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Technology

Pentium Throws a Fastball 147

Posted by michael from the AMD-gets-brushed-back dept.
phillippaxton writes: "Abner Doubleday lives in the 21st century. Two mechanical engineers have gotten together and created what may be the perfect pitching machine, powered by a P3 850MHz computer. Using an eight-axis industrial robot, it has the ability to throw practically any pitch within the strike zone. Custom-built software enables you to choose the type of pitch by pointing at a touch-screen, setting the speed, location, handedness, as well as fastball, curveball, slider, slurve, changeup, cutter, sinker, splitfinger fastball or knuckleball. There's also a database of 2500 preset pitches in a database."
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Pentium Throws a Fastball More

Pentium Throws a Fastball

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  • Huh? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If the top one is faster, there will be top spin on the ball -- making it a curveball.

    Nope, that's a sinker. Curveball has lateral spin away from the pitching arm (slider is towards the pitching arm).

  • Re:Great. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'd still like to see how a machine gets a knuckleball in the strike zone every time ;)

  • Re:Sorry, "pitching" ? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Pitching" is a baseball term. Unless you say "pitching a tent." Then it means you have a "woody." Unless, of course, you are talking about "camping." Then it means something else, entirely.

  • Re:The real innovation here... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    At a Microsoft PDC last year or the year before they demonstrated a file system implemented inside a SQL Server table. The BLOB contained a filesystem. Inside this filesystem, they created a SQL Server instance. Viola: A database in a database.

  • Great. (Score:5)

    by Wakko Warner ( 324 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @09:53AM (#91521) Homepage Journal
    Until a floating-point error causes it to bean Mike Piazza.

    --

  • OMG (Score:2)

    by Have Blue ( 616 )
    throw obscure_reference

    I hope they name the prototype Spencer Talos.

  • First of all there is cost. Every carpenter I know owns a handsaw. For small cuts I will take a handsaw over a power saw anyday for speed, and thats even when the power saw is already pluged in! I've seen it over and over again: the handsaw is faster then the power saw. Of course there are two things to note: the hand saw user cannot do a second cut at near the speed, so the power saw wins in endurance. Also, not all cuts qualify, I'm thinking of very selected cuts where the fastest tool is a handsaw. (this applies to both metal and wood working)

    There are still farmers today who farm entiely without tractors in an area where tractors are avaiable. They love their horses (oxen, donkeys, ...) enough that the slow speed is worth it. I'm not talking about Amish or others who do it for religion reasons, there are normal people who's hobby is farming with animals.

    Baseball does not allow (or at least didn't) instant replys in the game. What the umpire sees is what is, even if the ump really is blind. Football allows them. Compare and you will soon notice that replays are a major factor in almost every play in football. I prefer baseball's approach even though it means teams have lost because of the umps error. Part of the game is the human error. I'm not claiming either way is better mind you, make your own decision.

  • Fah! We might as well use a cannon instead of a pitcher as well. In fact, I am sure that with a little engineering we could get a supersonic fastball. We might need to replace the catcher, but that shouldn't be hard as you wouldn't need to worry about errant pitches. We should also consider arming the first basemen with battle-axes. That way if a hitter does manage to connect with the ball the first baseman can make sure that the poor fool doesn't make it to first base. Heck, why not just give all the players automatic weapons and see which team has the most players standing at the end of nine innings.

    This is precisely the reason why there are rules to baseball. Everyone knows that you could have better pitchers just by letting them spit on the ball. But the point is the competition. Someone somewhere along the way decided that spitting on the balls was illegal (for whatever reason), and so now hitters don't have to worry about "spitballs." The rules may be strange (and sometimes fairly arbitrary), but folks like to watch and play baseball, and the rules allow the game to proceed fairly. Mixing in a robot pitcher may be great for hitting practice, but it would almost certainly be against the rules for competition, and since it wouldn't really be that fun to watch it almost certainly won't ever become legal.

  • ahahaha don't you know anything about baseball? The pitcher has to be able to _field_ the ball -not just throw the ball to the batter.
  • Agreed. I'd like to hope that baseball isn't the sort of game where somebody sat down one day and came up with it. Didn't we all invent Calvinball-type games? The best ones involved hitting balls with sticks and running around, IMHO. Baseball seems like a natural occurrence.

