NEWTON, BIOMECHANICS, AND BASEBALL

IT’S TOO SOON FOR THE GRASS TO BE ENTIRELY GREEN and way too cool for the sun to completely warm a spring day, but the “boys of summer” have stormed the diamonds all over this country. The baseball season is back and I could not be happier.

Putting aside the fervor for the sport, it is in the throwing motion of Little League pitchers and Major League aces where we enter the discussion.

Back in 1687, Sir Isaac Newton published his three Laws of Motion, respectively involving inertia, acceleration, and reaction. Today, more than 320 years later, former Major League All-Star pitcher Mike Marshall is teaching youngsters how to pitch a ball using Newton’s laws. He believes that by observing the fundamental Laws of Motion, pitchers can be more successful and less prone to serious injuries. Marshall focuses on youth baseball, but yearns to show his stuff in “The Show” (baseball parlance for the Major Leagues).

But he remains a controversial figure in baseball. His unique pitching style and training regimen made him a rogue in his playing days, mostly during the 1970s. Today, Marshall wins few fans within the tight-knit baseball community by often criticizing big league pitching coaches for failing to understand the principles that he believes will make pitchers perform better and remain healthier longer.

Avid baseball fan and celebrated mechanical engineer Steven Kerno Jr., a frequent contributor to Mechanical Engineering, brings us inside Marshall’s teachings in this issue—one Newtonian law
at a time.

As a fellow baseball devotee, I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to test drive Marshall’s thinking on one of the renowned pitching gurus today, Rick Peterson—himself not entirely immune to criticism for his own scientific approaches to the game. But little did I suspect that talking with Peterson would reveal a link closer than even Newton’s between pitching and mechanical engineering.

Peterson is a strong believer in a holistic/scientific approach to pitching that includes a dose of psychology—his educational background—and a heavier dose of engineering, based on the research conducted at the Birmingham, Ala.-based American Sports Medicine Institute and its two key figures, celebrated orthopedist James R. Andrews, and Glenn S. Fleisig, a mechanical engineer and member of ASME.

Although the methodologies differ between what Marshall believes and what Peterson preaches on the professional level, both share a strong belief in a biomechanical approach. “It’s baseball, but it’s also science and engineering, and it’s tough to dispute that,” Peterson said. It is also good business. Major League teams have an investment of approximately $1.2 billion in pitching, Peterson added, and a third of that investment resides on the disabled list every year. “If biomechanics tells us something critical, baseball better listen.”

—John G. Falcioni, Editor-in-Chief
He can be reached by e-mail at falcionij@asme.org