Baseball season just started, and everyone’s talking about these crazy new bats. Will they change the game?
Source: Torpedo Bats and the Physics of the Sweet Spot
fta:
“If this stick was a bat and you were holding it at that end, the bat would rotate but not recoil at the location of your hands. Without a hand recoil it feels much better when you make contact. It feels sweet—so it’s the sweet spot. You clearly notice the difference if you hit the ball at some other location. It not only jangles your hands, but it sounds different. The sweet spot feels better, sounds better, and more importantly hits the ball better.”
i wonder if this was the source of the (per haps mistaken) beleif that you didn’t want to hit the ball on the bat’s label, resulting in a broken bat? as i was led to beleive as a kid. the label being in the wrong spot (not the sweet spot), resu.ting in a jarring vibrating feeling in the bat?). but then wouldn’t the bat makers put the label on the sweet spot as an in dicator? or maybe they wanted more cracked bats?
also, thinking on hockey with ovetchkin recently surpassing grettzky’s all-time nhl goals record, it might be interesting to plot all his (or wayne’s) goals over time, with changes in rules demarked (larger/smaller pads, changes in goal size, stick, etc.)