    -Waldo
  • Nope, not Cartwright, either. (Unless he came up with the rules as an infant. :) See this weekend's story on this topic, "Early Reference to Baseball Found [yahoo.com]."

    -Waldo

  • Re:Is it really a faithful reproduction? (Score:4)

    by general_re ( 8883 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:20AM (#91528) Homepage
    We will not have the perfect pitching robot until it also scratchs itself for a minute and a half in between pitches.

    Come on. It's got to do much more than that to be the perfect pitching robot. It has to be able to show up at spring training 200 pounds overweight yet still bitch about "only" making $6 million a year. It has to be a named defendant in at least one paternity suit. It has to be able to snort cocaine for years, come close to blowing its entire career, and then suddenly find Jesus.

    This thing's still got a long way to go.
  • ``Until a floating-point error causes it to bean Mike Piazza.''

    Seeing as how I generally root against any New York teams, I want to say ``You say that as though it would be a bad thing.''. But that wouldn't be very nice. Oops! Too late!

    On a more serious note, (assuming that pitching machines with `Intel Inside' can actually be serious) wouldn't it be interesting to be able to program this thing to pitch like whatever pitcher you would be facing that day? Batting practice would more interesting. By the time you faced the real pitcher, you'd have already ``virtually'' batted against him instead of some third string reliever. Heck you could bat against pitchers who've long retired (spend the morning batting against Nolan Ryan v1.3.1).
    --

  • Re:The real innovation here... (Score:5)

    by rnturn ( 11092 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:24AM (#91530)
    ``Viola: A database in a database.''

    I think you actually meant to say:

    ``Viola: The beefier cousin of the violin.''

    Cheers...
    --

  • >How do do hit the ball and not smash the machine
    >throwing it?

    I'd assume it's somewhat like a regular batting machine and sits behind a shield of some kind.

    Not exactly rocket science...

    -l

  • Re:hmmm.... (Score:3)

    by ethereal ( 13958 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:20AM (#91532) Journal

    See, robots could never replace real ballplayers, because mankind doesn't have the technology to build a robot as ugly as Randy Johnson :)

    Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!

  • That'd be a great challenge -- who could outdo who and still stay within the "rules" of baseball, and maybe the limits of human ability/perception.

    It'd be interesting to know if a really good pitcher is always better than a really good batter, or vice-versa.
  • Whatever the market will bear.

    Baseball is BIG business. The value of a product is determined by the perceived value to the one who has the funds.

    My guess is that they will sell quite a few of these. Good for them. I hope that they are very successful.
  • I'm all for the purity of baseball; the homerun derby is simply eye-candy for all the rainy day fans. But anyone who watched the derby monday night who knew anything about baseball would have noticed that the pitching coaches made a huge difference in how it turned out. Sammy Sosa went with a pitching coach of his choice in the first round and barely moved on with only 3 homers. In the second round he chose to use someone else's coach and smacked 8 dingers. Obviously, the difference in pitching helped him out. With a machine like this, we could guarantee all the batters would be fairly pitched to.
  • "sediment"

    "I don't sink this word means what he sinks it means." -- Inigo

  • If by this you men the episode where Catherine convinces Bill to use a bunch of ridiculously fake "street-talk" in his racially offensive malt-liquor commercials, then no. This is not that episode, although this episode does reference that episode. Catherine tells Bill: "Wazzup, y'all" is seriously dated and that today's cool street people greet one another "Gazziza!" In the "Space" episode, Bill and Catherine greet one another: "Gazziza, Bill." "Gazizza, Catherine." Also very funny...

    Anyone know all the words to Bill's "misinformed" Rocket Fuel Malt Liquor ad? I remember it was hilarious. It had a line like "It has the zazzapy gazmossis that will keep your feet stinkin' all night long" or something like that. The mix of badly phony "hip" words with absurd variants of real "street" reinterpretations (think "keep your feet stinkin'" as being like "down with that," or "you bad") was just plain hilarious...

