Keep your eyes on the ball?

[JJsqueeze]

This has me confused as well. Whether or not they actually can see it hit the bat at 90 mph is besides the point in softball because speeds don't get that high. Reaction times are faster but speeds are not so I don't see why you can't see the ball hit the bat or at least try to every time. From personal experience I can tell you that my DDs hit much better when they are watching the ball to the bat and when they start to drift away from it they foul many more off. I know I also get better contact with a golf ball when I see it hit the ball.

 

[rdbass]

This has me confused as well. Whether or not they actually can see it hit the bat at 90 mph is besides the point in softball because speeds don't get that high. Reaction times are faster but speeds are not so I don't see why you can't see the ball hit the bat or at least try to every time. From personal experience I can tell you that my DDs hit much better when they are watching the ball to the bat and when they start to drift away from it they foul many more off. I know I also get better contact with a golf ball when I see it hit the ball.[/QUOTE]

Is some throwing the golf ball at you? I will get back to you on the rest of your question.

 

[JJsqueeze]

no..but the club sure is moving fast, at least on some days, and I can see that as well.

 

[rdbass]

UC Berkeley scientists pinpoint how brain tracks fast-moving baseball pitches and tennis serves
By Lisa M. Krieger

lkrieger@mercurynews.com



Posted: 05/08/2013 04:44:57 PM PDT
Updated: 05/08/2013 09:48:00 PM PDT

Click photo to enlargeRafael Nadal from Spain returns the ball during the match against Benoit... ( Andres Kudacki )
«1»The human brain is far slower than a Major League fastball or a blistering tennis serve -- but it has figured out a workaround.

New research by UC Berkeley scientists solves a puzzle that has long mystified anyone who has watched, in awe, as elite athletes respond to incoming balls that can surpass 90 mph.

The brain perceives speeding objects as further along in their trajectory than seen by the eyes, giving us time to respond, according to research by Gerrit Maus, lead author of a paper published in Wednesday's issue of the journal Neuron.

This clever adjustment -- compensating for the sluggish route from the eyes to neural decision-making -- "is a sophisticated prediction mechanism," he said.

"As soon as the brain knows something is moving, it pushes the position of the object moving forward, so there's a more accurate measure of where this object actually is," said Maus.

This is useful in survival situations far more important than sports -- such as when we're crossing a street, in front of a speeding car.

Former Yankees catcher Yogi Berra pondered the mystery, once asking: "How can you think and hit at the same time?"

You can't, because there's not time for both.

"But you don't need to think about it, because the brain does it automatically," said Maus.

At the average major league speed of 90 mph, a baseball leaves the pitcher's hand and travels about 56 feet to home plate in only 0.4 seconds, or 400 milliseconds.

Tennis is even faster. Last May, courtside radar guns measured a serve by British player Samuel Groth at 163 mph.

In that split second, there's a lot of work for the body to do. Eyes must first find the ball. The sensory cells in the retina determine its speed and rush this information to the brain. Then the brain sends messages through the spinal cord that tell muscles in the arms and legs to respond.

"By time the brain receives the information, it's already out of date," said Maus.

The researchers said it can take one-tenth of a second for the brain to process what the eye sees. That means, for example, that by the time the brain "catches up" with incoming visual information, a fast-moving tennis or baseball would already have moved 10 to 15 feet closer than the image in the eye.

A region in the back of the brain, called area V5, computes information about motion and position -- and projects where it thinks the ball should be, rather than where the eyes saw it.

For the experiment, six volunteers had their brains scanned with a functional MRI as they viewed the "flash-drag effect," a two-part visual illusion in which we see brief flashes shifting in the direction of a motion.

The researchers found that the illusion -- flashes perceived in their predicted locations against a moving background and flashes actually shown in their predicted location against a still background -- created the same neural activity patterns in the V5 region of the brain.

In an earlier study, they stimulated this part of the brain to interfere with neural activity, and disrupted this visual position-shifting mechanism.

The finding could also help explain why altered trajectories can fool us -- such as tennis backspins or baseball pitches with so-called late break.

