He also appeared on 20/20, and met Phil Rizzuto after that article.
Rising fastballs don't rise. They just don't drop as much.
Which actually sounds almost like Democrats saying, "there's no tax increases, just the scheduled end of the tax cuts".
Basically, in the time it takes a ball to get from pitcher to catcher, it will drop 4 feet vertically. The spin on the ball could cause it to drop a little less. To actually rise, it would need in the neighborhood of 10,000 rpm of spin.
Yes, but it's a question of perception.
To a human brain that's programmed to catch things, I can easily see how "dropping less" would be perceived as "rising."
As for the breaking curveball ... that, too, would be a matter of perception. To be a strike, the curveball has to be thrown wide of the plate. Close to the pitcher, it's moving away from the plate. Close to the hitter, it's moving back toward the plate.
The perception of "breaking" is a matter of angles -- as seen by the hitter, the outward part of the curve is far away and covers a small angle; the inward, final part of the curve is close, and covers a relatively large angle. So it seems to "break."
Or a little spit.
I agree with the physics part. But I used to catch and would see what appears to be motion. The professor claims it is normal versus peripheral vision causing the problem. Maybe it makes it worse, but a catcher still observes a “rising fastball.”
I always thought it was that the pitcher is coming down off the mound, so the straight line to the glove would be a downward line. I assumed it was an illusion of rising since it was just that the downward line wasn’t as downward as I thought.
You're talking about bowling balls, right?