  • Newsradio? (Score:5)

    by evilpenguin ( 18720 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:01AM (#91538)
    I immediately thought of the Newsradio "Space" episode. Joe is thawed out in the far future and immediately asks who won the World Series since he went into hibernation. I forget the exact words, but it was something like "In 2021 it was the Yankees, 2022 the Braves, 2023 the Robots, '24 the Robots, Robots, Robots...."

    Made me laugh...
  • The abstract here intimated that it was a robot arm or something. I was all excited to see a robot arm and hand controlled to simulate a real pitcher's arm. What do I get? Same ol' auto-pitcher technology with a little extra control grafted on. Cool, yes, but seems a little like bait-and-switch to me. What do they pay the editors here for?!

  • Re:Age of Spiritual Machines (Score:4)

    by hugg ( 22953 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:12AM (#91540)

    They still haven't made a computer that can hit the ball... this requires significantly more smarts to do in the general case.
  • Now all we need is a robotic batter. We could network the two together and eliminate humans all together.
  • It has to be able to show up at spring training 200 pounds overweight ...

    Geeesh. And it already weighs 2,700 pounds.

    ----------------------------------------------
  • And "invented" is too strong of a term. The evolution from the childrens game of rounders is obvious to anyone who's ever seen both.

    --
  • So? People pay $7 million for pitchers who can't pitch anywhere near that consistently. Just look at the Mets [go.com]. :)
  • Padding in football? Oh, you mean that "sport" americans call football. Real football players (Aussie rules, Rugby League | Union) dont wear padding or helmets.
  • I'm a die-hard baseball fan (GO TRIBE!) and I have no interest in seeing a robot pitcher. Being a pitcher is more than pitching exactly where you want the ball to go.

    It's intimidating the batter, being intimidated by the batter. It's watching a pitcher go 7 innings, after throwing 100+ pitches, tiring out but still throwing 95mph fastballs. It's Clemens throwing chunks of bat at Piazza. It's waiting for some batter to go after Pedro Martinez, bat in hand (God, I hate Pedro!)

    You can't compare baseball to plowing a field, or making crayons. Baseball is sports entertainment, not work. And Battlebots/Robot Wars/Robotica don't count. Those are not robots, they're glorified remote control cars.

    Now, the idea of human sized and shaped, fully automatic, non R/C robots fighting ala WWF, that might get my interest. But mostly for watching how the bots are built.

  • They still haven't made a computer that can hit the ball... this requires significantly more smarts to do in the general case.

    Oh come, come! If Rummy and Dick can get the Pentagon to produce a missile defence, how hard would it be to adapt the system to hitting fastballs? Who knows, this might even make missile defence against an imaginary adversary worthwhile! :-P

  • It's a metadatabase.

  • oof (Score:1)

    by woj ( 54802 )
    i'd hate to see it's fork ball...

  • Specs (Score:4)

    by pnatural ( 59329 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @09:57AM (#91550)
    are here [fastballinc.com]. note the $175,000 pricetag and the $18,000 maintenance fee. must be former IBM engineers. :)

  • 3/4 (Score:4)

    by kajoob ( 62237 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:02AM (#91551)
    I've batted against this thing at the Vet in Philly where they have one set up, and I must say that is extremely realistic in that if you can see the pitches hand and you can watch for the seams instead of the old goofy BP balls. The only complaint is every pitcher and ever pitch has the same release. Like the article says there is no 3/4 release and there are no sidearm or submariners, but on the whole it's an amazing device and mixes up the pitches well. If you're near a ballpark in your hometown, I recommend trying it.

  • Re:Science and sports don't mix. (Score:5)

    by aonifer ( 64619 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:40AM (#91552)
    I have to disagree with the sediment. I think they mix quite well.

    That's not a very concrete response.
  • OMG! What are you smoking? King of The Hill is the worst piece of animated trash I've ever seen! It makes Beavis and Butthead look intelectual!

    Kintanon
  • hmmm, where is the the moderation option when I need it...

  • padding? in baseball?
  • NEWS FLASH! Pentium Pitching Machine denied nomination to Hall of Fame after emery board found in power supply!