A clearer understanding of how the brain processes objects in motion can eventually help in diagnosing and treating myriad disorders, including those that impair motion perception, according to the UC Berkeley team. People who cannot perceive motion cannot predict locations of objects and therefore cannot perform tasks as simple as pouring a cup of coffee or crossing a road, researchers said.

"The brain doesn't work in real time," said Maus.

 

[rdbass]

September 13, 1954
You Can't Keep Your Eye On The Ball


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A Hundred years or so ago an early baseball coach waggled an admonishing finger at a chin-whiskered rookie and said, "The first rule in hitting a baseball is: 'Keep your eye on the ball from the time it leaves the pitcher's hand until the moment it hits your bat.' " This precept soon attained the status of the gospel and it has been drilled into would-be baseball players ever since. It's a fine idea, but it can't be done, no matter how physically fit the batter is.

The truth is that baseball hitters never do see the ball when they swing at it. They lose sight of it anywhere from eight to 15 feet away from home plate. Proof that the batter cannot follow a pitch all the way home comes from two physical-education researchers at the University of Illinois, Dr. Alfred W. Hubbard and Charles N. Seng, who took motion pictures of 29 major-league hitters in action.

NOT BLIND, JUST CAN'T SEE

The pictures (above) revealed in every case that the batter's eyes were not on the ball when it was hit. This was true whether the pitch was a fast ball traveling about 90 mph or a relatively slow ball at 55 mph.

When a batter swings he tracks the ball with his eyes alone; his head remains stationary unless he elects not to swing at all. The basic technique in tracking a baseball is called "pursuit movement," or keeping the eyes fixed on the movement through a constantly changing focus. The onrushing ball is seen as a blur.

To keep the ball in view after the pitcher first lets it go, the batter's eyes must cover a visual field of only about 15�. Pursuit movement is fast enough to accomplish this. But when the ball reaches a point about 20 feet from home plate the batter must be able to see over a much greater angle. The ball's relative speed to the batter has increased to the point where even the slow ball travels too fast for the eyes to keep up with it over this wider field. Only by turning his head could the batter keep his eyes on the ball, and a batter can do this only if he figures as Mighty Casey did, "Tain't my style," and gives it the go-by.

Baseball is an incredibly fast game. A ball takes from two-fifths to three-quarters of a second to travel the 60 feet between the pitcher and the catcher. Within the first 40 feet of the ball's journey, the batter calculates its speed, its height, and its probable direction (curving or not). He relays an educated guess to his body and by the time he loses sight of the ball his swing has already begun.

If he holds up on the swing it is because the calculation already tabulated indicates that the ball will miss the strike zone or is not the type of pitch he wants. If he goes through with the swing, any further information on the path of the ball which his eyes might give him would be useless anyway. It is too late to translate this information into a corrected swing; the body has taken over from the eyes. Results now depend on how well educated the guess was and how well the estimate was incorporated into the swing.

HIGH AND INSIDE? MAYBE
Even Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams, who is reputed to have the "fastest" eyes in baseball, now admits that he can't follow the ball all the way home. Williams says, "No, I don't see the ball when it hits the bat. You usually lose sight of it a few feet away. Once or twice in my whole career I'd say I saw the ball hit the bat, but that's all." (Dr. Hubbard says this might be possible on a high inside pitch which is hit well out in front of the batter because the angle of vision necessary in such circumstances is greatly reduced.) Of course, in the case of Mr. Williams (not to mention Willie Mays) it doesn't seem to matter much.

 

[JJsqueeze]

once again, I don't see how research at 90 + mph applies to softball vision, reaction time yes, but seeing an object at 40-70 mph (the ranges of softballs being thrown from 10U through D1)? I gotta say I just don't think it applies. That being said, I do think this brain calc is hugely important to hitting, I just don't think it precludes actually seeing the ball or somehow invalidates the concept of keeping your eye on the ball.

 

[rdbass]

Did you watch this? Pretty good info.
Sport Science: MLB Vision - High School Baseball Video - ESPN

 

[JJsqueeze]

I watched it and I agree with it and everything else you've posted on this subject as far as decision making etc goes, but it still doesn't invalidate the concept of trying to see the ball to the bat and it doesn't speak to the possibility of doing this at softball speeds. Seeing the ball all the way is really not aimed at the decision part of the swing as this has to be made well before the ball gets to the plate anyway, it has to do with the quality of contact and the minor adjustments that can be made during the swing to get the best contact. I'm open to adjusting my thinking on this subject but I would have to see some evidence based on softball (big ol yellow ball travelling slower) and some explanation as to why on Earth would you not want to do your absolute best to see the ball all the way even if it were impossible?

