What New Technologies Are Teaching Us About the Game of Baseball

The trajectory of a baseball moving through the air is very different from the one we teach in our introductory classes, in which the only force is that due to gravity. In reality, the aerodynamic drag force (which retards the motion) and the Magnus force on a spinning baseball (which causes the ball to curve) play very important roles that are crucial to many of the subtleties of the game. Despite their importance, our knowledge of how these forces affect the flight of the baseball has been qualitative at best. Recently, however, new tools have been developed for measuring accurate baseball trajectories during an actual game. These tools include both video tracking (the PITCHf/x and related systems) and the TrackMan Doppler radar system. In this article, I will discuss these new tools and give some examples of what they are teaching us about the game of baseball.