    The Pitching Machine denied comment, but said it planned to retire to a life of embittered interviews with Bob Costas and lousy commercial promotions.
  • It might help us off-worlders if you actually made at least one reference to the subject to which the term "pitching" is applicable.

    Is it that lame game that's like Rounders?

    xx Stuii!

  • Futurama flashback... (Score:4)

    by szcx ( 81006 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @09:59AM (#91558)
    Bender: Clem Johnson? That sack of skin wouldn't have lasted one pitch in the old Robot Leagues. Now, Wireless Joe Jackson, there was a blern-hitting machine.
    Leela: Exactly. He was a machine designed to hit blerns. I mean, come on, Wireless Joe was nothing but a programmable bat on wheels.
    Bender: Oh, and I suppose Pitch-O-Mat 5000 was just a modified Howitzer?
    Leela: Yep.
    Bender: You know, you humans are so scared of a little robot competition you won't even let us on the field.
  • ...it has the ability to throw practically any pitch within the strike zone.

    If all this thing can throw is strikes, any half-decent batter should be able to smack the crap out of it. The reason good pitchers are good is because they get the batter to swing at stuff they just can't hit.

    The way this season is going, they'll probably get this robot into the Mets' bullpen. :(

  • Ok, I admit, this is kind of cool. If I was a baseball player, I might even buy one to practice with. But what it really boils down to is this; baseball is boring enough as is, does anyone REALLY want to sit around watching a robot throw out pitches?
  • When they make one that can do leg-spin and offspin and throw a Googly [britannica.com] they'll have something to show off about.
  • I know it wasn't ACTUALLY steroids, but a nutritional supplement that has the same effect as steroids: it builds muscle mass and power

    They don't build muscle mass and power, the hours that McGwire puts into strength training do that. The supplements are no good if you are just sitting on the couch. By the way, not many of McGwires HRs would have been in play even if you took 10 feet off them.

  • I heard about this machine right after spring training. The article specifically mentions the Cleveland Indians as having used the machine. Marty Cordova, an outfielder for the Indians, was a significant user of the machine before and after practice, and he attributes the machine to helping him get back into his prior form. With the help of the extra batting practive from this machine he was able to raise his batting average by 93 points so far over last year.

    What I don't understand is why every major league team doesn't have one of these machines. Why will they pay a player $20 Million per season, but won't invest in a $200 K machine that will help make EVERY one of their players better?
  • Are they going to make available an accessory to inject some spit onto the ball?
    Perhaps they could experiment to find the best adulterant to create really wild pitches!
  • Does this include the repetoire of those Triple-A pitchers posing as major leaguers on expansion team rosters? Hell, you can accomplish this with a rubber batting tee. Does the 2500 pitch database include the Rick Ankiel heave to the backstop? What about the Nuke Laloosh "hit the bull" pitch? Can it scuff the baseball a la Mike Scott?

    But seriously, what about the spitball?

  • Cincinnati, OH- Two Reds pitchers were placed on this disabled list today. Johnny Johnson was placed on the 60-day DL with a blow tendon in his pitching elbow. Johnson is scheduled to undergo Tommy John surgery tomorrow. Linus Blazer, the phenom pitching robot, was placed on the 15-day DL to upgrade its repetoire. Blazer is scheduled to undergo a ./configure; make; make install Thursday.
  • both, i think ted nugent was in damn yankees
  • The thing is, it's not up to a computer to determine where the strike zone is. It's up to the umpire. Different umps call the zone more tightly or more loosely than other umps. What's going to happen when this thing throws a fastball to the outside corner and the ump calls it a ball? Who wins, computer or umpire?
  • > When they make one that can do leg-spin and offspin and throw a Googly they'll have something to show off about.

    I'd settle for seeing it throw an ephus pitch [sportingnews.com].

  • In fact, aluminum bats are used all the way from t-ball to triple-A.

    I can't find any documentation to confirm or refute your claim, but I don't believe aluminum bats are used in MLB-affiliated minor leagues.

    High school, college and probably some independent pro/semi-pro leagues allow aluminum, but I'm pretty sure you won't find metal bats in the minors. And I know only wooden bats were allowed at the Sydney Olympics.

