StarTalk Radio - #ICYMI - Juiced Balls, Broken Bats & Record Breakers, with Shawn Green

Episode Date: October 18, 2018

In case you missed this episode on the Playing with Science channel… Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly explore the science of baseball with physicist Alan Nathan, James Sherwood, Director at the Baseball Research Center, and baseball great Shawn Green. 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 Knives and this is Playing With Science. It's that time of the year when the legends of the fall rise and stake a claim to Major League Baseball's coveted World Series pennant. We don't know yet who will battle it out this time around, but we do know if there's homers galore, the juicing rumors will return. Absolutely. And we have the perfect guest for just that topic, the man who wrote last year's baseball juicing paper, physics professor Alan Nathan. So we'll get to the bottom of whether or not that is the case. Plus, we'll be talking to James Sherwood from the UMass Lowell Baseball Research Center. They're the guys that run the tests on both bats and balls,

which will certainly be interesting. Yes, it will indeed. And because we've got the science and tech bases covered, we needed a seriously big hitter. So we have a man who, amongst other records, owns the most home runs in a single game. it's four by the way and that man is sean green yeah looking forward to talking to him really am there's a great mix in this show man yep we got record breakers we got the people who keep records and the people who make records and juiced balls don't forget that no i love juice balls you would. Right, let's get our first guest. Professor Alan Nathan, a professor of physics emeritus at the University of Illinois and chairperson of this particular baseball study. Professor, welcome to the show.

Thank you. I'm good to be here. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Thank you. So how did this come about? I mean, why would Major League Baseball commission 10 scientists to do this study in the first place? Well, so I can only speculate. I think that there had, as you know, as everyone realizes, there had been an increase in home runs. And last year, 2017, by the time the committee was formed, MLB was on a trajectory to have the largest number of home runs of any season in MLB history. And Major League Baseball was sort of getting a lot of bad publicity from it. There were a lot of people writing that somehow the ball had been altered and juiced in the lingo. And I think ultimately they must have decided, look, we really do need to look into this. We need to understand this.

need to look into this. We need to understand this. So they initially called on me to chair the committee and asked for some suggestions of people to be on the committee. And we took it from there. It's just weird because you would think that Major League Baseball would be very, very pleased because people want to see home runs. I mean, you know, that's that's what you go to the park for. I think they're pleased at the home runs. You know, I think I think fans are pleased at the home runs. Yeah. But I think they're they're quite sensitive.

Again, I'm just speculating here. I think they're sensitive to bad publicity. One thing about baseball is there is a real sense of the historical aspects of it. True. Meaning that, you know, a home run hit today, you know, means the same thing as a home run hit 50 years ago. And, you know, records that were set back then being broken in the current environment, they you know, if they're broken legitimately, that's fine. But if they're broken because of change, either in the players, you know, the the other juicing scandal. Right. Right. Or changes to the ball. I think they're sensitive to that. And I think they're sensitive to that and i think fans are sensitive to that okay so i think they really felt that that they really wanted to have a group of scientists with

no axe to grind whatsoever uh working independently of major league baseball see if they could come up with uh the reasons so we're talking about the purity of the sport, the purity of the game to respect the history. So in which way do you do that? I mean, there's coefficients of restitude, you've got natural products would come with natural flaws, i.e. wood and leather. How did you go about ensuring the purity of the game was respected, but science has its say? but science has its say so we proceeded along two broad tracks uh one was using actual data from mlb games so the so-called stat cast data where a combination of radar and cameras are used to track every pitch ball and every batted ball. So we analyzed those data. We had complete access to the data.

So that was one part of it, to see whether we could spot anything in the data. And the second branch of this whole thing was to do our own laboratory testing of various properties of the baseball. And intermingled with both of those was actually a trip to Costa Rica to visit the Rawlings factory where the baseballs that are used in Major League Baseball are actually constructed. That was very, very informative for us to do. But yeah, so as I said, two different tracks, analyzing data from actual MLB games and taking our own laboratory data to try to figure out what, if anything, had changed about the baseball.

And your findings were conclusive, inconclusive, or partially conclusive, or what exactly were your findings? Okay, so we had some amount of success and, you know, one big hole in our study, which I'll tell you about. So we sort of asked two overall questions. Is the increase in home runs due to a change in the launch conditions of a ball coming off the bat? That could come either from a higher exit velocity, which would lead to longer fly balls, or more and or more optimum launch angles. and or more optimum launch angles that would, for a given exit velocity, at a more optimum launch angle, the ball will travel farther. So we looked extensively at StatCast data to see whether we could see any evidence at all for either one of those things. And in effect, we found no evidence that you could explain the change in home runs by a change in the launch conditions, either the exit velocity or the launch angle.

So that was the second question that we asked was, was it the change in the carry of the ball? That is, once the ball leaves the bat, for given launch conditions, given exit velocity, launch angle, and whatever other things you want to put into it, is the ball carrying farther now than it did two, three years ago? And we found evidence in the data that that indeed was the case. And moreover, that the change in that carry was really sufficient to account for the change in home run. So it was not a change in the launch conditions themselves.

It was a change in the carry of the ball. And we found this directly from the StatCast data. And we confirmed it with laboratory measurements. We had large samples of baseballs from various years. We're able to measure the so-called coefficient of restitution of the ball, which measures how bouncy the ball is, the bouncier it is. So when one talks about the ball being juiced, normally one talks about the ball being more bouncy, a higher coefficient of restitution. We found no evidence in the laboratory testing that there was a higher coefficient of restitution, more or less confirming what we found from the analysis of the StatCast data, namely that the exit velocity wasn't really changing all that much.

velocity wasn't really changing all that much. But further, we found that there was a change in the so-called drag coefficient of the baseball. So the carry of the ball, if baseball were played in a vacuum, the launch conditions would exactly determine the landing point. But baseball takes place in the air, and there is the effects of drag and lift. The drag is really the most important effect. And what we found was that the drag properties of the baseball had changed in an ever so subtle way. Uh, and by an amount that basically could explain the change in the home runs. Okay. So it wasn't the coefficient of restitution.

It wasn't the so-called launch angle revolution that people talk about, you know, batters swing, altering their swings to come up with a more optimum launch angle, which then lead to more home runs. It really had to do with the subtle effect in the so-called drag coefficient. So that was the success and it all hung together very, very nicely. What was the failure, what was missing? What was missing was we could not and still have not been able to figure out what actual physical property of the ball that you could measure would lead to a change in that drag coefficient.

We looked at all the obvious things. We looked at the surface texture of the ball, which affects the drag because it affects how the air flows over the ball. We looked at the seam height. the drag because it affects how the air flows over the ball. We looked at the seam height. We found no change in the seam height that could explain that change in the drag coefficient. And then we even started really grasping at straws and looking at really, really subtle effects. And in the subtle effects that we looked for, we also found nothing that would explain things. I should point and by the way, it was those follow up studies trying to figure out what had you know, what property of the ball had actually changed that reduced the drag that led to the long delay between when our report was initially submitted at the end of December to when it was finally released in May. We were just conducting further laboratory studies to try to figure this out. We didn't succeed in figuring it out. So is this still a mystery? Are we still looking at the fact

that we don't know why we're getting more dingers happening? This is pretty fascinating, if it is. Yeah, that is where we are. As a scientist, I have to say that it was a little bit unsatisfying for us in that we sort of figured out things to a point, but then we reached a stumbling block and we weren't we could not find what you might call the smoking gun that explained everything professor before before you go on um i'm sat here thinking and i'm i'll have a devious mind on occasions what happened if i cook the ball or lower the temperature of the ball? So I play with that quite literally.

If I stuck it in a microwave for 20 seconds, raise the core heat and everything else, or actually froze it for a while. I'm sure you consider that the sort of ambient temperatures that come into play. OK, so the thing that you're talking about would not affect so much the carry of the ball. The air temperature, okay, through which the ball is going does affect the carry of the ball. So in warmer temperatures, the air density is lower, the ball carries further. We looked at that, actually, and we concluded that it was not a change. You couldn't explain the home runs with a change in the temperature. The thing that you're talking about, putting the ball in a microwave oven or in a freezer or whatever else, that would actually affect the coefficient of restitution of the ball, which would be exit velocities. And since we found

that the exit velocities didn't explain things, you know, that that would not have been an effect that would have been seen. Well, I think it's fascinating that this is still a mystery. I'm interested to know whether or not Major League Baseball wants you to continue and make some findings? Or are they just happy with the fact that what you were able to establish is that the ball is not juiced? And they're like, all right, ball's not juiced. We're good. And that's it. Yeah. So there are two of us on the committee, myself and Lloyd Smith, who's a mechanical engineering professor at Washington State University, it's his laboratory where all the lab work was done. He and I are still involved.

