Baseball Myths on Mythbusters
 

Interesting episode so far.
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spoiler space
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/tk

Without looking at the spoilers, I hope they highlight the corked-bat issue - another example of people not understanding the impact.

did that really need a spoiler tag?

anyone catch the onion this week where they did a story about how people were upset with the 7th harry potter book because it contained spoilers?

eh. i figured better safe than sorry. didn't want to "ruin" it in case people wanted to get it from the show.

/tk

Have they busted the myth about Richie Sexson being able to hit?

Damn, I missed it. Guess I'll have to cross my fingers and hope I catch one of the 9000 replays they'll show of it.

lol

I'm not watching it unless they prove that steroids actually make an impact on hitting homeruns.

Hopefully they did a segment on Vernon Wells' 119 million dollar contract. .754 OPS....woot...

I thought it was an okay episode.

No myths!

I enjoyed it, but Mythbusters is one of my favorite shows, so that's nothing new.

Right - all about bat speed.

Bat speed is part of it, there's also bat control. Its much easier to control a lighter bat.

And they start off the episode by pointing out that there is nothing in the rules against using a lighter bat...

Of course, a lighter legal bat is almost always a SMALLER bat, in terms of hitting area.

the thing I was most disappointed in was the hiting the cover off the ball.

they claim to have busted that one.

But... as many kids who grew up playing sandlot baseball can attest its very easily repeatable. just not with 1 hit. In days gone by a baseball wasnt replaced every pitch. in fact 5 balls were generally used for an entire series or more. So it wasnt 1 impact that blew the cover off but rather a series of impacts that weakened the stitching and 1 final impact that did it in.

TK,

Thanks for starting a thread on this. I meant to write earlier, but I got home from work and was able to catch the 1 a.m. replay of this episode. Very cool, and I would have missed it if not for you.

My pleasure. :) Glad to be of help every now and again. :)

/tk

Yeah, I think they misinterpreted it a bit. But they did a good job of showing what it takes with a new ball. It's not that interesting if you destroy all the stitching first as OF COURSE the cover will come off.

The humid ball tests were interesting. Stealing was interesting, although it overlooks the fact that sliding is often used to make it harder to tag you. As was the corked bat one where they showed it actually ABSORBS energy and hurts your hitting, although they should also have tested how much of a bat speed increase it generates. I suspect we'll get a "revisited" episode for many of these.

Fer crying out loud, it would have helped immeasurably if either one of those donkeys knew even the slightest thing about baseball. Sheesh.

the only thing i was disappointed with was for the sliding vs stopping one, i would have liked if, after they tested from first to second, if they had then tested whether sliding into first is faster than running through the bag.

Is that really debatable though?

Also might be worth checking the website, as they often leave a variety of tests off the actual show due to time. They may have tested it, found the blindingly obvious result, and focused on other issues.

i think it is...they didnt prove any negative acceleration as a result of sliding...they proved it happened if you didnt slide...i would have liked to see if there was a difference between running through and sliding....i am pretty sure i know what the result would be, but the data would have been nice to see.

It must be debatable, as you still see big-leaguers occasionally slide into first on groundballs with no apparant throwing error.