Well, I'm a classic "moneyball" guy and Oakland A's fan, so I'll take you up on that...
First off, the vast majority of all games are won with a "big inning"...in fact, in softball, often times the winning team will score more runs in one inning than the losing team does in the whole game....so...
I've been a proponent of 65' bases for quite a while, in fact I organized a few year end tournaments using 65' bases as an experiment. These were men's teams and we also moved the pitching distance back 2' (from 46 to 48) and allowed base runners to leave the bag when the pitcher's hands...
All this talk about seams is making ME wanna throw up in my mouth!
It's not that the seams don't make a difference...they do...but only a very small difference compared to the *direction of the spin*.
Billy is right that a rise ball must spin backwards or close to it. However the "close to it"...
I have a question about the Revfire. Does it take into account the direction of the rotation?
In other words, if the ball has a spiral spin or "bullet spin" does it give the same readout as a ball with a top spin...assuming of course that both examples are spinning at the same rate of speed.
I think you would have to video one of the top male pitchers to ever see a ball actually climb as it passes through the hitting zone. Personally, I doubt that it actually climbs very much - if at all - as it is more an issue of perception....that is....the ball doesn't drop as anticipated...so...