The rest of the committee is not. So I'm involved. So Lloyd, at his laboratory, is pursuing various ideas about what would be the cause. So, you know, one of the crazy ideas that we had was that maybe the, you know, the ball is, the center of the ball is the so-called pill. And that, and one of the crazy ideas we had was maybe the pill is slightly off center. And when it, which it could easily be. And when it rotates, it wobbles a little bit, not in a way that you could actually perceive,

but the air going over the ball would perceive it. It would change the drag. And if the ball were now better centered than it was because somehow they've improved the manufacturing process, then that would reduce the drag. So one of the things that's happening is Rawlings, the company that makes the baseballs, is actually preparing us for some baseballs in which the pill is purposely put off center just so we could study the effect to see if that would play any role whatsoever. It's only speculation on our part that it might. And so those are the kinds of crazy ideas that we're pursuing. And so it is ongoing.

I'm serving as, well, Lloyd Smith and I have worked together over a decade and a half of doing a variety of sort of physics of baseball type projects. So he and I talk with each other all the time anyway. So he and I together are still involved with this project. The rest of the committee is not, at least not yet. Wow. I got to tell you, it's fascinating stuff. It does open your mind, Chuck, doesn't it? To the sort of consideration that's taken place with the professor and his team on this study. And I mean, I remember back to the World Series last year, pitchers were saying, of course the ball's juiced. And I think that what the professor's done is just said,

that's a great idea, but the facts are, it's not. We don't quite know yet, but that won't stop us trying again to find out exactly what it is. And I think on behalf of every baseball fan, that's a perfect scenario, unless you come up with the perfect answer first time. But it hasn't been the case. So I think everyone's pleased. I think we'll go back to that point of purity. The sport seems to have retained its purity, unless, of course, the athletes themselves have uh done something hey look look at that that's

a whole nother show isn't it just i have to say it was for me it was an exhilarating a project to work on it just sort of put together uh you know various aspects of the physics of baseball that i've been working on for over a decade. And so for me, it was an ideal kind of project to be part of. And although I was disappointed we couldn't find the smoking gun, I was quite proud of what we as a group accomplished with this. Well, that's great. And we're pretty much out of time for this segment,

but hopefully you'll allow us to get back in touch with you periodically to just see how things are going. Sure enough. Anytime. Professor, thank you so much indeed. Professor Alan Nathan there, who was chairman, chairperson of the study into juicing in baseball. We're going to take a short break. When we come back, more baseball. Don't forget, it's juicing, it's broken bats and it's record breakers. And we'll add them all here on Playing With Science. A bit of a treat for you now. Professor James Sherwood, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UMass Lowell, Director of the Baseball Research Center. Yes. Yes.

And exploring many of the scientific aspects of the game in terms of bat and durability and baseball compliance. Yes. Yeah, I want to get into a little bit of that baseball compliance. But before we do, hi, Professor. Welcome to the show. Hi, guys. Hey, great to have you here. So can you just tell us, I mean, no sense in jumping into this without giving the listeners a bit of a background on what you're doing with particularly wood bats, because of course that's the that's major league baseball yeah so uh in 2008 there was concern that the number of bats that were breaking into multiple pieces during major league baseball games was was growing all right and uh and that there was some concern as to how it was going to

compromise the safety of the players on the field and also with the spectators in the stands with pieces of wood flying around. So Major League Baseball assembled a technical team of wood experts and statisticians and the team we have here with Patrick Drain and myself at the Baseball Research Center at the university, which Major League Baseball did give us our initial funding to establish, just to look into this problem. Let's see if we can understand why so many bats were breaking into multiple pieces and where there are some measures that we could take to mitigate this problem. Cool. And now, you know, with that being said, I just, when you just said broken bats, I,

you know, we're, we're about to have in our next segment, uh, we're going to have Sean Green, who is a major league baseball player and one of only 18 players in the history of all of baseball to hit four home runs in one game. One of those home runs, he actually hit off of a broken bat. So I asked you, professor, can a broken bat help you at times? Can it actually do something to the ball, change the flight direction of the ball, make it so that it's advantageous for you

to break a bat when you're hitting a ball? Well, great question. And the thing is, when the ball left the bat, it probably didn't know that the bat was even broken at that time. So I'll leave it to the physicist. Wait a minute. That's very much like many of my relationships. Don't go down that road.

