"At the end of the day, boys, you don't tell me how rough the water is, you bring in the ship." – Steve Stone
A Goat Riders Affiliate
Go Cubs!

Wrigley Rooftop Directory
Ryne Sandberg Fan Page
The Cubdom Photo Gallery
The Cubs Prayer
Cubs Calendar
Jim Hendry Page
Cubs Ownership History
Baseball Business Essays
TheCubdom Hall of Cubs


Recent Blog Updates

Editor's Pick:

Goat Riders of the Apocalypse
Bleed Cubbie Blue
Desipio Media Ventures
Hire Jim Essian!
Cub Reporter
Ivy Chat
Cub Town
Ghost of Paul Noce
The Cubdom
Thunder Matt's Saloon
View From the Bleachers
Cubby-Blue
WGN-TV Baseball Blog

Honorable Mention:

A Hundred Next Years
A League of Her Own
Agony and Ivy
Bad News Cubs
Baseball Diamond News
Boys of Spring
Bush League Times
Chicago Cubs Baseball
Chicago Cubs Blog
Chicago Cubs Online
Church of Baseball
Clark & Addison blog
College of Idiots
Cubs f/x
Cubs Hot Stove
Cubs Hub
CubsNet.com
Cubs Obsession
Five Outs to go
Gonfalon Cubs
Kosuke Fukodome
Lollygaggers
Out of Right Field
The Cubs Brickyard
The Other Fifteen
The Ted Lilly Fan Club
Temporary Bleachers
TheCubsfan.com
Wrigleyville23

Newbies:

Cubbie Nation
Holy Cow Bell
Ivy Envy
Towel Drills
Turning Two
Wasting away in Wrigleyville

Soldiering On:

Die-hard Cubs Fun
Fire Dusty Baker
Northside Lounge
Peoria Northsider Report
Yarbage Cub Review

Cubs Sites:

Desipio Boards
North Side Baseball
Cubscast.com
Inside the Ivy
The Heckler
My Wrigleyville

Just Read 'em!

Baseball Analysts
Baseball Musings
Baseball Prospectus
Baseball Think Factory
Hardball Times

Conglomerates

Baseball Toaster
Most Valuable Network
SportsBlog Nation

NL Central

Brew Crew Ball MIL
Bucs Dugout PIT
Crawfish Boxes HOU
Get Up Baby STL
Honest Wagner PIT
Red Hot Mama CIN
Red Reporter CIN
Viva El Birdos STL

NL East

Amazin Avenue NYM
Citizens Blog PHI
Federal Baseball WAS
Fish Stripes FLA
The Good Phight PHI
Sabernomics ATL

NL West

6-4-2 LAD, LAA
AZ Snake Pit AZ
Dodger Thoughts LAD
Ducksnorts SD
Gas Lamp Ball SD
McCovey Chronicles SF
Only Baseball Matters SF
Purple Row COL

AL East

Batters Box TOR
Bronx Banter NYY
Camden Chat BAL
DRays Bay TB
Futility Infielder NYY
Joy of Sox BOS
Over the Monster BOS
Pinstripe Alley NYY
Replacement Level Yankees Weblog NYY

AL Central

Aaron's Baseball Blog MIN
Bless You Boys DET
Let's Go Tribe CLE
Royals Review KC
South Side Sox CHW
Sox Machine CHW
Tiger Blog DET
Twins Geek MIN

AL West

Athletics Nation OAK
Halo's Heaven LAA
Lone Star Ball TEX
Lookout Landing SEA
USS Mariner SEA

Miscellany

Beyond the Boxscore
Minor League Ball

Chicago Sports

Blog-A-Bull
Section 8 Fire
Windy City Gridiron Bears

News Sources

Chicagosports.com
Cubs.com
MLB.com
Sun-Times Cubs
Daily Herald Sports
Daily Southtown Sports
BaseballReference.com

The Force of a Fastball

Saturday, June 25, 2005

If any one ever tells you there is no reason to suppress a memory, I ask you to kindly consider yesterday's ballgame. I'm working hard to forget it, but when the final score is 12-2, and you're on the losing end... thats pain. Well, at least Jason Dubois hit a homerun.

