question about the old Bill Terry story

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Posted By: barry arnold

Reading Josh's post about the Bill Terry photograph got me to reminiscing about Terry with my nephew.
I started telling him about that story Dizzy Dean would tell Pee
Wee Reese when they were commentators for baseball games.
Usually Dizzy would tell the story when he was giving commercials
for Falstaff beer or feeling the effects of the product himself---
often before singing the Wabash cannonball.
I was a boy when i heard the story and as i talked to my nephew
started wondering how much of the 'ball hit by Terry going through
Dizzy's legs (while pitching) and being caught way in the air near
the homerun fence' was based on some real fact. Or is this just great
Dizzy embellishment?
anybody know about this?
thanks,
barry

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Posted By: Damian

Sounds like the Falstaff talking to me. I am not a big Dizzy Dean fan but I have heard he was quite a character.

Damian

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Posted By: Anonymous

without running the numbers..I'd guess the ball would have to be traveling around 900 mph.

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Posted By: Darren J. Duet

In the same vane, Willie Mays missed a couple of games in 1955. Legend has it, that Willie was fast, so fast in fact, that he smoked a line drive up the middle which hit him in the head as he was rounding second.

Ty Cobb was giving an interview in the 1960's, and the reporter asked Cobb what he thought he'd hit in the modern game. Cobb stated ".290" The reporter shocked tried to rationalize the answer, "is it because of night games, specialty pitchers, greater talent?" Cobb perturbed stated,"NO! it's because I'm 70 years old!"

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Posted By: barry arnold

great stories Darren!
i needed a laugh tonight and have been chuckling at these stories again and
again.

many thanks!

barry

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Posted By: Anonymous

Barry...

..Yhe Dizzy story is possible..
but only if the ball skipped off the mound between his legs...especially if it bounced off the piching rubber.

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Remember, the mounds were a lot HIGHER in those days... so the ball could have been 2 feet off the ground to go over the mound PLUS another 1.5 feet to go between his thighs...

so if a batter hit the ball only 6 inches off the ground and "golfed" a wicked line drive that had already risen 3 feet by the time it traveled 60.5 feet back to the mound...

could the ball not continue to rise in a straight path until it was about 14 feet off the ground (not an unreasonable height for a line drive)...

which at that rate of ascent would put the ball 240 feet away from home plate...

which would seem perfectly reasonable that the ball then started it's downward arc and ended up traveling over 350 feet by the end???

I know that gravitational forces start acting on the ball the second that it is hit...

but wouldn't a low hit ball also have a "riser" effect (or whatever the opposite of "topspin" is)??

I have hit golf balls that start off low and then rise... and they have no seams on them.

Can't pitchers use the seams to make a ball appear to "rise" (or at least to NOT sink due to gravity)??

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

How fast do ball come off of a baseball bat??

Surely they are in excess of 100 mph, right?

I think if you set up a pitching machine at 120 mph and fired a baseball through it from 6 inches off the ground and aimed it to a height of 3.5 feet at the pitcher's mound...

I think that ball would go a pretty long ways.

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Posted By: barry arnold

thanks fellas for helping the Dizzy story become a possibility.
i think i want to believe in it, even more than my nephew does.


great physics stretches!

barry

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Barry:

I can get the pitching machine if you will volunteer to stand on the mound and let me hurl baseballs at 120 mph between your legs about 6 inches below your groin.

Interested?

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Posted By: Anonymous

Sir Isaac Newton meets William Tell

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Posted By: barry arnold

Only if you bring some of Dizzy's famous Falstaff, Hal,
to numb the pain or the possibility of pain.



Barry

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Posted By: john/z28jd

Years ago listening to a Yankees game Phil Rizzuto told of a story where he jumped for a line drive that went between his legs and ended up hitting the outfield wall on a fly.Bill White called him out on it as did whoever their partner was at the time(Frank Messer possibly?) and Rizzuto stuck to his story.They went back and forth about it for an inning or so

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Posted By: Anonymous

well that one is easy to explain.

everybody knows there is an anti-gravitational field installed under Yankee Stadium...How do you think they hit all those Home Runs?

...must have been on the blink that day.


I wonder how many other HOF'ers would admit to leaping for a line drive and having it go between your legs..

Holy Cow!

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

I don't know of the Rizzuto story. But, I can tell you what
actually did happen back in the early '60s when Kubek was
the Yankee SS. Now, Kubek is tall (6:3) and the batter is
Frank Howard (a 6:7 slugger for Wash.). Frank was so powerful
a hitter that most pitchers, and even the infielders, were in
constant fear that a ball off his bat could seriously injure
them.
Anyhow, Howard undercuts a pitch with a powerful swing and the
ball is heading right at Kubek. Kubek thinks he has a chance
to catch it and leaps for it. The ball soars over his reach.
The ball continues soaring till it hits the 457 ft. mark on
the left-center field wall at Yankee Stadium. Now, I ask you
to stop and consider this scenario.....the SS thought he had
a chance at it....but, this line drive hits the the far off
wall on a fly......WOW.....now that is power !

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Posted By: identify7

Frank Howard: what a powerhouse! Big. It was in the late 60s he hit 10 HR in 20 AB. Six games - what a demonstration!

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

Gil

I met Frank when he was batting coach for the Yankees.
What a nice guy, he is the epitome of "the gentle giant"
expression. In fact Frank and Clete Boyer were at a show
and I had the opportunity to chat with them for at least
3/4 of an hour. You get these former ballplayers wound up
and the stories they have to tell are really amazing.

I never could figure out why the Dodgers traded him to
Wash. (it wasn't a big trade). Frank played 1st,and Gil
Hodges had left the Dodgers in the early '60s. Howard,
on better teams would have had really great numbers.

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Posted By: Anonymous

http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:wX-EfLRc1yMJ:www.me.mtu.edu/~slpost/CLASS/baseball.htm+trajectory+calculation&hl=en

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Posted By: barry arnold

I must admit i was impressed with Uribe's dive into the crowd to
catch the next to last out of this World Series----until i
thought back to the Rizzuto and Kubek stories.
and those backhanded grabs and scoops of Willie Mays.
and as far as hitters, you fellas are right about Frank Howard---
i remembered as a boy being scared and excited at the same time
when the GIANT OF A MAN came to bat.

barry