What is it like to see at bat?

September 16, 2016 4:49 AM

“I see spin. I don’t see color. I don’t see red,” he said before a game with the Blue Jays. He thought for a second, though. “Maybe I do and I don’t think I do.” What can hitters actually see out of a pitcher's hand?
posted by painquale (21 comments total)

Well played with the title there.
posted by Segundus at 5:06 AM on September 16, 2016 [14 favorites]

Of course, according to the famous findings of Benjamin Libet, a decision to move is taken something like half a second before the event enters awareness, so deciding how to hit the ball consciously is completely impossible anyway and what you see in your conscious mind must be irrelevant.
posted by Segundus at 5:16 AM on September 16, 2016

The duel between pitcher and batter is what makes baseball such a great game. And that's said as someone who doesn't really care much for sports, but absolutely loves to watch a really good at-bat. In that video it's not just Phillips' reaction, but also Jungmann's very similar reaction. He got a good one in, and both players know it and they're both laughing, and probably having a lot of fun, too.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:19 AM on September 16, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'd suspect that the hitters perception also picks up subtle cues from the pitchers motion in the windup and arm movement that the conscious mind would not have time to analyze.
posted by sammyo at 6:02 AM on September 16, 2016

Seconded, Thorzdad. Hate sports but I could read this kind of thing forever, and I always love the posts and discussion here!
posted by nevercalm at 6:06 AM on September 16, 2016

I'm facing a similar issue in table tennis. One simply does not have time to 'think' what to do after the ball is hit at you, and there's even less time than in baseball.
You have to subconsciously react to visual (and sometimes audible) cues.
A group in Australia came out with a training app to practice these skills. In the app's first version, which I downloaded, all I have to do is decide whether the ball is coming to my backhand or my forehand.
And I'm really bad at it. And yet I heard from much better players who say that they consistently get good scores, so they must be better at picking up the cues.

Practice, practice, practice.
posted by MtDewd at 6:46 AM on September 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

It seems that Ortiz will often follow along in Bogaerts’ at-bats and try to alert him to when a certain pitch is coming with chirps and whistles from the on-deck circle.

David Ortiz is a hitting god. 41 years old, playing his final year, and having one of the best seasons anyone ever had.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 6:47 AM on September 16, 2016 [3 favorites]

I love this. An NFL quarterback can probably explain how he throws a pass. A basketball player can tell you how he aims and shoots. But a MLB hitter? None of them know how they do it, and how they think they do it often isn't right. But they do it.*

There's a part of me that wants us to fully understand the human brain, yet another part of me likes that it is such a big mystery that it often seems like it's performing magic.

*Hanley Ramirez sure did it last night. Yankees suck! Yankees suck!
posted by bondcliff at 6:59 AM on September 16, 2016 [5 favorites]

This is just fascinating stuff! I would have loved to talk to my Dad about this. He and his two brothers were all ball players, and Dad was trained as an engineer, so I bet there would be a great deal of discussion about this. Sadly all three are now deceased. I loved listening to them talk baseball, though.

God dammit, I miss you, Dad.
posted by blurker at 7:01 AM on September 16, 2016 [3 favorites]

All this makes me feel somewhat better about my constant lack of success at sports as a kid. Great post.
posted by COD at 7:23 AM on September 16, 2016

In the comments, someone mentioned the SI.com article "Why MLB Hitters Can't Hit Jennie Finch..." and included this quote about a study of volleyball players. Absolutely fascinating.

In one instance Starkes tested members of the Canadian national women's volleyball team, which at the time included one of the best setters in the world. The setter was able to deduce whether the volleyball was present in a picture that was flashed before her eyes for 16 thousandths of a second. "That's a very difficult task," says Starkes, who would become one of the world's most influential expert-performance researchers. "For people who don't know volleyball, in 16 milliseconds all they see is a flash of light."

Not only did the world-class setter detect the presence or absence of the ball in 16 milliseconds, but she also gleaned enough visual information to know when and where the picture was taken. "After each slide she would say yes or no -- whether the ball was there -- and then sometimes she would say, 'That was the Sherbrooke team after they got their new uniforms, so the picture must have been taken at such and such a time,' " says Starkes. One woman's blink of light was another woman's fully formed narrative. It was a strong clue that one key difference between expert and novice athletes is not in the raw ability to react quickly but rather in the way the expert has learned to perceive the game.
posted by kuanes at 7:33 AM on September 16, 2016 [10 favorites]

Kuanes, this article is the first chapter of the book "The Sports Gene" which I'm listening to right now.
posted by of strange foe at 9:04 AM on September 16, 2016

On my first day of Little League practice I was hit in the face by a wild pitch from the fastest thrower on our team. I played for three seasons after that, but never got over my fear of being hit by a pitch. I became a pretty good fielder and a decent hitter, but the trepidation I always felt going up to bat against one of the league's handful of hard-throwing pitchers was a constant source of stress. I eventually had to quit, despite the fact that I very much enjoyed the sport.

