science behind the moonshot, the kind that's powered by the bat rather than a Saturn V. Yes, guess what, listeners? Today, it's all about the home run.

The physics of the bat, the ball, the brain. And letting fly with the science will be physics professor Alan Nathan from the University of Illinois. But first, you know, if you've ever wondered what it's like... You have? Yeah. Well, you know what, if you've ever wondered what it's like. You have. Yeah. Well, you know what? But you haven't wondered, like, too much because you're a professional athlete.

Oh, yeah, but there's certain things you want to do in your life. That's so true. And one of them is probably the hardest thing they say it is to do in all of sports, which is hit a home run. Hit a Rome run. Yes. Yeah. Actually, take a bat. You hit it that far, it goes to Italy.

Go to Rome. Find a guy who is jogging, whack him with a bat. That's called a Rome run. Of course, we're talking about a home run. But then take that. Yeah. And then put it in the setting of a World Series. And then put it in the setting of, I don't know, the last

inning, maybe the 14th inning? What do you get? Well, we're going to find out today. Oh, yeah, because with us in the studio is none other than the Chicago White Sox legend, the man with his own bronze statue. Yes, Jeff Blum. Yay. Welcome to the show, Jeff.

Good to be here. Thank you for having me. Did we embarrass you? Not enough. Yeah, we've got plenty more. All right. Yeah, OK. We're going to lay it to the show, Jeff. Good to be here. Thank you for having me. Did we embarrass you? Not enough, yeah. I just got plenty more. All right, yeah, okay. We're going to lay it on. Yeah, man.

Oh, that's just something else. Okay, so here we go. When you go up on deck, do you know this one is leaving the park, or is it just in the hands of the gods? Or do you have a sense? Like, I feel it. I feel really good.

You know what? It's kind of funny that you talk about that, because they had me mic'd up in batting practice before the game. Really? And I know that we're in a National League ballpark where the pitcher's going to hit. I know there's potential double switch, pinch hit, all kinds of issues that will get me in the game. And they had me mic'd up, and I'm taking batting practice, and I'm yelling at the batting practice pitcher. I'm like, would you please give me better pitches so I can try and hit them out of the ballpark? You know, I'm trying for home runs.

And who would have thought, you know, five and a half, six hours later, I'd have the opportunity and follow through. Yeah. I'm not saying I called it, but I'm saying I had a pretty good feeling about it. A good feeling about it. Ammunition. So, you know what? Before we go any further, because we're taking it for granted that those listening and those watching us on StarTalk All Access that those listening and those watching us on StarTalk All Access know that we're talking about the fact that Jeff is a former

Major League Baseball infielder. He is currently the announcer for the Houston Astros and an analyst for MLB at the plate on TuneIn Radio. But specifically what we're referring to is that as a World Series champion for the Chicago White Sox in 2005, Jeff, in the 14th inning of the longest game in fall classic history, came to the plate and knocked a ball out of the park to win the game. So why don't we take a look at that?

Oh, man. Might I add, that doesn't get old. No, it doesn't. And I love the look on a pitcher's face when he's like, dismount. I don't know if they'll have a clip of it, but the best part was the manager, Phil Garner, for the Houston Astros, literally picked up his bar stool he was sitting on and fired it into the tunnel.

So there was a lot of anger and aggression. How slow can you run the bases once you've dinged a homer? What's crazy is I was on the Astros team two years prior. Yes, yes. I mean, a year and a half prior. So I knew a lot of guys on that team. So there was a little bit of, oh, hell yeah. And then at the same time going, oh, man, my boys are in the other dugout.

So it's kind of ironic that I had to hit it against them. Did you already have the read on the pitcher? Did you know what he was going to do? I had a pretty good idea. Well, you know what? In knowing that I played for that team, I knew they had the scouting report on me, so I knew what they were going to avoid. And that place where he threw the baseball is the last place you want to pitch me

because the one place where I don't have to think and I can just react is that down and in fastball. Do you think he read that report? Yeah, and I think that's why everybody in the dugout snapped when I hit that home run because they knew exactly where it was going as soon as I put the ball on it. Right. Whoops. Yeah. Yeah. It was a whoops. Yeah. And joining us now by video call to help us wrap our heads around the physics is Professor Alan Nathan. Alan, welcome to the show. How are you, sir?

