OPINION

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Last summer, House of Highlights released a poll to the public, asking which was more difficult: hitting a 100 mile-per-hour baseball pitch, or making a half-court shot in basketball. The answer seems apparent, since hitting a 100 mph pitch is nearly impossible for even the best major leaguers, so the general public would stand no chance to even make contact with it. Shockingly, 42 percent of respondents said that making a half-court shot was harder. To put this in perspective, most able-bodied adults have a reasonable chance to make a half court shot if they have 25 tries, but almost nobody in the general population could hit a 100 mph baseball if they had two hundred tries.

I am a firm believer in the fact that hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports, especially once you reach high school age and beyond. Baseball is the most skill-reliant sport, and it is the sport where repetition and practice matter the most, yet it does require some natural talent as well.

Reds Pitcher Tyler Mahle. Photo credits: Andy Lyons/Getty Images.

A fastball traveling 90 miles per hour (which is less than the MLB average of 93.5) travels from the pitcher’s mound to home plate in 150 milliseconds, the same speed as the blink of an eye. When factoring in the stride distance of the pitcher and the time that it takes the human eye to recognize what is happening, the hitter is left with roughly 50 milliseconds to do three things: recognize the pitch, decide if they want to swing, and then swing. If this doesn’t sound challenging enough, pitchers often have four or five different pitches that they can throw at any time, with varying degrees of spin and movement on each individual pitch. For example: Tyler Mahle of the Cincinnati Reds, a pitcher who is widely considered to be average, relies on four pitches to get him through the game: a fastball that travels around 94 mph, a slider at 86 mph, and a splitter and slider at 86 and 87 mph, respectively. Mahle can choose to throw any pitch, depending on the situation. This is just one example of how hard it is to compete at a professional level.

Batting averages are a prime example of how hard baseball is. The best hitters of all time only have a .325 batting average or higher. That means that the player only gets a hit 32.5% of the time. If somebody only succeeded 32.5% of the time in any other sport, they would be considered abysmal and likely not survive long in their field. 

Varsity baseball co-captain Eric McDaniel (‘22) says “hitting is so hard because you’re trying to hit a round ball with a round bat with less than a second to react, plus you have to factor in offspeed pitches and the strike zone.” McDaniel brings up a great point regarding the round ball and round bat. The diameter of a baseball is three inches, and the diameter of the “sweet spot” on a bat, which is the area on the bat that gives the ball the most exit velocity and makes it the most likely to get a hit, is only 2.75 inches. Even if you do make contact, odds are that you won’t hit the ball well enough to even get a hit.

All-state varsity football wide receiver and cornerback, and starting point guard on the basketball team, Jalen “Cloove” Pierce (‘22), joined the varsity baseball team this spring just to have some fun before he goes to Millersville University to play basketball in the fall. “Baseball is so much different from basketball and football, you can’t just use your natural athleticism for it” says Pierce. Pierce says that he has had a difficult time getting used to baseball, because he can’t utilize his natural athleticism as much as he would in other sports.

New York Mets pitcher Jacob DeGrom
Photo credit: The New York Times.

In basketball, Pierce is a quick guard who uses his natural speed to blow past defenders, but he can’t do that in baseball. While Pierce had many struggles getting used to the hitting aspect of the sport, he quickly picked up on the fielding part. Since he has experience tracking balls in the air from his time as a wide receiver, Pierce had little trouble following the ball in the air and making a play. With that being said, since baseball can be so challenging, there will always be more ways to improve every aspect of a player’s game.

Baseball is the hardest sport to excel at because there is such a small window for success, and even in that small window everything needs to unfold perfectly for a hit to land.