You would have to have the worst hand eye coordination on the planet if you practiced with live MLB pitching everyday for 6 months and couldn’t even foul off a ball in the first at bat of month 7.
i disagree. the fact is that seasoned mlb hitters can’t actually track the the entire flight of the ball with their eye and react in time to swing and make contact. They have to extrapolate where the ball will be when their bat moves through the hitting zone based on a couple milliseconds of information. We’re talking about a small fraction of the top 99th percentile of population in terms of hand eye coordination who are successful. that’s for someone with major league bat speed - people who can generate 95+ mph of speed on the bat in addition to being able to put the barrel of the bat exactly where it needs to be to square up a pitch (the sweet spot on a wooden bat is about 3 inches wide). an average person who played in HS or college probably hits 80mph bat speed and that’s with arm swinging as hard as they can which creates a ton of head and body movement that (1) makes it impossible to see a 90 mph fastball and (2) shortens the reaction runway by about a foot.
it looks easy on TV, but stepping in the box is a whole different experience. a quick, powerful swing looks really easy compared to reality. above average athletes can work on their swing for more than a decade and still not reach major league precision.
TV makes extraordinary mastery look easy, hence the multitude of armchair athletes thinking they coulda made it if it wasn’t for this knee injury…no actually you couldn’t.
I would assume with that amount of practice I would be better than the worst hitting pitchers.
TV strikes again.
Jim Abbott for sure
Even the worst contact hitter in MLB history*, Mark Reynolds, puts the ball in play 62% of the time.
* Pitchers excluded.
this guy is a better hitter by a huge margin (like it’s not even remotely close a comparison) than anyone any of us has played against in HS or college (excluding other major leaguers).
^ Not saying he isn’t, just adding some context. Some more context:
Apparently the worst hitter in MLB modern history was pitcher Ron Herbel. He went on 6 for 206 in his career, with 125 strikeouts. He also had 11 sacrifices and 8 walks for 227 plate appearances. Penalizing him for the walks, since he technically did not put the ball in play, means he failed to put the ball in play 133 times, or 58.6% of his plate appearances. Flipped around, he only managed to put the ball in play 41.4% of the time over his career.
Ron is a bit before my time so I can’t speak to his overall athleticism, but he’s listed as 6’1", 195 pounds and pitched decently in MLB for 9 years, so I’m going to guess he was a pretty good athlete. So, a pretty good athlete who had certainly seen his fair share of pitching over his career could only manage to put a ball in play 41.4% of the time.
Here’s 1 sports writers self assessment.
http://www.royalsreview.com/2011/12/14/2635206/what-would-your-stat-line-be-as-a-major-leaguer
On a semi related note, I believe I could beat 64 year old Jimmy Conners in a tennis match. My odds increase in a 3 out of 5 set match.
How good exactly are you at tennis?
Another point of reference: Michael Jordan played a year of AA ball. He hit .202 in 436 at bats in 1994, his only year. I think I recall him being quoted as saying that hitting required use and coordination of parts of his body that he never used as a basketball player.
Pretty damn good (although not the best sport I’m at).
At this point of our lives, I am just more athletic and have better cardio than J. Conners. I can’t envisage a scenario where he would have a fighting chance. I know he tried to coach a few female players in the last decade and rumor has it he couldn’t keep up.
Here’s a fun one to lighten the mood:
you have the opportunity to eradicate cancer forever. All you have to do is kill a child. You don’t know the child. You have a picture of him/her and all you have to do is will that child to death. No one will know you killed the child or cured cancer.
This is a simplistic question. The end doesn’t justify the means.
…from the leftovers…and no, don’t kill the child. We need cancer to control the population. On the other hand, If you could eliminate the suffering that people endure with cancer (but they die as they would), or kill a child, then i would kill the child.
That’s weak brah, really weak.
First all suffering is vital in and to life, not to mention religion. Second of all and most importantly, you don’t ever kill an innocent life. Even the US Military abides by this principal.
Go count out how man innocent lives were taken in the name of religion and get back to me.
And does the military’s principal apply to drone strikes or all night bombing missions?
Suffering is vital, I agree. Suffering coupled with an estimated death date is unnecessary punishment. If you could take one of those factors away, it would at least make your last days more pleasant.
“Yes, but they where all bahd”
Oh wait, this isn’t the movie quote guessing thread…
is it really that simplistic?