Many fans and onlookers of MLB baseball believe that baseball is just an easy sport because all you have to do is hit a ball, run and catch right? Actually its a lot more complicated then most people think. Baseball is all about reaction time, placement, power and precision. There is so much more that goes into pitching and hitting than you may think. Every time a player steps up to bat they must be ready for anything, a fastball, curve ball, knuckle ball, slider, change up and several more pitches. Each pitch has a different thinking process depending on speed, placement and movement. One pitch there might be an inside 90 mph fast ball while the next could be a 77 mile per hour curve ball, which leads me to explain why baseball players so talented.
Some say professional baseball players are born with their talent others believe it’s from the countless hours they put in. I believe that its possible to have an advantage when born but countless hours and training are required in order to become one of the best of the best. Reaction time is something learned over a long period of time and takes lots of practice to get it right. This is because when, on average, when a pitcher throws a fastball at around 95 mph, the pitch gets to the battle at an incredible 4/10th of a second for the ball to reach the batters hands, where the he must use it muscles and precision to make contact with the ball.
The average human body can react around 0.25 seconds to anything visual , 0.17 for hearing something and 0.15 seconds with touching something. This data is important because it just shows how baseball players must use these incredible abilities and not only react but react well. They need to perform these actions with 100% efficiency to get the outcome they want. A split second to early or late could result in a foul ball, or even worse a strike.
Overall, those who believe that baseball players are not talented and that anyone can perform these incredible acts are completely wrong as you can tell from the information above.
Do you think you have the ability to react this fast? Play this quick game and put your abilities to the test: https://www.exploratorium.edu/baseball/reactiontime.html
Also take the time to read this interesting article to learn more about the reaction time of the human body: https://backyardbrains.com/experiments/reactiontime
This post is very interesting to me because it made me realize how much sports and exercise can affect humans not only physically, but mentally. I found other articles that discussed the other ways sports affected our bodies, But I do think that It’d be interesting to see how different sports with different skill sets affect our minds. Like if golf affects patience, or running enhances mental endurance as well as physical.
http://breakingmuscle.com/strength-conditioning/what-determines-reaction-time-and-how-to-improve-it
http://woman.thenest.com/exercise-affect-reaction-time-12650.html
I played baseball for most of my early life, and I agree that it requires a good set of skills and reflexes to hit a ball. However, I cam across this article..http://livehealthy.chron.com/sport-requires-fastest-reflexes-9672.html which explains the reaction times required by other sports and activities. Some of these seem to have topped the .4 second mark that is required by baseball players.
Great blog post! I never knew how much skill and agility actually went into baseball, your statistics were really helpful with putting everything into perspective and the game was eye opening as well. Here’s a list of the top 15 fastest MLB players: http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hypothermia/basics/prevention/con-20020453