    But I could be wrong. Somebody back one of us up!

  • I always thought the sport would be a lot more interesting if everyone had a bat, and was allowed to use it as they see fit.
    =\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\ =\=\=\

  • All we need now is... (Score:3)

    by dsginter ( 104154 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:28AM (#91572)
    All we need now is a robotic batter. Baseball has never been so much fun!

  • Cool. I'm glad someone has tried one of these. My question is: How do do hit the ball and not smash the machine throwing it? Seriously, you don't want to whack a ball 90 mph back at the thing's LCD. How does this aspect work?

    psxndc

  • That's what I thought, I just didn't know if clear display of the pitcher and a large vertical opening would play a part in it. Conventional pitching machines have one hole the pitch comes out of. This on, though it has one hole, may need to move the initial location up and down depensding on the pitch. I guess two plexiglass shields would work... hmmm...
  • Uhm...think about it. You are building a machine that is going to cost $175k and will have small total sales. Do you

    (a) pick the processor that supports OSes and tools you are familiar with and can easily get and that will let you do all your initial software development on your existing computers, or

    (b) try to save $200 per unit by going with a cheaper processor that requires tools you aren't familiar with, and new development systems?

  • If I'm not mistaken, I remember reading in American History class about Native Americans playing a form of baseball when European settlers began coming to the "New World". Playing with a stick as a bat and a ball made from some sort of filled leather "ball".

    That's lacrosse.
    Totally different sport.
  • I'm sure for the actually pitching part of the machine an 850 Mhz machine isn't needed. But for the graphics and to reproduce the finger position of the pitcher you need a little bit more horsepower!

  • Is it really a faithful reproduction? (Score:3)

    by Galvatron ( 115029 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:01AM (#91578)
    We will not have the perfect pitching robot until it also scratchs itself for a minute and a half in between pitches.

    God, I hate baseball.

    The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.

  • What is the intrigue of seeing someone pitch a baseball, now, in a fashion that we know is not the best?

    It's not whether a pitcher is/isn't the best, but when.

    There's baseball as hitting and pitching, then there's baseball the game. Machines might make better pitchers or hitters, but they won't improve the game just by doing what they do better than any human could.

  • Or better yet a DSP. I'd like to see a GHz Pentium 3 that can smoke a DSP a quarter the clock speed. Obviously they're best at what they do, but it sounds like this is exactly what DSPs do best.

  • Ahem (Score:1)

    by maxxon ( 124407 )
    We all do understand that the functionality of the robot has nothing to do with the fact that it's running on a Pentium, right? It's about software, not hardware.

  • Their G4-powered iPitcher is oriented at minor league players and throws perfect goofballs, which come out in graphite, flower power, and blue dalmatian variety.

  • Finally I now have a reason to watch baseball. Look out for the blue screen of death changeup.

  • The real innovation here... (Score:3)

    by jcoleman ( 139158 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @09:57AM (#91584)
    ...is the database within a database:

    There's also a database of 2500 preset pitches in a database.

    I've been trying to figure out for years how to include a database as a field in another database. How'd they do it?

  • `Viola: The beefier cousin of the violin.'
    Surely he means:

    "Viola, Frank: [baseball-reference.com] Left handed starting pitcher who led the Twins [mlb.com] to the 1987 World Series"

  • Hahahaha!!! I went to this site, and read one of the articles, and part of another. I was thinking "Holy crap, how could anyone be so stupid". Then I realized, the entire site is one big troll. Very funny! I bet they get a lot of misdirected hatemail... :-)

  • Padding is a weapon. It hurts a whole lot more to get smashed in your padded chest with a helmet, worn by someone on the other team who can run at full throttle without fear because they are "protected", than to simply be hit in the unprotected chest by another person's head. There are way more injuries in football (NFL, CFL, NCAA) than in Rugby or Australian Rules. How often do rugby players become parapa/quadripalegics?

    In hockey, lacrosse, and *especially* hurling, you have a stick in your hand to inflict lots of damage with. Hurling is a real "manly" sport, but Rugby or Aussie rules are no meaner than NFL football. The players in the NFL are much bigger and stronger too - you don't see many 350+ pounders in Rugby...