I'm very fine. Thank you. Glad to be with you. Yes, we're glad to have you. Of course, Alan is Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Illinois, and he spent a decade studying the physics of baseball. Check him out at baseball.physics.illinois.edu. So let's just get into the anatomy of a home run. Okay, sure. So the ball is coming in. If it's released, let's say for the sake of argument, it's a really good fastball released at maybe 95 miles an hour, 94 or something like that. By the time it gets to home plate, it's going a bit slower. It's probably going more like 85 miles an hour because air drag slows it down and it's falling. It's descending at maybe for a fastball, it probably is coming into home plate at maybe a six or seven degree angle. It's descending.

Okay. So the batter's job is to get the bat in the right place at the right time, space at the right time, at the right location on the bat itself with a high bat speed. Bat speed is basically the thing that matters most in terms of how hard that ball will be hit. And of course, how hard that ball will be hit along with the launch angle is what determines how far that ball will go and therefore whether it's a home run or not. So the batter's job is a pretty difficult one, at least for me it would be difficult, for major league players is maybe not as difficult, because you don't have a lot of time to react. It might take something like four-tenths of a second from release until the ball gets to home plate. And not all that time is available to the batter in terms of observing the pitch. I mean, you have to decide by roughly halfway through that, you know, roughly two tenths of a second,

you have to make a decision. Am I going to swing or am I not going to swing? If I swing, how am I going to swing? Is the pitch going to be on the low side, high side, inside, outside? The swing itself takes something like.15 seconds, typically, sort of on average for an agent hitter.

You subtract that.15 from the.4 that you have altogether, you get.35. So there's plenty of time. Basically, you've got plenty of time to make up your mind about how you're going to go about this thing. Right. You can probably have a cup of coffee, you know, and friends a little bit and, and then, Oh yeah. And here comes the ball.

So, you know, you, you, you really have to process that information very, very quickly. And I basically, I think that's what batters are doing. They're, you know, they see the pitch, they see the pitch at release, they observe it, they essentially transmit that information to their brain and they have some memory lookup table. They're comparing it to pitches, similar pitches that they've seen before and using that to make their decision about what that pitch is going to do and therefore whether they should swing it.

Well, you know what? Let's hold on for one second because this is fascinating. And we have a major league baseball home run World Series hitter in the room. Legend. Legend. A man who has a bronze statue of himself. We like the idea of that. They liked the idea of that. They liked him very much in Chicago.

But, Jeff, can you speak to the things that Professor just told us? No, I think what he's talking about, and I actually appreciate it, I should have put him on my PR team to try and explain how hard it actually is. But, you know, I have a whole new appreciation now watching what these guys do. But a lot of what Alan is talking about now is actually provided by Major League Baseball for us to actually look at and they can instantaneously look at they don't necessarily look at bat speed but they can give you the exit velocity launch angle and they can calculate hit probability number one and then they can go ahead and estimate the distance because of adding those two things together. So it's a lot of fun for me to look at. Would you change the launch

angle depending on which park you're playing in? That's what's crazy. You could probably put Allen in a batting cage right now and tell these guys, you want to try and hit a launch angle. And again, the pitch is coming downhill. So you've got to change your bat angle almost into an uppercut to make contact with this. But these guys are talking about how to create a launch angle that will deliver a long fly ball that Alan is talking about. It's incredible. Wow, that's insane. Does the theory translate into the bat in your hands?

Does it really work? I don't know because I grew up in an age of swing down on the ball to get the ball in the air. And they're kind of shifting away from that because of the launch angles that alan's talking about alan we talk about the bats the batter hitting with the sweet spot and we've spoken to a couple of batters in major league and they tell me when you connect and you hit it on the sweet spot you don't feel any vibration it's almost an invisible hit. Yeah. So what is the sweet spot? Okay, so the bat is not a rigid body.

It can vibrate. And, you know, when the ball, the sweet spot is the location. I mean, the simple way to say it is it's the location along the length of the bat where when the ball hits there, there's essentially no vibration. You don't feel it in your hands. And you know it really, if you hit on the tip of the bat or you hit way on the inside part of the bat,

you know that that can sting. I mean, sometimes. And nowadays, with high-speed bees... Jeff, by the way, Jeff is in studios shaking his head like shaking his head and shaking his hand like you have no idea we call it a handful of bees a handful of bees i like that it probably doesn't feel very well

and nowadays uh in major league games you oftentimes you have high speed video and you it's it's dramatic the kind of vibrations that you actually see in the bat when the ball is not hitting on the sweet spot of the bat. So the sweet spot is, there are many definitions of the sweet spot, but they all amount to about the same thing. It's the place where the vibrations are the least, so it feels best. It also is the location, whenever the bat vibrates, that represents energy that the ball transferred to the bat, and therefore less energy for the ball to have on its way out so it's also the best place in terms of exit speed to get the highest exit speed you want the sweet spot so those two points on the bat or regions of the bat pretty much

pretty much coincide that's that's why it's the sweet spot but now you have the science as to why we are going to take another commercial break stick around we'll be back shortly Welcome back. Yes. Thank you, yes. We are here at South by Southwest, and we are privileged to be here with some really rather special guests.

