Fastball

August 28, 2022 8:34 AM

Fastball [1h27m] is a documentary about that blink of an eye showdown between batter and pitcher. How fast is fast? What is it like throwing or facing a big league fastball? This 2016 documentary by Jonathan Hock is a history of baseball through this lens.
posted by hippybear (12 comments total)

The pitcher/batter duel, in the end, is the whole point of the game. And when you get the right pairing of pitcher and batter, the resulting at-bat is one of the greatest events in sport.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:42 AM on August 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

Video won't load for me, but it looks like a great film [trailer on IMDB]

Someone once told me that hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in professional sports, which is why consistently failing in two out of every three times at bat makes you among the best batters ever.

[I would only say though that it's not only about pitching speed. There's so much more to it, so many pitches, so much psychology, so many statistics ... what a great game.]
posted by chavenet at 8:59 AM on August 28, 2022 [3 favorites]

Here are a couple of alternate links from YouTube:

"Free With Ads" (an official YouTube offering, requires YT login for age verification)

Alternate link from Sports Revisited.
posted by hippybear at 9:04 AM on August 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

That last one works, thanks! The one before it is geoblocked, but that's my problem!
posted by chavenet at 9:23 AM on August 28, 2022

"Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing."

--Warren Spahn
posted by obscure simpsons reference at 11:55 AM on August 28, 2022

I haven’t researched this, but is it a coincidence that the rise of the pitch count as gospel has roughly coincided with demise of the windup and the much more prevalent 90+ fastball? Like maybe humans are reaching some sort of physical limit?

Anyhoo, I watched and enjoyed this with my dad a few years ago. Thank for reminding me about it.
posted by badbobbycase at 2:46 PM on August 28, 2022

I think the demise of the windup (if that’s even true) would have much more to do with the pressure on pitchers to take less time between pitches, than it does with pitch count.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:45 PM on August 28, 2022

The windup adds nothing to a pitch. It doesn't increase velocity or improve location. Also, since you can't use it once a runner is on you're spending a lot of time perfecting something you can't use all the time instead of focusing on improving the stretch delivery, which you can use all the time.

That said, there's a lot of theatrics to windups (like Luis Tiant and Fernando Valenzuela, two examples from my youth) that make the game fun to watch. Analyzing and perfecting aspects of the game has a negative side as well.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 4:41 PM on August 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

This was fun. I enjoyed the interviews the most, though the game footage was a close second. Bonus points for Kevin Costner as narrator to add an extra dash of nostalgia.
posted by saeva indignatio at 5:45 PM on August 28, 2022

Pitching is monstrously hard. Every minor league game I go to, they have one of those radar gun pitch booths setup. No matter how hard I huck that little damn thing. No matter how much I think about that motion and try and get all the juice behind it, my top speed is still 76 and my shoulder feels like I've decided to set it on a furnace.

(And I still hate 3TO baseball, which means I inherently hate pitch counts, etc, etc)

But trying to hit a ball? That seems easy in comparison to trying to deliver that little bean ball in a challenging way
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:18 PM on August 28, 2022

the demise of the windup

And then there's this.
posted by chavenet at 2:07 AM on August 29, 2022

Oh, wow. I remember when this came out, never got to it and of course forgot. Parenthood does that to you. So I started it up last night, and the baseball-mad now-teenager came in and joined me. We're both really enjoying it. Thanks, hippybear!
posted by martin q blank at 8:44 AM on August 29, 2022