ABSTRACT
A baseball batter hits a hard groundball into the hole. The shortstop, known as one of the best fielders in the game, backhands the ball and makes a spectacular jump-throw to first that the runner barely beats out. The batter is on first with a hit, but everyone applauds the all-out effort by the shortstop. That tale from the low-tech past may well be replaced, by the time you read this, with the following description. The batter hits a ground ball with exit velocity 81 mph. The shortstop has a very slow reaction time of 0.4 s, and only covers a distance of 8 feet before fielding the ball. The time between fielding the ball and getting off the jump throw is a very slow 1.3 s, and the throw has a low velocity of 58.3 mph. An average shortstop would have thrown out the runner 95.8% of the time, so the official scorer flashes “E6” indicating an error on the shortstop.
