Baseball season is nigh! From Yankee stadium in New York to Dodger stadium in Los Angeles, teams around the country will face off Thursday to mark the start of the 2025 MLB season. And when we here at Short Wave think of baseball, we naturally think of physics. To get the inside scoop on the physics of baseball, like how to hit a home run, we talk to Frederic Bertley, CEO and President of the Center of Science and Industry, a science museum in Columbus, Ohio. In this encore episode, he also talks to host Regina G. Barber about how climate change is affecting the game.Interested in the science of other sports? Email us at [email protected] — we'd love to hear from you.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the significance of baseball season?
You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey Shortwavers, my favorite season starts this week, baseball season. As a kid, I loved the sound of the ball hitting the bat at the San Diego Padre games. I thought I could actually hear it when it was going to be a good hit and someone would be getting on base. I was also fascinated by curveballs.
Like, how did the pitchers get those things to curve like that? And I had heard that there were stadiums that were easier to get home runs in. Frederick Burtley was also fascinated by baseball as a kid, and he also loved science and math. And he would go on to get his Ph.D. in immunology.
But when he was a kid, he loved rooting for his local pro baseball team, the Montreal Expos, which have since relocated to Washington, D.C. as the Nationals. And he was inspired to try his hand at it, too.
And I'm embarrassed to say this on national public radio. I was terrible. I couldn't hit the ball.
Needless to say, he's not a pro baseball player now. But he is the CEO and president of the Center of Science and Industry, or COSI, a science museum in Columbus, Ohio. And he loves spreading the wonder of science, especially when it intersects with sports.
Did you know hockey players and figure skaters are literally gliding on a thin layer of water? A combination of pressure the blade puts on the ice and heat from friction of the blade going over the surface.
He thinks making videos like these is one of the easiest ways to get sports fans into science. It's a pursuit he feels very passionate about. When Dr. B, as he's known in his videos, watches baseball, he now sees it through a different lens.
I can't watch any sport, especially baseball, without now looking at it through the scientific lens.
There's physics, biochemistry, anatomy.
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Chapter 2: How does climate change affect baseball?
Okay, speaking of home runs, what kind of pitch is needed for a home run to happen?
Traditionally, fastballs are better at triggering home runs. Okay. Why? The faster the ball comes to you, when you hit it, you know, with Newton's law, you're going to transfer in the exact opposite direction. the ball is going to travel. And so the faster the ball comes to you, the better chance you have at hitting a home run. So that's number one.
However, depending on certain curveballs and depending on how you actually hit the curveball, you can trigger a certain spinning of the ball through the air and that might make it carry it further upwards or further downwards.
Chapter 3: What role does air density play in pitching and hitting?
So, but when we're talking about, you know, Absolutely. The cool thing about sports, again, especially sports that involve balls, they really follow classic Newtonian mechanics. The kind of everyday physics we experience, speed, acceleration, collisions.
And so whether you're taking a basketball shot from the foul line or anywhere in the court or hitting a baseball, the ball will travel in what we call that parabolic shape. So think of kind of an upside down U or a mountain-y shape. It's going to arc upwards. Then it's going to hit a specific height. And because of gravity, it's going to slow up until it hits that height.
And there's going to be a moment of... very, very fraction of a moment where it literally is going to be still in the air. Yep. And then it's going to follow the exact opposite parabolic arched kind of flow right back down. So to your point, you can have a parabola that looks really steep. So if you imagine Mount Everest, you can have a parabola that's really shallow.
Imagine a bunny hill and a ski slope, and you can have everything in between. Well, if you're trying to get a ball from home plate by hitting it over the wall for a home run, you want to make sure you've optimized the angle of where you hit the ball. Does it shoot off exactly at 45 degrees off the bat?
That might be the best, and that also depends on a different field, which we may talk about that in a minute, a different ballpark. But do you hit it and leave your bat at 45? Is it slightly shallower and it leaves your bat at 30 degrees? That will be optimized to get that ball out of the park.