How major leaguers can stand a mere 60 feet away from pitchers throwing 100+ MPH fastballs inches away from their heads without so much as flinching is endlessly amazing to me.
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:29 AM on September 16, 2016

A friend of mine is an assistant professor at the University of Utrecht, researching human perception. He gave a TedX talk this year about some of his research which I found fascinating. In it he talks about how any tennis player receiving an Andy Roddick serve at his his peak could possibly return it. This is the same question raised in the article about baseball players.

The brain's visual system needs to reconstruct a story based on things that happened at the same time (ie someone jumping) with information that is processed in different parts of the brain at different speeds (ie movement, colour and shape). Most folk, including those baseball players, then tell themselves a story about what they saw even though mostly they didn't. So interesting.
posted by sarcas at 9:29 AM on September 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

"Why MLB Hitters Can't Hit Jennie Finch..."

There was a segment on Baseball Tonight several years ago where they sent John Kruk to hit against Michelle Smith. Fastpitch softball is no joke. John Kruk is kind of a joke.
posted by bluejayway at 10:00 AM on September 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

My father could pluck houseflies out of the air between thumb and forefinger and then release them again to fly away, apparently unharmed.

I didn't get all of that, but when I was in little league from 9-14, I somehow was able to be an effective hitter even though I was really nearsighted (-8 diopters in both eyes, back then) and my myopia progressed so rapidly after getting a new prescription that I never had a period during my baseball career when I could pick up the ball after it left the pitcher's hand until it was a third or half way to the plate -- and I was a pitcher who only threw fastballs because I couldn't see the catcher's fingers well enough to get signs.

During the last game of the regular season when I was 14, the coach I'd had for two years, and who was a total stats geek, ran up to me waving his notebook when I was on deck and told me that I hadn't struck out a single time in the last two years. I had no idea; I didn't know my average; I always batted 4th but didn't know how many home runs I'd hit; I was the main pitcher but I didn't have a clue about my ERA; I didn't know where our team was in league standings; etc. And as he turned away, he muttered, "but why do you hit all those home runs to right field?"

Which made my stomach drop; I had worked so hard to keep anybody (including my parents!) from realizing how little I could see out there. They just thought I was stupid -- and weren't too shy about saying so, either. But it was what I preferred people to think.
posted by jamjam at 10:30 AM on September 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

Fascinating, thanks for the post. I think the few paragraphs gets closer to the reality: It’s driven subconsciously. This is a learned response, just as walking is. But in the same way that we would struggle to explain how we walk a batter will struggle to explain how they bat.

There’s still got to be something innately hardwired (i.e. genetic) about these guys that makes the sum of training and experience equal success. Baseball is practiced by a sufficiently large number of individuals that it may actually be possible to solved by genomic studies.
posted by kisch mokusch at 10:51 AM on September 16, 2016

The visual acuity of any effective post-little league hitter is amazing to me. I've always wondered what a hitter consciously sees verses how much of it is just wrote mechanics and an ability to make continuous adjustments throughout the swing. I guess now that the sport is driven by vast sums of money it is inevitable that there would be this level of research into a silly game (that I absolutely love).

It wasn't until I was in my 30s and established enough to see an eye doctor that I "discovered" that not everyone sees double. Now I know that I couldn't hit or catch because there was a 24 prism vertical difference with a slight horizontal shear between my right and left eyes. I would have loved knowing that back in the day. Instead I got a lot of crap from a lot of volunteer coaches who steered me into pitching because that was the only way they could fulfill the requirement of "everyone gets to play" and not give up a eleventy-one runs because the right fielder couldn't catch a fly ball to save his life. I never could figure out how anyone could catch or hit a ball because the damn thing would noticeably jump whenever it would cross the field of vision.

But I could throw a mean knuckle-curve at the ripe age of 13. So there's that I guess.
posted by Fezboy! at 11:00 AM on September 16, 2016

I wonder if this was (partially) why Doc Ellis managed to pitch a no-hitter while under the influence of LSD - the batter's inability to predict the throw?
posted by porpoise at 11:39 AM on September 16, 2016

i've had this experience playing a tennis tournament against a superior player. he was having great success by basically waiting for me to make an error but decided to start pressing me with difficult angles. something just took over where i was simply reacting and making some very good winners and took a couple of games. i could not tell you anything about those points other than i won them.

(he quickly adjusted back to his original strategy and finished me off)
posted by lescour at 10:00 AM on September 17, 2016

I don't know about pitching on LSD, but I have experienced the act first build a picture later effect.

In the middle of a multiple drug multiple day long camping trip in the jungle I was having heavy duty stroboscopic vision, no more than 12 frames per second.

I was trying to catch minnows in the river. One frame there would by silver lightning darting in the water. Next frame I would have a fish in my fist. Nothing in between, no perception, no decision to act, no movement.

I caught enough to fill a small soup can.

I've tried again, and if I get lucky I catch one fish in several hundred attempts.

The mind is such an amazing organ, and only a tiny bit is accessible to itself. I really hope that by studying the minds athletes and artists and other freaks, we will be able to learn how to teach these skills to everyone.
posted by Doroteo Arango II at 4:04 AM on September 18, 2016 [1 favorite]