Samurai slices 100 mph fastball with sword in Japan

upi ^ | Oct. 14, 2015 | Ben Hooper

[JoeProBono]

TOKYO, A Japanese swordsman dubbed a modern-day samurai sliced a 100 mph fastball in half 30 feet away from where it was launched by a pitching machine.

Isao Machii, who previously made headlines when he dueled a sword-wielding robot and sliced a shrimp traveling 80 mph through the air, drew his sword after the ball was fired from the pitching machine and sliced it in half in midair.

Video of the stunt, posted to YouTube by Oricon News, shows the ball was clocked at 100 mph in the air and was fired from a machine 30 feet away from where Machii was standing.

The video closes in on some of the remains of the baseball, which appears to have been sliced almost exactly in half.

[ThunderSleeps]

...previously made headlines when he dueled a sword-wielding robot and sliced a shrimp traveling 80 mph...

Main thing I got out of this... I'll spend the rest of the day - well, any idle time today - trying to figure out how to get a shrimp going 80mph. ;-)

[Daffynition]

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

That’s not a baseball.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Any chance the core could have fallen out?

Nope. That black inner liner would have the impression of the windings of the core on it. It would not be glossy black.

[Daffynition]

Did you say *tennis ball*???

[W.]

Next up: Samurai Audio Man! [Radio commercial from late 70’s Toledo for some car stereo joint—Belushi ripoff]

[ETL]

[crusty old prospector]

I wonder how many times he got pegged before he got it right.

[Maceman]

Video: How It's Made: Baseballs

[Daffynition]

Not a baseball. Not a samurai. Still a classic. ;)

[JoeProBono]

[central_va]

I never noticed before but the raghead looks like O’Bastard.

[JoeProBono]

Samurai slices 100 mph fastball

[Daffynition]

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Oops. Good catch. No pun intended.

[IronJack]

I thought at first that he might have just held the katana and let the ball slam into it, cutting the projectile in half. But from the video, it appears he slices in the same direction as the ball’s flight, which means that his blade must have been traveling way faster than 100 mph.

If he was 30 feet away from the launch site and the ball was moving 100 mph, he would have had about 0.2 seconds to draw his sword, aim, and slice. Considering the average human reaction time is somewhere between 0.5 and 0.75 seconds (and that’s just REACTION time), that is an incredible feat.

[PeterPrinciple]

Considering the average human reaction time is somewhere between 0.5 and 0.75 seconds (and that’s just REACTION time), that is an incredible feat.

---

What we don’t see is the number of failures to achieve this one success?

[Daffynition]

[namvolunteer]

You just figured it out. All the balls weigh the same. They are launched from a stationary position. The machine is calibrated to deliver the same speed until it is changed,
Get comfortable with a slower velocity and then increase. When you’re comfortable, increase again.
Batting is 60 percent technique and 40 percent fear. When you remove fear from the equation through mechanization, you can perform much, much better.

[Daffynition]