Bill Simmons once wrote a column where he said that he thought baseball players were the dumbest of all professional athletes. I'd have to say I agree with him. And that's because when it comes to physics and baseball, most baseball players seem to harken back to the equivalent of the pre-Galileo days.
Here was an excellent nugget of infomation that Tim McCarver passed along to viewers after Casey Blake launched that mammoth home run off of Wakefield.
One thing Francona was telling us before the game is that a knuckleball is so light, that if you make crisp contact with it, it will fly.Wow. The stupidity alarm is exploding right now. So Francona believes that the weight of a baseball somehow gets lighter if it's a knuckleball? While curve balls clearly gain weight. God, Francona's statement is so dumb it makes my head hurt. I guess Francona has more important things to worry about right now than gravity, considering Boston is down 3-1 in the series.
But my question is why do announcers let guys get away with shit like this? Sure McCarver's a former player, but shouldn't Buck step in and say, "That's ridiculous."
Did you know managers used to think you couldn't have a knuckleballer throw in a domed stadium because there was no wind? That's brutal, but true. And you constantly hear announcers who say "look at the late break on that ball." Curve balls don't break. Sliders don't break. No pitches break. If a pitcher could throw a ball that could travel 55 feet in a straight line, and then break a foot down into the dirt, no one would ever get a hit. Curve balls, sliders, splitters all do what they do because they're on a set path once they leave a pitcher's hand. It's an optical illusion that they break late or do something "magic." Let's take a look at the trajectory of a curve ball.
Anyone see a massive break at the end? Because I sure as hell don't. Selig should just force every baseball player to take a class in physics so we don't have to hear any more of these asinine comments by managers and announcers. Because seriously, I felt stupider after hearing Francona's thoughts on the knuckleball.