  • Abner Doubleday did not invent baseball. They needed to ascribe the game to someone, but didn't know who the real inventor was so they basically picked Doubleday because he was a good guy. He had NOTHING to do with the invention of the game!

    This "Mr. Baseball" [mrbaseball.com] page will open your eyes if you've been under the long-held mistaken notion that Doubleday invented the great American pastime. The real inventor's name was Cartwright.

    Or was it Costanza?
  • I'm only kidding but you saying we're wasting money on sports research is the same as those rednecks who say NASA is the black hole of money.

    Playing devil's advocate, there are many who theorize that the money spent on NASA/DOD programs that have commercial spin-offs would have gone further in the commercial sector in the first place due to NASA/DOD overhead and things like, oh, bombs, bullets, etc.

    OTOH, the fear of losing a war can be a great motivator to the ingenuity of the DOD crowd (or the loss of human life or desire to reach the moon first IRT NASA) that the commercial sector might be missing.
  • Was this the 'gazunga my gadingas' episode?

    Man that was a great line.

    Phil Hartman was good.

  • The question is - why keep pitchers at all? When society realized that it was better to plow with a tractor than a bunch of oxen, we got rid of the oxen. When we realized that it was better to manufacture and box crayons with robotics than with third-world child labor, we did that, too.

    The purpose of plowing with oxen was to hget the plowing done, not to exercise the oxen. The purpose of manufacturing and boxing crayons is to have boxes of crayons to sell. The purpose of Paul Bunyan's lumberjacking was to get trees cut down so they could be used as wood. Etcetera.

    The purpose of baseball isn't to get pitches thrown, or to get home runs hit. The world has no independent need for well-thrown pitches or home runs, outside the context of baseball. (When we do need similar activities performed outside of baseball, we already do use machines -- see, for example, the grenade launcher.)

    The purpose of baseball, if it has one, is to experience and observe competition among teams of human beings. Therefore, replacing the human beings with robots necessarily undermines the point of the activity.

    I'd be delighted to see a seprate league for robot-vs-robot baseball games, but it doesn't make sense to replace human athletes because the machines perform the tasks "better." By that standard, the dawn of auto racing should have meant the end of track & field sports. After all, cars are "better" than runners at getting from Point A to Point B quickly, aren't they?

    --------------------
    WWW.TETSUJIN.ORG [tetsujin.org]

  • On a more serious note, (assuming that pitching machines with `Intel Inside' can actually be serious) wouldn't it be interesting to be able to program this thing to pitch like whatever pitcher you would be facing that day? Batting practice would more interesting. By the time you faced the real pitcher, you'd have already ``virtually'' batted against him instead of some third string reliever. Heck you could bat against pitchers who've long retired (spend the morning batting against Nolan Ryan v1.3.1).

    It's been done. [fastballinc.com], read the article it's really cool.

  • Remember all those industrial revolution fables of man versus machine, like Paul Bunyan and John Henry? If I recall correctly, the moral of the stories was that even the best of any field were eventually beaten by machines that anyone could wield, and that the old-fashioned way of doing things eventually died out.

    So, now we have a machine that can theoretically pitch better than any pitcher, living or dead - that will always place the ball wherever it wants, and that can keep a database on each player's weak pitches and patterns that screw them up.
    The question is - why keep pitchers at all? When society realized that it was better to plow with a tractor than a bunch of oxen, we got rid of the oxen. When we realized that it was better to manufacture and box crayons with robotics than with third-world child labor, we did that, too. So -

    What is the intrigue of seeing someone pitch a baseball, now, in a fashion that we know is not the best?
  • And if you start hitting well against it after about 60 pitches, a robot Tom Kelly comes out, takes the ball away, and calls for the Eddie Guardado machine. :)
  • There are several reasons why MLB insists on good ol' wood bats, too.

