Posted by: tom.guerry (tom.guerry@kp.org) on Sat Oct 19 10:21:49 2002

Took me a while to dig this out.This is the nearest thing to science I have seen on the web.
>
> http://www.geocities.com/baseballdocs/Baseball.pdf

This is the most generous estimate I have found of "lift".It is still estimated and not directly measured based on baseball numbers.It would seem to indicate that the lift could exceed the weight of the softball somewhere between 90 and 100 mph if you could provide underspin at a rate of 54 rev per second.I don't think this spin rate is humanly possible,but direct measurements would be nice.Any willing grad students out there ?