Edgamacational tv..

So have you ever seen that show Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel. It’s basically these two guys who take myths and legends and test them to see whether or not they’re true. Fantastic show, always entertaining.
Well on tonight’s episode, they tackled four baseball myths. (http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-schedules/series.html?paid=1.13056.24704.3913.x)
The first was whether or not balls stored in a humidor (like the Rockies do) will influence the distance a ball is hit. Amazingly enough, their data showed that balls not stored in a humidor (like every other stadium besides Colorado does) went 14% further than balls stored in one. (that means a ball hit 425 feet at Fenway would only travel 365 in Colorado) Cool stuff.
The second myth was the corked bat. Their experiments showed that using a cork bat actually decreases the distance the ball will travel. The cork will actually absorb the impact of the ball to the bat, minimizing the distance it will travel. And to think for all these years, guys have been corking their bats thinking that the ball will go further.(for myths one and two, they took out the human element by using an air cannon and a bat rigged to swing on command)
The third myth is that pitches aren’t actually moving, that they’re optical illusions. Now anyone that’s ever seen a curveball in person, will tell you that its definitely moving. And their data showed that all the pitches were in fact moving or not moving (fastball, slider and curveball, with special guest star Roger Clemens) They also proved, with the help of NASA scienticians, that its physically impossible to throw a fastball that rises.. go figure.
And finally, they proved that sliding into a base is faster than running to the base and trying to stop on it (as opposed to running thru the base, like first base)Interesting stuff all around. Science is fun!