 

[rdbass]

once again, I don't see how research at 90 + mph applies to softball vision, reaction time yes, but seeing an object at 40-70 mph (the ranges of softballs being thrown from 10U through D1)? I gotta say I just don't think it applies. That being said, I do think this brain calc is hugely important to hitting, I just don't think it precludes actually seeing the ball or somehow invalidates the concept of keeping your eye on the ball.

Olympic softball players 'seeing the ball' more clearly

THE MIAMI HERALD


Linda Robertson

MIAMI -- The U.S. softball team has a vision -- a third straight Olympic gold medal -- which is coming into focus as the players concentrate on improving their eyesight.

Athletes talk about "seeing the ball" exceptionally well when they're in the groove. The softball players are taking some of the mystery out of it by learning how to track the ball when they are in the batter's box. Not everyone is born with the eyesight of Ted Williams, but you can strengthen the eight muscles located behind the eye.

Olympic softball players Lisa Fernandez and Crystl Bustos raved about their recent introduction to Conditioned Ocular Enhancement Vision Training.

"The more drills you do, the slower the ball appears," Bustos said. The program was invented by Dr. Mike Bonaventura, a Chicago gynecologist. During Bonaventura's ophthalmology rotation he became fascinated with the concept of enhancing hand-eye coordination. After years of research, he created vision drills and applied them to the skill of hitting a baseball. He visited the Milwaukee Brewers and tested his machine, which fires painted and numbered tennis balls at speeds ranging from 60 to 200 mph.

"Most major-league baseball batters lose track of the ball five to eight feet in front of home plate," said Dave Neal, vice president of the company. "By training the eye to see the colors and numbers, the player can track the ball all the way into the bat or the glove. It's like what you'd do in the weight room with any other part of your body."

Tracking a fast-pitch softball at the elite level is more difficult than tracking a major-league baseball pitch, said Mark Neal, a vision trainer and Neal's brother.

"There's less reaction time," he said. "The pitcher is 60 feet, 6 inches away in baseball but only 43 feet away in softball."

Which makes the 65-70 mph pitches of Fernandez and Jennie Finch roughly equivalent to the 100-103 mph pitch of a major-leaguer.
Mark Neal joined the U.S. team on its "Aiming for Athens" tour stop in Italy last week, and the players got immediate benefits.

"Definitely the hardest-working team I've ever been around -- and no egos," said Neal, who has worked with half a dozen major-league teams (not the Marlins). "One morning before they had a day off in Rome, they wanted to take extra swings. They were on the field before dawn using car headlights to set up."

Said Fernandez: "Eventually we'd like to upgrade our vision to the point that we can see the spin on the ball, which is more challenging in softball than baseball because the ball can spin so many different ways that it's harder to read the seams."

Players such as Edgar Martinez, Ichiro Suzuki and Carlos Beltran swear by the vision training techniques.

 

[rdbass]

I watched it and I agree with it and everything else you've posted on this subject as far as decision making etc goes, but it still doesn't invalidate the concept of trying to see the ball to the bat and it doesn't speak to the possibility of doing this at softball speeds. Seeing the ball all the way is really not aimed at the decision part of the swing as this has to be made well before the ball gets to the plate anyway, it has to do with the quality of contact and the minor adjustments that can be made during the swing to get the best contact. I'm open to adjusting my thinking on this subject but I would have to see some evidence based on softball (big ol yellow ball travelling slower) and some explanation as to why on Earth would you not want to do your absolute best to see the ball all the way even if it were impossible?[/QUOTE]

I'm not saying that you shouldn't keep your eye on the ball or it's not important. I wouldn't have my DD wear glasses if wasn't important. Just pointed out that seeing the ball, white or a big all yellow ball may not be what is or can happen thats all. Also not a good ideal to teach 'keep the head down' or keep looking at point of contact thats all. You don't want to teach or limit the head movement like that or make it the hitters goal.