from Amazon
Friday, June 04, 2010
Baserunning path
I *know* we’ve talked about this, and I know we’ve come up with a good conclusion. I just want to point out this:
Using the “veer to the right just before the base” approach, a typical player will take 22.2 seconds to complete an in-the-park home run. That same player using the optimal strategy of a constantly curving path can round the bases in 16.7 seconds.
22.2 seconds? How old is this typical player? The diameter of a circle that encompasses the 4 bases is 127.3 feet (square root of two times 90^2… see kids? math is useful). The circumference of a circle is 2PIr, or PId (that’s pi times diameter… see kids? listen to your math teacher, and you can write a blog like I do). So, a circle path is almost exactly 400 feet. We know that Olympic runners run 100m (328 feet… kids, please, stay in school) in around 10 seconds. 400 feet would be 12 seconds (technically you’d want to separate the first 10 m from the other 90 m, but we’re looking for accuracy, not precision). Dirt, cleats, uniform, base-touching, non-Olympic-speed runners.... bump that up to 14 or 15 seconds if you like. Who’s running 400 feet in 22 seconds?