On Baseball’s Opening Day, Physicists Tell Batting Coaches To Get A Grip On Grip Advice
- Date:
- March 30, 2001
- Source:
- American Institute Of Physics
- Summary:
- The sharp-eyed baseball fan will notice that some batters, like the Yankees’ David Justice, remove one of their hands during their swing – sometimes against the advice of batting coaches. But now physicists are telling coaches and players alike to rest easy - new research shows that the released hand has nothing to do with how fast the ball leaves the bat.
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Some good news for players and batting coaches as baseball’s opening day approaches – physicists say they shouldn’t worry about a player’s grip on the bat as it connects with the ball. The sharp-eyed baseball fan will notice that some batters, like the Yankees’ David Justice, remove one of their hands during their swing – sometimes against the advice of batting coaches. But now physicists are telling coaches and players alike to rest easy - new research shows that the released hand has nothing to do with how fast the ball leaves the bat.
In research published recently in the American Journal of Physics, University of Illinois professor of physics Alan Nathan says the grip on the bat during contact with the baseball does nothing to affect the power delivered to the ball. Nathan says that even if the hitters were to let go of the bat right before contact, the batted ball would have the same speed and trajectory.
"Just prior to the collision with the ball, the bat is already at its maximum speed," says Nathan, "There's nothing that the hands can do to affect the ball at this point."
Many coaches are instinctively aware of this, as they typically ask batters to relax their grip on the bat during their swing. But these results, demonstrated in theory and experiment, would correct the advice of other coaches who suggest to their players that they use their hands to "muscle" the ball during the brief period the ball and bat are in contact.
The hands do play an important role during the actual swing prior to the actual contact, as they help transfer energy generated in the large muscles of the body to the baseball bat. This muscle power propels the bat to the high velocity needed to transfer a lot of momentum to the ball and send it on its way. But during the bat-ball contact time, the grip does nothing to affect the ball's final velocity or trajectory.
There are several reasons for this, Nathan explains. First, the bat exerts a force on the ball that can easily reach eight or nine thousand pounds. The force is so large, many times the weight of the batter, because the ball is in contact with the bat for such a short time – only about one thousandth of a second. During that contact time, Nathan says, the hands add little to the amount of force exerted on the ball.
Nathan also points out that the collision between bat and ball creates a vibrational wave in the bat. The wave originates at the collision point and ripples down to the hand. The wave itself, since it absorbs energy from the baseball, can affect the exit speed of the ball. But by the time the wave hits the hand, the ball is already separated from the bat, and there's nothing that the hands can do to alter this vibrational wave, assuming of course that the impact occurs in the barrel of the bat, far from the hands.
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Materials provided by American Institute Of Physics. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
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