The pitch gets to home plate in slightly less than half a second. The hitter has that much less time to react and decide whether to swing at the pitch. I’m sure the pitch appears to be a blur.
Ted Williams said he could see the rotation of the seams. Don't know if I buy that, but that's what he said.
I thought Nolan Ryan had a 106 mph clocked pitch?
When I played as a kid growing up the faster the pitcher was the more I liked it. If I made decent contact it was going to travel a good piece. I caught a guy on my team in little league and had to use a batting glove and a huge sponge in the catchers mitt and it still hurt at times when he brought the heat.
Watching the pitcher and knowing his tells and stealing signs helps a lot. In later years the guy I caught in little league played on a different team in senior league and we were playing them. I always picked a lighter wooden bat, usually 31-32 inches at the most instead of the aluminum bats.
We had a runner on first and this guy threw a heater high and inside and I swung on it because the guy on first was stealing second and he made it. I knew the next pitch was going to be a breaking ball outside corner and waited and it was a ball. Next up was fastball outside corner of the plate low and away, knew it was coming and turned on it and drove it off the left field fence for a double and RBI.
I was standing on second and he said how did you do that? I said I caught you for a year I knew what was coming. He just grinned and struck out the rest of the side that inning. He later came within a point of making the Pittsburgh Steelers on their depth chart. I hated hitting really slow ball pitchers, messed my timing up.