    1. Tradition
    2. "The crack of the bat" is a much more elegant thing to say than "the dink of the bat"
    3. Tradition
    4. Guys like Sosa and Griffey could potentially kill a pitcher or third-base coach if you let them hit with metal bats
    5. Tradition
    6. It's absolutely hillarious entertainment when a good pitch breaks the bat of a cheater, and we see shards of cork fly all over the field.
    7. Tradition

  • Re:Science and sports don't mix. (Score:3)

    by Golias ( 176380 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @12:05PM (#91605)
    McGwire does have a huge set of guns on his shoulders, but the timing of the swing, accuracy of the hit, and position of the torso all have a much greater impact on the distance and direction of a baseball than arm strength does.

    Besides, it's kind of cheap to start by saying "he took steroids" only to parenthetically acknowledge that actually, he did not. Let me cut the redundant text by rephrasing your second sentence:

    Mark McGwire was not takeing steroids the year he set the home-run record.

    Much shorter, much more accurate.

    Carefully chosing the right foods would have had the exact same effect as McGwire's daily clump of nutrient powder. That crap is really just a quick-n-dirty alternative to eating the same health-food entree every damn day. It's not at all the same thing as taking artificial hormone pills.

    Besides, why get worked up over a record that Bonds is probably going to shatter this year anyway?

  • I've been trying to figure out for years how to include a database as a field in another database. How'd they do it?

    Multidimensional databases have been getting close to this sort of thing for ages (I have a friend who is profoundly expert in these things, I am not) Considering that they were originally systems designed to be multiuser multitasking, etc with true real time queries; and there are versions of this that run on an XT with decent performance [shrug] So you tounge in cheek question has a semi serious answer.

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • Coming from a baseball fan, I don't see how an 8-axis robot is going to imitate real MLB pitchers, considering that there's much more than the simple location and velocity of a given pitch.

    I can't see a robot imitating the movement of a Tim Wakefield knuckler, or the movement on a Hideo Nomo split-finger.

    There are just too many variables, I would think, for this truly be of signifcant use for a hitter.
  • padding? in baseball?

    Yup... think catchers' mitts, batting helmets, and the suit of armor that the catcher and umpire wear. Padding in baseball isn't as prevalent as it is in some other sports (football, hockey) but it certainly plays a role.

  • Well, there is actually a lot of real scientific research being done in the name of sports, and these things can be spun off to give us benefits in our everyday lives.

    Much like the space program, in fact...

  • Actually, the MMX and SSE extensions in the PIII, if they're used appropriately, can provide DSP-level performance on Pentium computers, and the Altivec unit is as fast as any DSP. However, this is only if they can write their own assembly, which very few people can these days. I would suspect that's the reason they picked the PIII.

    P.S. Why do you give out your call on your Slashdot posts? There's a lot of kids here who I wouldn't want to know that much of my personal information if I could help it.

  • when he charges the mound.

  • A perfect batting machine would be cool too for pitchers who need some practice! Also, use it to train the whole team - you could have perfect pops and setups for the team to practice with.

    The machine could be height adjusted, etc...

  • I want to mount one of these on my car. (Score:4)

    by Gannoc ( 210256 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:43AM (#91620)
    Anyone tries to cut me off, they get a 90mph chunk of American culture through their windshield with an accuracy of up to 5.00000001 decimal places...

    This is how the terrifing future depicted in Death Race 2000 [imdb.com] began. Will we all just sit by idly while it happens?

    I blame Intel.

  • Age of Spiritual Machines (Score:3)

    by iReflect ( 215501 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:02AM (#91621) Homepage
    This reminds me of a cartoon in Ray Kurzwiel's Book "Age of Spiritual Machines" where a guy representing the human race is in a room with papers. Written on each paper is a task that was once thought to be doable only by a human. The guy keeps discarding them as computers prove to be able to do the tasks.

    "Only humans can play baseball"

    right....
  • You know, I just cannot understand how people can find Futurama funny. I have watched it several times, most recently this past weekend (it was an episode with the Harlem Globetrotters), each time promising myself to give it a chance. Each time I found myself gagging and thinking Futurama made the Dilbert TV cartoon look good. Now 'King of the Hill', *that* show is funny.
  • I have to disagree with the sediment. I think they mix quite well. I think improvements in sports medicine have added to games, keeping some of the greats in the game longer, allowing people to get familiar.
    It also does something else, it allows geeks to compete in professional sports, though not directly, I could see it as a source of pride to have designed the exercise program that made your team the forth quarter terrors. Or to develope a machine that helps some player recover and extend his career.

