Revealed: Why curve balls are so hard to hit

[brewers02]

According to this article it is actually an interesting optical illusion: http://www.newscientist.c...-are-so-hard-to-hit.html

 

Here is an animation to illustrate: http://www.newscientist.c...sual-illusions-curveball

[BrewCrewRising]

That is a cool optical illusion link, but I don't completely get the logic in the article.

 

According to the article, it appears that it's going down and then breaks away, confusing the hitter. On the optical illusion though, it demonstrates that this happens when you stop looking at it straight, and then see it from your peripheral vision. Why would you be looking straight at the ball, and then only see it out of your peripheral vision?

 

I know the researcher mentioned (Arthur Shapiro) says that it "overlaps with the peripheral vision" as the ball gets nearer, but that doesn't seem intuitive to me. As it got closer, wouldn't be more in your direct center vision?

 

Haven't gone out to have one thrown at me, so I'm turning my head and picturing it, which is probably not a productive excercise (and is getting me some stares at work).

 

In any case, cool links. Thanks for sharing.

[jeffy]

Why would you be looking straight at the ball, and then only see it out of your peripheral vision?

 

I know the researcher mentioned (Arthur Shapiro) says that it "overlaps with the peripheral vision" as the ball gets nearer, but that doesn't seem intuitive to me. As it got closer, wouldn't be more in your direct center vision?

 

The only thing I can figure that might explain that is that maybe the ball is moving too fast to track it with your central vision?

 

But, doesn't game day track the actual flight of the ball and report how much it breaks as well as how much it drops? Does that information back this up...indicating that a curve ball does not "break"?

 

Another thing is would peripheral vision even pick up the spin? A spinning baseball is not going to have that dark/light pattern.

 

It is an interesting illusion, in any case.

[BoKnowsBall]

baseballs do break- it is the Magnus force which is caused by a rotating body in a fluid that will cause it to break. It also is one of the things that causes bullet drift for snipers

[Patrick425]

Yeah, I'm not sure I'm getting this either. Are they saying curve balls don't actually break....it's just an optical illusion? If so, what about the center field camera that clearly shows a path of curvature. Also, wouldn't a fast ball have the same illusion? Wouldn't all pitches look like curve balls?

 

Why are curve balls so hard to hit? Because they curve! (..oh and the fact that they are usually mixed in with 90mph fastballs, wicked sliders, and effective change ups)

[mmerde]

I'm no expert, but I would guess that there is a bit of optical illusion present in all pitches. We always hear about how a pitch needs to be deceptive or the hitter will be all over it. The key to a pitchers success is making every pitch look the same to the hitter even though the various pitches are very different. I think much more goes into that deception then just this curveball effect they talk about, but it seems to make some sense.

[Thats Freakin Sweet]

This is much ado about nothing. Curveballs curve in comparison to a fastball because one, they are slower so gravity comes into account allowing for the change veritcally, and two, the arm angle the ball is thrown at influences horizontal movement. 12 to 6 curves are thrown over the top, thus they tend not to drift a lot side-to-side. A 3/4 delivery will add tilt to the curve and then give it side to side movement. The seams also provide some movement, the ball is not a perfect sphere. A hitter does not use peripheral vision to hit a baseball.