Science says hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports

In baseball, if you get three hits out of every ten at-bats, that means a .300 average and you'll be one of the best hitters in the game.
Young batter hitting baseball
Young batter hitting baseball Photo credit Getty Images

In baseball, if you get three hits out of every ten at-bats, that means a .300 average and you'll be one of the best hitters in the game.

And for this very reason alone, Popular Science says that hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports.

First of all, the average speed of a fastball is 90 mph. That's fast. The ball is in the "hitting zone" for less than 10 milliseconds. That's not very long. And even further, you're trying to hit a round ball with a rounded piece of wood, so the margin of error for making solid contact is roughly half the width of your phone's SIM card!

One engineering professor likened trying to hit a baseball to trying to hit a bullet with another bullet. And a physics professor said "When I see the very limited number of human beings that can do what [MLB hitters] do, I'm just in awe."

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Featured Image Photo Credit: Getty Images