The Illusion of the Curve Ball

Stole this outright from Lookout Landing. Tricky stuff.

6 months ago TedFord 6 comments 0 recs |

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You can adjust

the speed of the spin, too. Pretty cool.

G G G E-flat_______ F F F D__________....

by t ball on May 15, 2009 10:52 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs

If you change the speed of the spin

while looking at the speed slider, it looks like the ball weaves to the left and the right depending on where you move the slider…pretty cool

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by fightingengineer on May 15, 2009 11:51 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

that is trippy

very cool.

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by SteveP on May 15, 2009 10:59 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs

Maybe that is why

Tthe extreme open stance that Nelson Cruz adopted made such a difference

by BEW on May 15, 2009 11:07 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs

That illusion is dumb.

Curveballs don’t spin sideways, and the pitches that do move horizontally actually move horizontally. There’s no illusion about it.

If what they say is true, a righty-on-righty curveball would cause the batter to hit it off his hands instead of off the end of his bat. The ball would appear to be moving further away than it is, so the batter would reach too far and jam himself. This is clearly not what’s happening.

I guess his little program is kind of neat, though.

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by NoNameOnCard on May 15, 2009 12:29 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

Poor eyesight would seem to be an advantage

for hitting a curveball then. If you had a difficult time picking up the spin, you’d be less likely to overcompensate for the ball’s supposed change in direction. Neat optical illusion, but I’m not sure I buy the correlation to hitting a baseball. I see red doves.

by 3hacks on May 15, 2009 12:53 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs