Posted by: Jake () on Thu Jan 16 15:24:47 2003

Using physics, we have three main components to hitting a baseball. They are mass, velocity, and time. Other components, such as angle of contact as well as hitting with the sweet spot, are also very important but lets forget about them for a second.

With good reason, this site deals primarily with the velocity part. It is the one components that can differ the most from person to person and yield the greatest results.

Mass is not as much of a factor because there is not a great difference between players. Also, there is the general rule that if you swing a bat that weighs more, you will likely have to give up some velocity.

The last component is time. This means the amount of time that the ball is in contact with the bat. Jack has stated that research says the bat and ball are in contact for only 1/2000 of a second. However, (correct me if i'm wrong) if the bat and ball were to be in contact for 2/2000 of a second, the ball would be traveling a great distance longer if not twice as far. I can not think of any way a person can try to maximize this time of contact so my question is if anybody can think of something. My only guesses are that this deals with the angle the ball is hit at and the part of the bat it hits.