Right, because that 45-degree angle, that's going to get you the longest range, as we would say in a physics class.
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Chapter 4: What type of pitch leads to more home runs?
That's exactly right.
OK, so let's dwell on home runs, OK? Let's talk about those stadiums. I've heard that there are some stadiums that are easier to get home runs in, right? Is that true?
Like, this is why I love baseball. It's such a peculiar sport, Dr. B. Almost every other sport on the planet has a standardized playing field. For some reason, in Major League Baseball, the field is not standardized. Yes, the distance from pitcher's mound to home plate is the same. Yes, the distance from, you know, home plate to first base, second base, third place. That's the same.
But once you start going in the outer field, some of these walls are much shallower, but really tall. Some of these walls are much shorter, but they're a little further out. So people know. that home field advantage teams have much better chances of hitting home runs. But spending a lot of time in Boston, we have the green monster. And the green monster is super tall, but that's a lot closer.
And so what happens is, you know, the Red Sox are used to smacking them either right near the top or sometimes they get it over. But then people who play in Boston who practice a lot in Fenway Park, actually can learn to slightly pivot because the green monster isn't the entire outfield. It's just one side of it.
So if you're used to being able to smack really well there and you can slightly shift and angle that ball to the other side, you have, by way of practice, an opportunity of being able to smack balls more in a home run fashion over that other wall because it's lower than the green monster.
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Chapter 5: How does physics explain the trajectory of a baseball?
This brings me actually to my question about precision, because I'm going to admit that I don't actually think home runs are that amazing. Games are won by hits, right? Not home runs. That's correct. Which brings me to the batting average, like one of the most famous baseball stats. What does that batting average mean?
It's so funny. And before, Dr. B, before we get to the batting average, which I love that question, I really want to talk about what you just said of precision hitting. Placing the ball in a precise manner, having it drop right between center and left field or right through the short time, that is an art and a science. It is. And to your point, the game is not won by home runs.
It's won by runs, which are a consequence of hits, however they come. And so the precision batter is infinitely a more threatening player than somebody who can just on occasion hit a home run.
Right, right. So that batting average is just like out of all the times you're pitched the ball, how many times you're hitting it and getting on base. So it's the tortoise wins the race, right?
The tortoise, the precise tortoise with the indicators in their car changing lanes effectively will win the race.
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Chapter 6: What is the optimal angle for hitting a home run?
It's true. I mean, it makes me think of like my favorite hitter of all time, like Tony Gwynn. Well, and Ichiro too, Ichiro Suzuki. They're just, they're so precise, right? They know how to get hits. Absolutely. Absolutely. And they have beautiful batting average numbers.
Yeah. You know, this is one of the most beautiful things in sports. I mean, we know the concept of getting a test, right? If you got a 90 or 95, that was great. If you got a 60, that would be like, you know, okay, pass, but I'm just not feeling good. But in baseball... Just to tell you how hard that sport is, there is nobody who's getting a 60% batting average. No, no.
Right?
There's nobody who's batting successfully one out of every two times a bat. No one's getting a 50%. If you bat 33% or you have an average of 333 or .33. That's amazing. You're successfully hitting one-third of those balls. You have a multimillion-dollar contract for the next 10 years.
Yeah. Can you explain why it's so hard? to get a hit even every other time? Why is it so hard to even get it every three times?
That pitcher, him or her, whoever, softball or baseball, they are throwing that ball so fast to you that you're not seeing it, eyeballing it, concentrating on it, and hitting it. You have to be swinging your bat literally the instant that pitcher has released the ball.
Because the time it takes your arm swing to swing that bat around is equivalent to the time it takes that ball to leave that pitcher and hit the catcher. So you're hitting the ball through experience, through intuition, through understanding and studying that athlete, that pitcher. And it's a best guess.
It almost becomes, I don't want to say straight chance, obviously, because some batters are better than others.
They're educated guesses.
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