When I leave, I had no idea how much damage I had done. So, yeah, so the ball hits the end of the bat. The sound wave travels down along the length of the bat to the player's hands. And when the player feels the vibration of the bat in their hands from the ball hitting it, the ball is already gone. and so in this case the vibration that was excited in the bat from the ball hitting it that led to the breaking of the bat

that was happening after the ball had left the bat ah interesting that's very interesting so let's talk about that vibration and everybody who's played baseball has hit the ball in such a way I don't care how hard it was thrown, it's just a certain spot on the bat, you hit it, and it stings your hands.

You're just like, God, what did I just do? So, one, what causes that? And when you talked about the vibration, what breaks the bat? Is it the force or velocity of the ball hitting the bat? Is it that vibration, kind of the way a crystal glass breaks when the opera singer sings? What's going on? Can you explain the whole process to us? Sure. So there's a spot on the bat called the sweet spot. Yep.

And if you hit it on the sweet spot, you're not going to feel this vibration. Yep. And if you hit it on the sweet spot, you're not going to feel this vibration. So to use an instrument here to help me explain this, although I realize this is a podcast, right? That's all right. There are some people who will see it as well. Oh, okay. So if we're looking at the bat, and I'll try to bend this pen as best as I can. I'll even turn it this way so it shows the university logo right here for you.

In the first bending mode, there's going to be a node. Let's say this is the handle right here. And this is the barrel of the bat out here. And if you hit off of one of these vibration nodes for this first bending mode of vibration for the bat, then you're going to feel this stinging. I mean, if you hit it right on this node right here, that's out in the barrel, which is very close to where the sweet spot is on the bat, you're not going to feel the sting in your hands. And so that's what causes it. Just hitting it anywhere outside of this location of this node, this sweet spot area on the barrel of the bat.

What sort of size is this sweet spot on a baseball bat? So that's a really good question. Some people would say that, oh, the sweet spot on an aluminum bat, it's three times, four times bigger than it is on a wood bat. And likewise, saying the same thing for the composite bats that people are using now. The sweet spot is really just a spot. And so the batted ball speed coming off the bat, if I'm looking at the barrel of the bat right here, the sweet spot is going to be we're going to get the maximum batted ball speed out of the bat. And then it's going to go down in a sort of a parabolic fashion as you go left or right of that sweet spot. The further you

get away from it, the lower the batted ball speed is going to be. So in some cases when they say the sweet spot is bigger on an aluminum bat or a composite bat, what they're really saying is that, okay, off the sweet spot of the bat on an aluminum or composite bat, it's going to hit better than wood. And now there's this region that's so long right here, maybe three inches, four inches, where you're going to get a hit that is as good or better than what you're going to get off of a wood bat. So it's a marketing thing, saying that the sweet spot is bigger on some bats than other bats. Gotcha. For Major League Baseball, I would assume all the bats have the same specs that they have to be manufactured to, very specific specs.

And does that include a type of wood and why use that type of wood in a bat? What is that wood and why do they use it? Yeah. So the two major types of wood that are used in Major League Baseball are northern white ash and hard rock maple. And then there's also some bats that are made out of yellow birch. They probably comprise a very small, a negligible amount of bats. So there's probably a split between maple and ash for the woods that are used. And there's also a range of densities that you're allowed to use for these woods for the bats because the strength of the wood, the elastic modulus of the stiffness of the wood increases with the wood density. So with the density comes the weight, correct?

Correct. And each bat has a defined weight, or is it a parameter from one to another, or it has to be precisely that weight? So there's a range of weights. I believe the regulation right now is that a bat can't be any lighter than three units. So we call these minus three bats. And the way that we calculate this minus three number is we take the length of the bat and we subtract from that the weight of the bat. So many players are swinging 34 inch long bats and they like to think that they can hit better with a lighter bat than they can hit with a heavier bat.

