This piece by Michael Sokolove (in yesterday’s New York Times’ Magazine) is the best article I’ve ever read on the physics of baseball. Here’s a sample:

At 90 miles per hour, average major-league speed, a baseball leaves the pitcher’s hand and travels about 56 feet to home plate in 0.4 seconds, or 400 milliseconds. The batter’s eyes must first find the ball, Adair writes, then sensory cells in the retina encode information on its speed and trajectory and send it to the brain. This all takes about 75 milliseconds, during which the pitched ball has traveled nine feet.

It’s also a discussion on aging in baseball, specifically Jeter who turned 37 yesterday, but just signed a three year contract w/ the Yankees worth 51 Million — mainly because he’s a few swings from his 3000th hit.

Very much worth the read… and fascinating if you’re a fan of the sport.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/magazine/for-derek-jeter-on-his-37th-birthday.html?_r=1&ref=magazine

Is there anything more reliable than the gleeful venom of the Saturday Letters in the Sports page? Here’s a beauty, one of many, from today’s L.A. Times:

My suggestion to whomever buys the Dodgers and doesn’t get the stadium parking lot, concessions, sunflower seeds, etc… Here’s what you do. Move the Dodgers back to the Coliseum, where it all began, until a new stadium can be built. Change the name to the Los Angeles Free, if you have to, so Frank McCourt doesn’t get a piece of the souvenirs and to be done with him. Let him have the parking lot, the bobble-heads, the Dodger blankets and let him live in the stadium he took from the people of Los Angeles.

BRUCE KALISH

Encino

It’s hard to choose, but this one wins on comprehensiveness, anger and historical sweep. I’m with you, Bruce.