How A Spartan Revolutionized Baseball

https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2026/03/spartan-revolutionize-baseball

by rmason • 4 months ago

27 12 4 months ago

msutoday.msu.edu

rmason• 4 months ago

I was a senior at Michigan State when Coach Litwiller invented the radar gun for measuring pitch speed. Used to attend games primarily to watch our star wide receiver, Kirk Gibson, try another sport.

He was so proud of the radar gun that they would display the radar speed on the scoreboard, the first and only time that I have ever seen that in baseball. When they built the new McLane baseball stadium I was happy to see they kept the pitch speed on the new scoreboard.

smithcoin• 4 months ago

When the Cubs signed Aroldis Chapman I went to the first game where he came out of the bullpen and I will never forget the entire crowd looking at the scoreboard and reacting every time he hit 100 miles an hour. Now every team has somebody that hits 100. It blows my mind people can throw a baseball faster than I drive on the interstate.

loloquwowndueo2• 4 months ago

So drive faster :)

triceratops• 4 months ago

The ball's much smaller than your car though.

sandworm101• 4 months ago

Given than scoreboards were updated by hand, and could be seen from the plate, one wonders if the reported pitch speed was ever altered to perhaps confuse a batter. The one person in the stadium not able to see the scoreboard is the pitcher, the one person with input on pitch speed.

banannaise• 4 months ago

Most professional stadiums display the pitch speed, albeit usually on one of the auxiliary boards rather than the main video board.

Thanks to enhanced pitch tracking in the last few years, they can now display even more information. The Pittsburgh Pirates' first- and third-base ribbon boards show pitch speed, vertical and horizontal break, and IIRC even the name of the pitch (bucketed based on the speed and break characteristics). It's a really neat addition to have in real time.

loloquwowndueo2• 4 months ago

An actual spartan? clicks through out of curiosity ah no, refers to a Michigan State University baseball coach : “The Michigan State Spartans are the athletic teams that represent Michigan State University.”

lukan• 4 months ago

Did you expect time travel was developed, while no one was looking?

xhkkffbf• 4 months ago

To be fair, many ancient civilizations played ball games. The Pre-Columbian civilizations in Latin America built stadia for ball games. So maybe the ancient Greeks had an effect too.

Archit3ch• 4 months ago

Sparta is a modern-day town. Not particularly famous for its baseball players.

zvr• 4 months ago

People are still be born in Sparta, Greece; no time travel needed.

raldi• 4 months ago

Clickbait antidote: by inventing the pitch speed radar gun after seeing campus police use one in 1974

How A Spartan Revolutionized Baseball

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