Posted by: tom.guerry (tom.guerry@kp.org) on Fri Jun 22 10:58:42 2001

Mark-

I think degree of rise has to do with whatever your brain is comparing the pitch too.Based on experience,a trajectory is anticipated,and your brain may be ignoring the difference until it gets to a certain magnitude.

If you got the WCWS on tape,there was a wild pitch/rise that went over the catchers glove and broke the plexiglass in front of the backstop camera.This caused the game to be stopped for a while during which time many replays were shown.Interestingly,the best camera angle to see when the pitch leveled out and dropped was the one from the backstop camera.The angle from center field and opposite batters box were much harder to interpret.

The MLB "pitchtrax" system should give a good look at this if any fastpitch exhibitions are done in the MLB park.