This decades-old medical report has received surprisingly little attention from the baseball community. Baseball season is about to begin again, in the USA. Please alert anyone to whom this study could be useful: “An Unusual Foreign Body in the Rectum—A Baseball: Report of a Case,” M.P. McDonald and D. Rosenthal, Diseases of the Colon and […]
Tag: baseball
Catching a 1000-mile-per-hour baseball
SmarterEveryDay made a cannon that can fire a baseball into the heavens at one thousand miles per hour, then used that cannon to fire baseballs first into a dummy of a person, then later into a baseball glove, then later still (after finding that one baseball glove is insufficient to catch a 1000 mph baseball) […]
Baseball mud deglossing machine: A Quixotic quest?
“This application claims benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/066,848, entitled ‘Baseball Deglosser Machine For Mudding a Baseball‘ and filed on Feb. 22, 2008, which is specifically incorporated herein by reference for all that it discloses and teaches,” says US patent application US 2009/0214792 A1, filed in 2009. The application describes a machine that attempts […]
Canadian Crime Rates in the Penalty Box
The game of hockey generates both action and statistics. Does it generate crime, now more than ever? This police study analyzes that and other questions: “Canadian Crime Rates in the Penalty Box,” Simon Demers, arXiv:1810.05118, 2018. The author, an Audit Manager in the Planning, Research & Audit Section of the Vancouver Police Department, reports: “Over […]
History of surveying: Berlin Spy Tunnel
This document, billed as a US government secret history of a surveillance tunnel dug in Berlin during the cold war (“Clandestine Services History: The Berlin Tunnel Operation 1952-1956“, CS document #150), tells of a difficult moment for the surveyors: The lack of an adequate base line made the surveying problem especially difficult. The engineers decided […]
They trained chickens to play baseball, and then some
Psychologist B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning work inspired the work of Marian Breland Bailey. Bailey’s work inspired this study: “Marian Breland Bailey: The Mouse Who Reinforced,” John N. Marr, Arkansas Historical Quarterly. Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring, 2002), pp. 59-79. Marr writes: Marian and her first husband, Keller Breland, had become the most experienced and accomplished […]
Baseball cards: Bubblegum Card Bubbles
Baseball cards – they’re collectible, and they can be worth something – and it’s been said (by some) that they’re “… a better investment than the stock market.” But is such a statement sound financial advice from dependable experts or misleading tittle-tattle from those with a vested interest (or neither) ? Perhaps what’s needed is […]
XKCD: The physics of relativistic baseball
XKCD, Randall Munroe’s comic strip, today considers the question “What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?” Even if you find the game of baseball to be confusing or uninteresting, the answer might please you. The drawing below is but one detail: BONUS (for baseball historians […]
Validating Pitcher Injury Theory
A new discovery regarding injuries to baseball pitchers’ elbows can be described, in round terms, as – the faster the pitch, the more likely the injury. Brandon (Brad) Bushnell M.D. (pictured) and colleagues at the Harbin Clinic Orthop(a)edics and Sports Medicine, Rome, GA. explain the background: “To our knowledge, no study has directly evaluated the […]