johngay

A guy from Cal State Berkley (I think) called me last year and was doing a study on it. Since my rise drops from lack of speed, I gave him Mike White's number. I'll call Mike and see if anything came of it.

__________________
John Gay
Complete Pitching Clinics
Vancouver, WA

ang4yanks

Brad . . . retired from bucket sitting

That's great, ROFL! My husband sits on that bucket so long with our two pitchers, one day I think he is going to stand up, and it is going to be following him :-)

Ang

ifubuildit

Make sure he doesnt have the indentation from the bucket on his butt when he drops his pants at the end of the day.

sluggers

The riseball doesn't "rise". It drops less than normal.

A pitcher throws a fastball at 60 mph, or 880 feet/sec. Therefore, it takes the ball 0.045 seconds to go from the pitcher to the plate. (40/880). If the pitcher delivered the ball "straight" with neutral spin, the ball would drop 3.25 feet over that distance. A good riseball "drops" only about 2.25 feet over the same distance.

A hitter is trained through countless repetitions of both pitching and playing catch to factor the normal drop of a ball when making his/her swing. Thus, to the batter, the path of the riseball follows is a large deviation from the normal path of the ball. It really does appear to jump at the end of the pitch.

If you get a chance on the ESPN Classic channel, watch Bob Gibson strikeout 17 batters in the World Series. He had his backspin fastball working that day, and everyone was swinging under his pitches.

I caught a pitcher who had a great rise ball. I never could catch it.

JRW

ifubuildit

I know the physics and I know what I see and they don't match.

Life is like a box of chocolates Forrest.

Elliott

Simo

Ok, for those of you in the old forum you may remember that data (ball size, weight, seam height, # rotations, speed, distance) was sent to Dr. Wm Covert of MIT who wrote back a lengthy dissertation, that in the end concluded that the riseball DOES actually rise. Anyone who would like to check out this fellow's credentials is welcome to do so. He knows more about aeronautics than any room of softball experts.

http://www.nae.edu/nae/naepub.nsf/Me...2?opendocument

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_E._Covert



Regards,

Chris

Brad

So Chris, is his report still on line? Does it say that the ball can overcome gravity? I mean start on a horizontal plane and rise above it.

Thanks,

Brad

sluggers

I'll believe it when you send me the report. I personally talked to Prof. Robert Adair, a former chairmen of the physics department at Yale, member of the National Academy of Science, and author of the book, "The Physics of Baseball" about this issue. He said "No, it doesn't rise."

In any event, here is a good web page on it:

http://www.physics.armstrong.edu/fac.../riseball.html

They were able to get a "JUGS" softball to rise, but not a regulation softball. A JUGS softball weighs 1/3 of a regular softball. The author speculates that it might be possible to get a regulation softball to rise. Again, I think the physics will show that a person can't get a ball to spin fast enough to get the ball to rise.

JRW

Simo

Dr. Covert is one of the most respected aeronautical engineers on the planet and was chosen to head the team that investigated the Challenger Disaster. I don't know what else to say? A softball also has aggressive seams. It is not a smooth sphere. Sorry, but the email was cut and pasted on the old FP Forum years ago. I will say the same thing that I said then. For those who believe and have caught a good riseball pitcher, no explanation is necessary. For the naysayers, none is possible. We couldn't turn them around at that time when the actual document was presented to the forum. I doubt replicating it would change any minds today.

Thanks Marc for starting this all over again!

Regards,

Chris

Mark H

Amazing. Some of these posts could have been cut and pasted from FPF. How many years has it been? I'd like nothing better than to see someone come up with video showing a big, or at least significant, curve upward. I look forward to it. Still. After all these years.