So they may choose to have a 31-ounce bat. And so we would call this a drop of three ounces of the weight compared to the length of the bat. And so that's a minus three bat. Some players might choose to use a minus two bat. So there's typically not a problem with setting an upper limit on the weight of the bat. Where the players are challenged is what that lower weight limit is. And it's going to vary with the profile of the bat. So there are dozens and dozens of different shapes of the wood bat profile. It's going to be hard to discern

maybe one shape from another shape that can be very subtle differences. But it's going to come down to what's the volume of that shape, that profile of the bat, and what wood density you use in that bat. You know, I want to switch gears for just a quick second, just because I know you work with fabric reinforced composites, which is really exciting stuff, I mean, for a geek like me, and probably Gary, too, because he loves this stuff. So is there anything that you have worked with or are currently working with that would inform your research and your work with Major League Baseball? So with Major League Baseball, it's only going to be wood bats. That's it. That's it. They're never going to allow aluminum bats. They're never going to allow composite bats. Major League Baseball is very much a game of tradition. Tradition. It's wood. It's wood. wood bat and then perhaps a composite bat that maybe depending upon circumstances or the type

of pitcher you were facing that you might be able to use it would add an element of chess of a chess a greater chess match to the game i think it would be a really exciting thing to include that kind of stuff yeah so that would be an interesting experiment And we'll just leave that to happen at the high school level and the college level. Because there they can choose to use aluminum, composite, wood, and you can see how the differences shake out there. And how do you feel about it? I mean, are you a traditionalist? Are you a purist? I got a feeling that you are.

Yeah. So just a little bit of history, how I got started in doing this baseball bat stuff. So this was in the late nineties and the NCAA and the high school federation were very concerned that the aluminum bats and the composite bats were getting to be better and better than wood. They were initially brought into the game as being cost competitive, that you're not going to break an aluminum bat during the course of a season compared to wood bats. And then as engineers realized how they could take advantage of the material properties

and different designs, the bats started getting better and better. So that's when the NCAA and the High School Federation stepped in and said, we need a process to test the performance of these bats. And what we were seeing is, yeah, they were hitting probably five miles per hour or better than wood bats, these composite and aluminum bats. But over a period of 10 years, we were able to work with the bat companies to get these things toned down. So now the aluminum and the composite bats actually hit no better than whatever you want to call the best wood bats.

Got you. So they kind of hit all the same right now. Wow. Look at that. And that's basically why they employed you, that and the safety issues as well. So they were concerned about safety, but I want to make it very clear. I'm not a safety expert, and so I never have said anything about one bat being safe over another bat. Okay.

There could be some legal implications with making statements like that. Okay. The only thing I can say is these bats hit essentially the same. All right, that's endless. We appreciate your indemnifying yourself. Believe me. How about the balls? You work on the bats, but you work on the balls as well, don't you?

Yeah, so one of the primary activities that we have with Major League Baseball is ensuring that the baseball is compliant with the Major League Baseball is ensuring that the baseball is compliant with the Major League Baseball specifications, that its coefficient of restitution is within a specified range, that the size is within the max min specs, and likewise, the weight of the baseball. So is there anything that can be done? And believe me, we know that there's a lot that can be done to change the ball so that it performs differently. There was a bit of a controversy, was it last year?

Last year, plus in 2000. And in 2000? The professor was asked through the Baseball Research Center to analyze the potential of juicing on baseball, and you proved that that wasn't the case. It hadn't been juiced. But how, I mean, what Chuck is saying, I think, is how can you, is not a baseball a defined size or is it a game within parameters? So I got to give credit to Rawlings. They make a very consistent ball. I mean, the weight of the baseball is supposed to be between five and a five and a quarter ounces. They pretty much hit the

middle for that at five and eight ounces. And with respect to the size, it's supposed to be between what, nine and nine and a quarter inches is the circumference of the ball. And once again, they hit that right in the middle. You know, with respect to changing circumference of the ball. And once again, they hit that right in the middle. You know, with respect to changing the performance of the baseball, you've got this rubber pill that's in the center of the ball. There are three windings of wool around the ball. And I don't have the capabilities within my lab to make baseballs with different windings and different pills and such. But there are those ingredients that can be played with to change the performance of the ball. And once again, Rawlings does a great job of making sure that every rubber pill is essentially

the same, the widening is essentially the same, So that the nominal behavior of the ball is consistent. Cool. Well, it's good to know. Yep. Next time I'm out on a major league baseball field, I'll feel more comfortable. Yes. Professor, thank you so much for your time and your insight and explaining to us exactly what is happening in the world of baseball. Time to take another break.

Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you to James Sherwood there, professor at UMass Lowell. Right. When we come back, record breaker time, Sean Green.

Sean Green will be here. A man with more records than you could shake a stick at. Yes. Or a bat or anything else. By the way, he broke the record of shaking a stick at records.. Or a bat. Or anything else. By the way, he broke the record of shaking a stick at records. I believe he did. Welcome back to

Playing With Science and our baseball show. Record breaker. Doesn't quite cover it, but I'll fill in the gap. Sean Green. A man with a past. Toronto Blue Jays, Los Angeles Doggers, Arizona Diamondbacks and the gap. Sean Green. A man with a past. Toronto Blue Jays, Los Angeles Doggers, Arizona Diamondbacks, and the New York Mets. And as I said just prior to the break, more records than anyone has ever shook a stick at.

Right, Chuck? Do you want to go in? Not to mention he's a two-time All-Star, a Golden Glover. He's a Silver Slugger Award winner. And more importantly, the man is known for probably being one of only 18 players in all of baseball history.

So think about all of baseball and all the players that have ever come across every single team. Only 18 dudes have done what Sean Green has done, and that's hit four home runs in one game, and he was the 14th to do it. Sean, how are you, man? Thanks for joining us. Yes, I'm great. Thanks for having me. Yeah, man. So super excited to have you on because, like I just said, first of all,

I just found out a really interesting little tidbit. Go on, then. There have been more perfect games thrown in baseball than people who have hit four home runs in one game. You're more rare. You are more rare than a perfect game, my friend. That was pretty wild. No, it's one of those things that all the stars, if they line up correctly, there's a lot of guys who could do it.

But it just worked out perfectly that day. I got really hot. And, no, it's definitely a club. I'm also in the four strikeout in the game club. So it's nice to be in the four homer club as well. Yeah, but one's a lot easier to join than the other. And you know it. as well. Yeah, but one's a lot easier to join than the other, and you know it. Speaking of which,

too, you were kind of in a downturn when that game came about, right? You were, I think it was Milwaukee, right? And you were kind of going into the game in a bit of a downturn. So can you kind of walk us through what you were going through mentally? Because I'm sure that had to be a wild emotional ride to come from being kind of downtrodden you know in a bit of a slump yeah and then boom so can you can you walk us through mentally what happens yeah so I the year before it was my second year in LA and I had I had signed a big contract had a lot of expectations it had a you know a mediocre first year. In my second year, I hit 49 home runs, and that's the Dodger record. All of a sudden, I set the bar really high.

Fast forward now to 2002, I got off the first quarter of the season. I had three home runs. You guys are science guys. You do the math. That's about 12, 13 home runs I was on pace for. I was 0 for 18 in the I was getting, I was over 18 in the homestand until my last at bat. And I was getting booed at home for the first time in my career. And it was, it was rough. I was, I was really down, worked really hard, you know,

throughout the season, but, you know, stepping up some of the routines in the cage and actually got my first day off of the year on a Saturday, played Sunday. My last at-bat, I hit a double, and that kind of got me going. And then the first game in Milwaukee, I was really happy to get the gray uniform on and be on the road because I was not wanting to get a home crowd booing me every time I fouled off a pitch or took a strike. Home fans are great, aren't they? We hit Milwaukee in the first game.

I hit two home runs. So I was like, okay, I'm starting to feel this. The next day, I hit a triple. And So I was like, okay, I'm starting to feel this. The next day I hit a triple. And then the next day, everything just kind of clicked. And I got in the zone. And I was six for six with four homers, a single and a double. When you're in this moment, I'm thinking about it. You've either had a time machine and used it,

and you know exactly what's being dialed up and coming over the plate to you or you have got the most amazing sense of what the pitch is thinking and the vision must be outrageous because i don't believe you get that lucky no you you get i think lucky in that the opportunity um arises because you know the game could be a situation where they walk you because they know you're you could be a situation where they walk you because they know you're swinging a hot bat. But it was a blowout. My good friend and teammate of 10 years, Carl Stogato, did it a year later. And he had four home runs, four solo home runs, I think, and they lost.

So our situation was a blowout. So they ended up getting pitches to hit. And, yeah, everything slowed down. My vision was, you know, my, my timing was great. And what's, what's interesting about it that was different than other times I got locked in was I, I wasn't overthinking it because sometimes you're like, oh my God, I feel so good. I don't want to waste this time, but I just sort of settled into that feeling.

And as I said, I had two home runs the first day, then four the next day. The next day we went to Milwaukee. I hit a home run. The first pitch I saw and had two more hits and then two more ones the next day. So it went from this like crazy slump to this, you know, nine home runs in five games, which was something that, you know, I would have never guessed was going to happen the way the season started out. Are you working your way out of something like that? I mean, you know, what do –

and Gary's a former professional player as well. Soccer. In football, soccer. Yep, yep. But, you know, I'm trying to figure out from a mindset when it's not going well, what are you doing inside your head? What are you saying? Like, I got to work harder?

Do you, I got to wear different socks? I mean, what do you do to work your way out of that? When you get down to the point where you're looking at wearing different socks, you have been through everything. Am I right? You're right. Now, baseball players are very superstitious. So, yeah.

Because, you know, one thing that's different about baseball than really any other professional sport is the sheer amount of games you play in a short time. So you get about two or three days a month where you don't have a game. So you're playing every day. So the routine becomes your preparation. And it's to the point of eating the same meals or getting to the stadium and getting changed in the same way. It kind of sounds weird, but, you know, maybe you put your socks on. You just kind of get in this routine, and that helps get your mind kind of funneling down.

So you start off each day in this space, and you get narrower and narrower of your focus, and the routine is the process. So I focus when I struggle. You know, it's easy to say now. I mean, I spend a lot of nights staring at the ceiling in some hotel, God knows where frustrated and stressed out, not, not being able to sleep. But then I just tried to remind myself to focus on the process and, you know, being in a hot streak or being in a slump, it's just sort of a way that you have to ride. And, you know, each of those two are going to pass and you just hope you can extend the hot streak as long as possible and shorten those slumps. We spoke to Dr. Heather Berlin, who's a neuroscientist.

And she was telling us about when you dial up and you dial down and you learn to control the brainwaves that are coming through and how you are in a state of flow. a state of flow once you tapped into that as you said in the milwaukee game did you feel able to dial it back up almost at will yeah i mean i think it's it it's like a muscle right i mean you work out everyone gets stronger in the gym um i used to do brain exercises you know way back in the with some software and i think that helped but. I'm a meditator, so I've been into that type of thing as well. I always try to tie the Eastern approach into my performance because it's something I think that gets overlooked quite a bit. It's easy to know, hey, if I go to the gym and work out or do certain types of sprints, I'm going to get faster, stronger, in better shape.

to sprints i'm going to get faster stronger in better shape but training your your focus is a really kind of nebulous type thing to get to get your arms around and so i try to come up with ways ways to do that and you know when i was in a hot streak i felt like it was never going to end but i knew through experience that hey this is going to end yeah just to to try to keep things in perspective and and just ride it out as long as I can. How did your teammates react to you taking these techniques forward and using them for your own benefit? Yeah, I mean, people are pretty open. I think I was one of the early baseball players to start doing yoga

and things like that. And now I think it's rare for players to not do yoga or some type of, uh, you know, breath, mind, body type exercise. And, um, so I think people were receptive and the better you perform that people are like, Hey, what are you doing? I want to try to do what you're doing. And I think that's, that's what happens. I, and my career sort of took off at the same time. And plus, I think age is a factor. You know, I was like 25. I was like textbook prime 25 to 29. But it's also I think as these things started to take root, that's when I got better.

Let me get a little just a little baseball. I just want to know. So like so that day, what we're talking about, that was all right field. But you're also known for going the other way. You're good at hitting over the shortstop, center left. Is that something you worked on, or is that something that happens organically for a hitter? Or do you practice that? How's that come about? That's a good question. It's sort of a complicated response, but I'll keep it as brief as I can.

