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Every Kid's Backyard Baseball Daydream  

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Every Kid's Backyard Baseball Daydream  

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Hitting a baseball, considered one of the hardest things to do in all of sports. It can seem even more difficult when the game is on the line against the best team in the conference and rival with the game on the line. It was the top of the 7th inning with the bases loaded and two outs. My team was down by one run and I was the next batter up.  As I step to the plate I eye down the pitcher and think of what he might throw to me. The first pitch comes out of his hand and I track it as it travels towards me. It’s a fastball and happens to catch the outside of the strike zone for strike one. As I step back in the box for the second pitch I’m looking for something off-speed because I’m down in the count. As the pitcher releases the ball I can tell by the grip and spin of the laces on the ball that I am correct in my guess. He threw a curveball and as it travels towards me I know he left it over the middle of the plate right where I can hit it. I initiate my swing and make solid contact with the ball and smack a line drive right over the 1st baseman’s head and drive in two runs to take the lead. I was able to identify the pitcher was throwing a curveball using visual search and focusing my visual attention on the pitcher’s hand and the laces of the ball. I used movement filters to identify the pitcher was gripping the side of the ball and released the ball with a different motion letting me know it wasn’t a fastball and the spin of the laces were rotating over the top of the ball letting me know it was a curveball. Experts are able to be much more efficient with these visual ques like Giancarlo Stanton (in the gif) and crush 500 ft homeruns. As the ball approached I used tau combined with the characteristics I already knew about the baseball to trigger my swing to make contact with the ball.

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One of my favorite interactions within a baseball game was always running the bases, in particular stealing bases on opposing pitchers. There was no better feeling than stealing 2nd or 3rd base on a pitcher that knew I was going to take it and he couldn’t do anything to stop me. One reason I became so good at this was because I was able to get the best jump possible against the opposing pitcher. Any time anyone was on base I would watch the pitcher and his timing between getting set on the mound and the start of his delivery to the plate. After watching several pitches from the same pitcher, I was able to anticipate the onset of the pitcher’s delivery and start running to the next base at almost the exact moment he started his delivery. I was able to reduce the time of stimulus identification of information processing because of temporal anticipation. The regularity of the pitcher’s time to start his movement allowed me to know exactly when I should start my response selection of running to the next base and program my body to carry out the action.

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Since I knew what to look for when stealing bases, when I would pitch to other teams I knew the subtleties their base-runners were looking for. I used this to my advantage to work on pick-off moves. The best ones would always have slight movements that made the base-runner think I was going to throw to the catcher. My hope was to get the runner leaning or even start his secondary lead to the next base. The slight twitch in my movement would have the runner reacting to that before I actually started my pick-off throw over to the bag. The fake is causing a double stimulus paradigm. The first stimulus is the subtle movement, thinking I’m throwing home the runner reacts to that move. The second stimulus is my making my actual pickoff throw to the base the runner is at. According to the single channel hypothesis, the runner will have to finish reacting to the first stimulus (the fake) before he can react to the second stimulus (the pickoff). This adds a psychological refractory period to his response time and allows me to have enough time to throw him out before he can dive back safely.

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Playing baseball for most of my life I experienced many different coaching styles. I’ll pick two examples, one was my head varsity baseball coach. I did not like his coaching style one bit. He was a micro manager and constantly pointed out errors in my mechanics whether it was fielding, pitching, or batting (It was like getting yelled at by Coach Pitino). During the two years I played under him I made constant errors in the field and hit very poorly compared to before I started playing for him. However, playing for another coach that I had, he was much more laid back. He wanted me to go through practice activities like hitting off a tee and ask how my swing was feeling and see if I could feel what I was doing wrong. If I didn’t know then he would interject with how to fix it.  I performed much better under this coach. I was the best defensive player on the team and a top hitter. This is a good example of how augmented feedback can either help or hinder skill learning. The first coach gave too much feedback leading to me thinking about if I was performing the skill right rather than just performing and feeling the skill. This carried over to games and I continued to struggle making plays. The second coach at the least didn’t hurt my performance and probably even enhanced my skills. This coach gave me a chance to listen to my intrinsic feedback to develop skills and tweaked the errors. I played much better and more confident.

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After my baseball playing days came to a close, I tried my hand in slow pitch softball. Thinking that I was a pretty good hitter in baseball I thought I would be able to easily transition to softball and have a lot of success. After all the swing is the same mechanics I’ve used for 15 years playing baseball and the ball is just being lobbed to the plate instead of being thrown 80 mph. I was in for a rude awakening when I stepped up to the plate and quickly learned I was terrible at hitting slow pitch softball. I was whiffing on every pitch and wasn't even close to hitting the ball the first game. I had experienced negative transfer from my years of playing baseball. Because the pitch of softball was much slower than what I was used to in baseball, there was a change in the timing structure of the swing. Luckily, the negative transfer was temporary and after playing a couple games I was able to readjust the timing of my swing