  • Re:Science and sports don't mix. (Score:4)

    by Fatal0E ( 230910 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:25AM (#91628)
    Your post is awfully narrow minded. If not for the content of it then for the Go Red Sox part! :) Go Yanks BTW!!!

    I'm only kidding but you saying we're wasting money on sports research is the same as those rednecks who say NASA is the black hole of money. Why do I say that? Well, my sister-in-law had to have arthroscopic surgery on her knee after a skiing snafu and she is 100% back after only 6 months. Where do you think they perfected that technique? Why are those sneakers you wear into work everyday so comfy? When we send food to Africa how do you think we know how to pack as much nutrition into as small a package as possible? Those are only the tip of the ice berg (thats my excuse for being unable to come up with anything else :) ) but sports research does have a realistic ROI in at least some cases.
  • Have you ever heard the story of the old baseball, when the fields were huge and irregular, people wore little to no padding, and most importantly there were not ten zillion geeks roaming like ants over the fields of sports medicine and sports technology in order to ramp up everything to the conceivable maximum?

    You know, we draw the line on steroids and such for some reason, but allow other drugs; we outlaw aluminum bats for Little Leaguers but we let people invest millions in designing a better nutrient regimen for sports teams.

    The bigger baseball biz gets, the more home run races we will want to see and the farther and farther science will push baseball from the sport that you can see played each weekend at Little League and weekender team fields around the world.

    I don't think that a computer can do any thing except put coaches into comeptition with each other for the best equipment and force pitching, hitting and coaching into a computer-determined standardization.

    Fuck a bunch of that.

    P.S. GO RED SOX!

  • Someone has to ask.. (Score:5)

    by CrazyLegs ( 257161 ) <crazylegstoo@gmail.com> on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @10:18AM (#91636) Homepage

    Does their code throw exceptions?

    That's not even funny.

  • With genetic engineering, maybe they can make kryptonite garlic.

  • ". . . it has the ability to throw practically any pitch within the strike zone.

    The best pitches are the ones that make the batter reach or hit into a predetermined part of the field. If the robots AI were to have the ability to choose which pitches where and when then it may be a "smart robot" but it'll get taken for yard every pitch. Unless it has Jason Kendall [mlb.com] calling the shots for it :o)

    No, I'm from Chicago.

  • Because the point of baseball is not to hit the ball. It is to create icons that are idolized to distract the population from the real problems of the era. A kind of hero worship if you will. Even if you do not see it that way, the fact remains that people need to be able to identify with the players and teams. If people could identify with the machine then there might be some reason to predict the end of a need for pitchers.
    -CrackElf
  • Are you trying to tell me that those people do not personally identify with the machines? the ones holding up the signs that say 'grendel' or whatever?

    The robots are distinct and their behavior is not dictated by an algorithm (well, and artificial algorithm anyway) it is dictated by humans. And when the announcers talk about the robots they tend to attribute human characteristics to them.

    I doubt very much that if you stuck a couple of preprogrammed bots that looked identical in the center and never showed the human teams if it would draw the same crowd. Analyze what it is that makes the experience something that people get involved with. I believe that one of the strongest factors is identification with the robot.

    -CrackElf
    (and no, I am not one of those ppl)
  • and what the article forgot to mention was that in the machines third revision, they're going to add a couple more motors so it can spit tobacco and scratch itself... hey realism counts here!

  • Re:I don't think so... (Score:3)

    by krugdm ( 322700 ) <slashdot@i k r u g.com> on Wednesday July 11, 2001 @11:07AM (#91655) Homepage Journal
    It's not going to perfectly replace a real pitcher, but it will give batters a chance to hit against something more akin to real pitching than either the 50 mph softballs they get during batting practice, or a one pitch only pitching machine. Plus, you can hit against 90 mph pitches all day without having to wear out some poor sap's arm

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