But my swing was naturally sort of an opposite field type swing. Other guys like that, I modeled myself after guys like John Olerud, who was my teammate in Toronto, Don Mattingly, Wade Boggs. Some of the great left-handed hitters when I was growing up, a lot of them were line drives over the shortstop's head. And I think also as I grew into my body, my arms are really long, so it's easier for me to get to the outside pitch. The inside pitch is a little tougher because I have to get it out front more

because my arms are long. So I think that was a big part of it. Even the home run game, the game where I hit all the home runs, one of them was straightaway left field. And what I did is I used to play a home run derby game in batting practice, which is sort of counterintuitive because you're taught to not, you know, over swing in batting practice. But Carlos Delgado, the same guy who looked for a year after me,

we used to do a home run derby game where we'd set up points and kind of make a fun time of it, and right field was out of bounds. We'd set right center, almost center field, and we'd have a point system, and we took it really seriously. We'd try to hit the ball as far as we could to center field, basically. Wow. And every swing. And what I found is I was teaching myself to hit home runs

and i was teaching myself to swing hard and but under control when i got into these counts like 2-0 and 3-1 and you get a good pitch to hit and that's when i really learned how to do it and my thought was as well if i could hit the pitch outside out to left field just like a right-handed hitter would hit out to left field right that gives such an advantage because when you're hitting home runs, pitchers try to throw away because they're scared to come in and have you, you know, hit it to your pole side. So it actually worked to my advantage to get better at hitting the ball out the other way.

Yeah, man. Yeah. And actually, you know, I never thought of that, though. But in the pitching batter battle, what you said, the pitcher is now looking at you because he studied you and so he's looking at you like wow i can't go in like that because i this guy is going to make me pay for it so that's really interesting yeah it's really it gets a lot easier when you're hot not just because you're in a zone but because it becomes really easy to know how they're going

to pitch you right you're sort of forcing them sort of, that would force them to my strengths. That's kind of how it works. It's funny. We did a show last year with a fabulous guy, Ron Darling. Yeah. And he said, I would set batters up earlier on in the season by throwing a certain ball that was absolute garbage. Yep. And then later on in the season by throwing a certain ball that was absolute garbage yep and then later on in the season i know i'd probably be facing them in a playoff situation and they'd be thinking oh he threw me that garbage before that's what he's got and he said and then i'm slice and dice them how did they did you ever feel you you were getting set up by a pitcher yeah i mean i think it worked both ways.

Sometimes I was setting them up too. I mean, it's part of the game. It really becomes a chess match, and players don't forget how guys are approaching them. I actually did a lot better against better pitchers because I understood what they were trying to do. Guys who weren't as good, you know, all these guys are major leaguers, so they all have good stuff. But the guys who really knew how to pitch,

I felt were easier in some ways to hit against because I knew what Greg Maddux's plan was. I understood his thought process and if I was him, how he would pitch me. And then you have some young guy come in that was throwing a 95, and he didn't really know what to do. He was kind of like, you're not supposed to throw that pitch there you know so you have that type of mentality but it's there's a lot of setting up what i got really good at um over the years and there's actually an article i saw with the red socks yakeys game the other day where they had louis uh severino's pitches they he was actually

tipping his pitches by the way he was holding his glove and that was something that i learned and got really good at and was able to determine what a guy was going to throw off a lot of times before he threw it cool what are you into now as regards uh what exercises your mind because you're not swinging a bat anymore actually i'll do one better like uh why don't you just take this time and go ahead and plug uh greenfly which is, which is your digital platform, because I know you're doing some work. What is that about? Yeah, so it's an enterprise software platform, so we sell to a lot of brands.

And it's really what we are is a hub for collaborating with a brand's storyteller. So that could be their employees, their influencers, or an app, as well as a backend and they could create, um, galleries of content, share the content through the, through their, uh, influencers or staff. And, and it's a kind of a two way street. Um, and so we work with a lot of big brands and media companies and sports leagues and teams, um, with just the, the publishing and creation of content. Wow, man, that is impressive. impressive okay so there's a little bird tells me you may have a family relationship with science i do i do i have a very good to share uncle yeah so my mom's um sister's husband you guys got that

paying attention he's he was for a long time i don't know the exact department he was basically the head of cell biology at harvard his name's mark kirschner and brilliant guy and he's you know doing all kinds of stuff with cell division and you know things obviously tied to to cancer research and he's been he's you know in his 70s now so he's been at it a long time and done some great work for sure very cool very cool and we have one thing to say thank you

yeah it's been brilliant talking to you and it's been a pleasure Chuck that's us that's our show man so juiced balls

broken bats and a record breaker yeah it's not bad for a show not bad for a show I like this show I like it too and guess what

we'll be back with more but it'll be a different show next time. Hopefully you'll join us on another Playing With Science. I've been Gary O'Reilly. And I've been Chuck Nice.