Baseball Minutiae and Trivia Only

I saw some of that.  One of the problems was the way the speed of the pitch was measured.  I know in the case of Johnson, he was pitching in street clothes in February at a lab in CT where he didn't warm up and where a wire was set up fifteen feet behind where home plate was located.  I know they extrapolated to try to make up for the difference, but it's hard to tell how that would work out under modern conditions.  Feller was in there too.  It just seems like if they measured the way they do today, all three of those guys were somewhere around 100 MPH.

      You've probably seen this already, but if you did not you might find it interesting:

www.baseballamerica.com/stories/the-measure-of-a-fastball-has-changed-over-the-years/

Yeah...I've seen that info if not specifically that article. And as "Pipp" said, the earlier methods used to measure pitch speed are not really dependable. However, I have no doubt today's pitchers as a whole consistently throw much faster than pitchers from an earlier era.

I think Bruce knows at least enough about baseball that the word flip was intentional. I’ll go with this::

mikevotava.com/what-is-a-speedball/

I definitely believe that there are more pitchers throwing at a high velocity now than at any previous time. I think even the shaky old eye test would confirm that. But I think a lot of it has to do with how pitchers are used, knowing that they won't be throwing many pitches so they know they can just air it out whenever they want to. Way back in the deadball era Christy Mathewson wrote a book called "Pitching In A Pinch" in which he discussed how he only threw his hardest in situations where he had no margin for error. He knew he was going to be on the mound for nine innings and paced himself accordingly.

While throwing hard has always been considered an asset, I think it is stressed far more today, I am sure partly because everything is measured in such excruciating detail. I have wondered if the technology could be developed that would allow for accurately measuring velocity based on videotape or film. Now that would be fun.

Yeah...I've talked about pitch speed being stressed today starting with youth leagues, of which I'm not a fan.

60% of all TJ surgeries are done on kids 15-19. An acquaintance of mine who pitched several years of ML ball started a pitching "school" for youth league pitchers...eventually shut it down when all parents wanted him to do was increase their kid's pitch speed.

You simply don’t appreciate art… 😎

Eh, I’m not big on Springsteen either. He hit a few nice spots but there’s only so much I want to hear a guy singing through a clenched underbite. Then I’m done…For God’s sake, open your mouth when you sing. It’s stressed I the most elementary of music classes.

“I’m sorry, Mr. And Mrs. Springsteen, but little Brucie is never going to be a professional singer if he won’t open his mouth so we can understand the words. The “D” on his report card stands. It would also help him if he would play baseball with the other boys instead of wriggling around in front of the girls on the playground. He’s calls it “Dancing In The Dark”. I think he’s scaring them, they scream the whole time he does it.”…