Holden Kushner from iTunes, and J.P. Al-Ansibiah, former Major League Baseball player, and the one and only Charles Liu. Right, talk about pitching, Charles. I think JP's got a little bit of an interest in batting. 80 home runs, by the way. This man here, total envy.

Total envy, 80. But holds the record. Still holds the record for what 23 home runs for the Toronto Blue Jays As a catcher That still stands right 23 in one season Incredible

And as Charles alluded to before the break On his major league debut First ball home run Wow What do you think when that happens Like okay so it's your major league debut debut, first ball, home run. Wow. Wow. What do you think when that happens? Like, okay, so it's your major league debut. It's your first at bat.

You get up there and you pop a home run. Do you just say to yourself, like, damn, it is all downhill from here? Yeah. No, I remember I was not really nervous. I was just ready for the opportunity. Yeah, because it had been a long road to get to a major league game. Yeah, I mean, the minor leagues and all these different stops that we have in baseball that, unfortunately, people only see the majors.

The New Hampshire Fisher Cats springs to mind. Yeah, let's talk about, well, let's not talk about, but Las Vegas was where I was at the longest, and that's where I almost died a few times, but it was worth it. It was pretty fun. Long journey. Totally worth it. What about that? Anyone have that dream?

First ball, home run, major league? Because if I was a baseball player, hand up, I would have had that dream. That's the reality. It's incredible. Now, you talked to us during the break about density of woods. Yeah. And all right, pitch that question. No pun intended. It was really. To Charles, go for it. All right. Well, when I went through my struggles, I started struggling a little bit and I actually thought that I would use a lighter, smaller bat that it would help me.

And a hitting coach told me, you're a power hitter, the bigger, harder, heavier, more dense wood would be more useful for you. That's what I'm saying. I knew that was coming. Of course. I knew that was coming. You can't say all those words together and not expect me to do something with it. And so, honestly, I started using it, but mentally I couldn't adjust

and say, man, if I use a heavier bat, I always thought it was going to slow down my hands. And so I wasn't able to... So you're thinking, let me get a round on the swing quicker, and a lighter bat will help me do that. I'll get a round on the swing quicker,

I can meet the ball faster. But then your pitching coach is saying, no. Hitting coach. Hitting coach, sorry. Is saying, see how much I know about this sport. He's saying, you need a heavier bat because you're a power hitter. Yeah, so what happens is he said lighter bat, since it's lighter

your body, you try more. When it's a heavier bat, you try to do less. But also, when a heavier, and this to do less but also when a heavier and this is my question is when a heavier billet of wood so when they start making a wood bat it's a piece of lumber and they move it down so it's there's heavier billets there's denser wood there's harder wood right so if you use a heavier bat when it hits the ball the ball is going to go further and so I got convinced when I started struggling, started using this bat. First game I used a bat, I went home, I hit two home runs and I was like,

all right, this is pretty cool. And then when I would hit balls on not the sweet spark part of the bat, they were still leaving the park. And I was like, complete sold. And nowadays, in older times, guys used to use much heavier bats. And it was a big difference. Now everyone wants to use a lighter bat. And I still try to convince guys like, dude. You should go with the heavier bat. The bigger, heavier bat.

The bigger, heavier bat. Everybody knows once you go bigger, heavier bat. Okay, so that's our question. Okay. The thing is, of course, the major leagues have rules, right? Just like the NFL requires you to inflate your balls to a certain pressure, whether or not you want to. The same is true with baseball bats.

You can only have a certain length, certain width, certain amount of pine tar, certain density, things like that. Okay? And you may remember there was a controversy some years ago about people putting cork in your bats, open it up, you put some spongy stuff inside and you cap it off and then you make the ball bounce a little bit off, off of your bat a little bit more. So here's the physics, right? JP, uh, your bat, your batting coach was correct in that if you have a heavier bat, you swing it around and you are creating more momentum in your bat so that when you transfer that momentum to the ball when you hit it, it will go farther.