Speaking of pain, I call your attention to the top of the ninth inning. Luiz Vizcaino was pitching and he threw a 94 MPH fastball that barely ticked off AJ Pierzynski's glove and hit home plate umpire Greg Gibson in the face mask. Gibson fell to the ground and got up about three seconds later looking like he thought he was in Never-Never-Land.

The trainers brought out salts to help him wake up, but it took several minutes before he was apparently able to gain his wits. Admirably, he stayed in the game and finished up the last half inning.

When I saw the play, I immediately asked myself: How fast was that ball thrown? (94 MPH) and What must that feel like?

Deciding not to imitate Happy Gilmore, I've decided to call upon my physics class I took a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

Velocity = Acceletation * Time
Kinetic Energy = 1/2 * Mass * Velocity^2

A standard baseball, according to the rule book is supposed to weigh between 5 and 5.25 ounces (or 142-149 grams.) LINK. For our purposes, I'll assume the fastball yesterday weighed 145 grams (5.125 Ounces).

A 94 MPH fastball is traveling at 42 meters/second.

KE = .5 * M * V^2
KE = .5 * .145 * 42^2 = 127.9 Joules (Units of Energy).

For Comparison, say you had a 20 pound barbell (9.07 kg) and you held it 57 inches above your foot (4'9" or 1.473 M), and then you dropped it. It would take .55 seconds to hit your foot (using acceleration due to gravity of 9.81 m/s^2), and would be travelling at 5.33 Meters per Second (11.93 MPH). Going back to our equation, we get:

KE = .5 * M * V^2
KE = .5 * 9.07 * 5.36^2 = 128.8 Joules (Units of Energy).

So, we could say that getting hit by a 94 MPH fastball is comparable to dropping a 20 pound barbell on your foot from 57 inches. Ouch.

Thus endeth the physics lesson. Disclaimer I am ignorant of a great many things in physics, probably didn't get the equations/math/concepts correct. Please excuse my shortcomings and feel free to be overly zealous in the comments pointing out where I screwed up.

Chicago Cubs Media Guide Trivia Nugget of the Day:
Page 84: "Any game scheduled to start after 5 p.m. is considered a night game. If a game is scheduled to start at 5 p.m. and is delayed by rain or for any other reason, it is considered a day game. If a game is scheduled to start at 5:01 p.m., it is considered a night game."

Posted by Byron at June 25, 2005 1:30 PM | Bookmark and Share | BallHype: hype it up!
Subscribe to The Cubdom - get emails with the latest Cubs info and pictures

This post has been tagged:

4 Comments

Whenever my boss and I talk about car accidents, we always say, "It's the V-squared that gets ya!"

Yeah but he had a mask on and not the old one the new style like a goalie mask. It would not hurt that much. Look at goal keepers in hockey taking 100 mph shots to the head by a puck which weighs more than a baseball.

You should pull out the physics next time you're on a date. Girls totally go crazy for that stuff. BTW, the key quantity you're looking for is the decceleration of the ball and/or mask, which determines the force and impulse on the ump melon. Congrats on being done with college. Don't go to grad school... trust me on this one. Hopefully, I'll be home in August.

Your equations are spot on, but what you're trying to do is a lot more complicated. There are component vectors of velocity involved. Also, Energy doesn't equal Force.

I'm way too far removed from my advanced physics classes to come up with the formulas and results, but there's a lot more force behind the barbell because all of the velocity is in one direction and it's still picking up speed as it makes contact... your foot is absorbing all of the energy just as it's building (turning potential into kinetic).


AddThis Feed Button

Get The Cubdom email updates


Search

Google
Web
TheCubdom.com

eXTReMe Tracker
Since Mar 18, 2004

Recent Entries


Monthly Archives



Cubs Sale Articles

© 2004 – 2015 Byron Clarke
legal - about thecubdom.com - site index