The Physics of Baseball
Alan M. Nathan
University of Illinois

Welcome to my site devoted to research related to the physics of baseball. My particular research interests are two-fold: the physics of the baseball-bat collision and the flight of the baseball. I have done quite a bit of independent research in both areas. I am also heavily involved with several areas of practical interest to the game. One is characterizing, measuring, and regulating the performance of non-wood bats, an area for which I have served on committees advising the NCAA and USA Baseball. Another is exploiting new technologies for tracking the baseball, such as PITCHf/x, HITf/x, and TrackMan, for novel uses in baseball analytics, often in collaboration with my talented colleagues from Complete Game Consulting.

This site is undergoing a major renovation, which will take place gradually over the coming months. Clicking on "Other Links" in the box to the left takes you to links that have only partially been converted to the new format. Many thanks to Ruthann Ryan Whobrey and her talented Parkland College students for their considerable help with the renovation.

Revisiting Mantle's Griffith Stadium Home Run

Analysis of The Mick's famous tape measure shot, which legend says traveled 565 ft.

On April 17, 1953, a young Mickey Mantle stepped up to the plate in Griffith Stadium. It was the 5^th inning with two outs and Yogi Berra on first. Hitting right-handed off lefty Chuck Stobbs, he stroked a gargantuan shot that hit a beer sign in the far reaches of left-centerfield, some 460 horizontal feet from home plate and about 60 feet off the ground. The ball glanced off the sign, exited the stadium, crossed 5^th St NW, and ended up in a residential neighborhood. There seems to be no controversy about that much of the story. More...

An account of this work also appears in Chapter 6 of the new biography of Mantle, The Last Boy, by Jane Leavy, published in October 2010. I gave a public presentation of this topic in Urbana on November 12, 2010 as part of the program of the Baseball Music Project.

Comparing the Performance of Baseball Bats

Published January 18, 2010 at BaseballAnalysts.

The game of baseball as played today at the amateur level is very different from the game I played growing up in Rumford, Maine in the early 1960s. In my youth, wood bats ruled. Nowadays, almost no one outside the professional level uses wood bats, which have largely been replaced by hollow metal (usually aluminum) or composite bats. The original reason for switching to aluminum bats was purely economic, since aluminum bats don't break. However, in the nearly 40 years since they were first introduced, they have evolved into superb hitting instruments that, left unregulated, can significantly outperform wood bats. Indeed, they have the potential of upsetting the delicate balance between pitcher and batter that is at the heart of the game itself. This state of affairs has led various governing agencies (NCAA, Amateur Softball Association, etc.) to impose regulations that limit the performance of nonwood bats. The primary focus of this article is on the techniques used to measure and compare the performance of bats.

This topic has a high degree of current interest because of the new bat performance standards adopted by the NCAA starting in 2011. The same standards will be adopted by the National Federation of High Schools starting in 2012 (and in 2011 in California). More...

See NCAA Baseball Bat Standards and 2011 NCAA Baseball Bat Standards for more information about the NCAA.