The problem, of course, is that it requires more torque. You have to generate that extra turning of your wrists and your arms, elbows eventually in order to move that bat head fast enough to transfer that momentum, right? The main issue is the matter of contact. If you can contact a ball pulling while swinging a thicker, heavier bat, your heavier bat is going to work for you. If you can't get the bat around though, if you don't have the arm strength, if you don't have the arm strength, if you don't have the wrist strength, then the heaviest bat in the world isn't going to help you because that fastball is going to blow on right by. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does because that's what his coach was saying.

You're a power hitter. Therefore, you need the heavier bat. It makes sense. Yeah, and to his point, there's guys, I mean, there's different gifts. I was always able to hit a ball far and so that was my gift there was guys that can't hit a ball far that some guys can throw hard some guys can't it's just genetically whatever they have but that was one thing I was and so when I was able to start using those heavier bats it it really made a huge huge difference

okay Charles I think JP has another question. Yeah, so another thing. You activated your mind. Your little squirrel's getting really busy. I love it. I love talking to this. So then some of the furthest home runs I ever hit, I realized in the barrel the seams were indented into the bat.

And so there's a mis... I don't know. They always used to say you caught a seam. If you hit a ball a certain super, super long distance, it was a difference between hitting it in the... I don't know. What would you call that? The white part of the baseball?

The space. Or the seam. Or right on the seam. Because again... So wait a minute. Are you saying that you have actually looked at a bat after you've hit a home run, and the seam of the ball is indented into the bat? Yeah, so in Maple, I mean, Ash, you can see it a little bit.

But in Maple, if you hit a ball square, because guys always want to clean their bats, too. Another thing is guys always clean their bats because you want to see where you're hitting the ball on the bat because there's a sweet spot. So you want to be able to. It's all the things that go into it but when when you hit since it's a clean bat when you hit a ball good right i know exactly where i hit it because you can see if especially the longer home runs you see the seams the indention of the seams on the bat so i just want to know if that was if that makes sense if that's and does that make a difference charles the hitting the seam or hitting the. And does that make a difference, Charles, hitting the seam or hitting the white space?

Does that make a difference and why? Let me tell you two ways that it could make a difference. One way is that the white part of the ball is slipperier than the seams. So if you catch the seams, you may be able to hit the ball with a more clean shot without slippage. So that like, you know, in a foul tip, what happens is you catch a piece of the ball and it spins away. But if you hit it on the seams, you might be able to get a little more friction

so that even if it's not exactly square, you might be able to get it without slipping off. It's the same reason why the pitcher grips the seams. The bat is gripping the seams the same way the pitcher throws the ball. Excellent point. Oh, dude, that's awesome. This creates more spin. Dude, that's right.

I have a thought for you. Sure. If we sort of cut across all Major League Baseball rules, what would be the perfect material to make? To cork a bat. A bat. So a power hitter like JP could do his thing and not worry about it. Tell us from an astrophysics standpoint

how can we cheat best at this game? If I want the perfect bat, I would actually use an aluminum bat. Really? JP, you probably remember from college, right? That ball would just fly off that aluminum bat. So why is that?

Aluminum is very light for it's, yeah, it's still heavier than wood, right? Uh, denser than wood, I should say. Uh, but, um, you can make it kind of hollow. The typical aluminum bat isn't filled all the way through with aluminum. So you've got some space in the middle. So you've got this sort of, um, ability to, to ricochet, bounce back and forth a little bit, that elasticity. That was the second point about hitting the ball on the laces that matters, right? Because as JP was saying, hit the ball on the laces. What you're getting is a little extra compression, right? The laces are up by a fraction of an inch. And if you hit that lace just right, get a little extra compression,

you have a little bit longer to transfer more energy from the bat to the ball, and therefore you can get a better launch of the ball. So it's basically a spring load, is what you're saying. Yeah. Gotcha. And so if you have an aluminum bat that's got a little bit of give to it, a little bit of hollowness in it, you're just going to contact, have a longer period of time to transfer energy, and therefore you get a little bit extra rebound off of that. I don't know, JP, if that makes sense to you in terms of of i don't know if you ever can feel this right the contact with the ball is just a fraction of a second but you ever feel like when you hit a ball really really well it seems to hang on the bat just that little tiny bit longer than when you just get a

piece of it honestly it's almost the the opposite when you hit. When you hit a ball super square with a wood bat, you don't feel it, which is – I don't know how to – Well, you know what? I thought that's why they called it the sweet spot. It's because there's no reverberation in your hands through the bat. Yeah, when I hit a ball good, I knew as soon as I hit it, I was like, that was sexy. That was it.

I'm Gary O'Reilly. I'm Chuck Knight. This has been Playing With Science. We'll see you all soon.