10/22/2010
On Friday, November 12, Alan M. Nathan, a professor emeritus of physics and full-time baseball fan, will share his knowledge about the science behind the sport as part of the pre-game warm-up for The Baseball Music Project performance by the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.
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On Friday, November 12, Alan M. Nathan, a professor emeritus of physics and full-time baseball fan, will share his knowledge about the science behind the sport as part of the pre-game warm-up for The Baseball Music Project performance by the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.
Over the past several years, Nathan has successfully combined his understanding of physics with his love of the game.
“Although I have studied a number of different aspects of baseball—pitching, hitting, and a number of new technologies related to the game—I have decided to talk about something very specific, my reanalysis of the famous Mickey Mantle ‘tape measure’ home run in 1953.
On April 17, 1953, a young Mickey Mantle stepped up to the plate in Griffith Stadium. It was the 5th inning with two outs and Yogi Berra on first. Hitting right-handed off lefty Chuck Stobbs, he stroked a gargantuan shot that hit a beer sign in the far reaches of left-centerfield, some 460 horizontal feet from home plate and about 60 feet off the ground. The ball glanced off the sign, exited the stadium, crossed 5th Avenue, and ended up in a residential neighborhood. There seems to be no controversy about that much of the story. What happened next is both unknown and quite likely unknowable with any certainty. Yankee publicist Red Patterson left the stadium and retrieved the ball from 10-year-old Donald Dunaway. Red determined that Dunaway found the ball in the backyard of 434 Oakdale Place. Patterson then paced off from that location to the edge of the stadium and concluded that the ball traveled 565 ft. Thus the Mantle legend was born. This account of the event has been described in detail by Dan Valenti in his book Clout.
"It is an event well-known to most hard-core baseball fans,” Nathan said. “It is also a good example of how to apply basic physics to solve a puzzle." According to Nathan’s analysis, the distance of Mantle’s home run is significantly longer than previously thought, but probably not the 565 feet of legend.
As an experimental nuclear/particle physicist, Nathan investigated high-speed collisions between subatomic particles. Nights and weekends, he studies the physics of baseball—high-speed collisions between cowhide and ash (or maple). From baseball trajectories to broadcast technologies, Nathan has regularly consulted on the modern-day game for Major League Baseball, the Amateur Softball Association, USA Baseball, the NCAA, Sportvision, and numerous media outlets around the world.
Nathan originally presented this talk at the SABR40 Conference in August 2010. A popularized account of this work appears in The Last Boy, Jane Leavy’s recently published biography of Mantle. In the coming weeks, Nathan will post an article providing much of the details of his analysis on his Physics of Baseball website.
The Baseball Music Project is a symphonic tribute featuring cherished photography, inspiring film footage, and live narration by Hall of Famer Dave Winfield. Krannert Center’s lobby is home base for baseball-inspired design projects, baseball and music mementoes from the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music at the University of Illinois and the Early American Museum. Representatives from the Illini Union Bookstore will be selling baseball books and memorabilia, and Associate Professor Adrian Burgos Jr. will sign copies of Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line.
Plus…free popcorn!
The lineup:
5:45 - Meet the players and coach from the University of Illinois men’s baseball team – KCPA Lobby.
6:30 - Professor Emeritus Alan Nathan will present a free pre-show talk, “Revisiting Mantle's Griffith Stadium Home Run, April 17, 1953—A Case Study in Forensic Physics,” Colwell Playhouse.
7:30 p.m. - The Baseball Music Project, Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra, Bob Thompson, conductor, Baseball Hall of Famer Dave Winfield, host and narrator, Steven Larson, music director, Foellinger Great Hall.
Tickets for The Baseball Music Project are still available from the Krannert Center ticket office (call 800/KCPATIX or 217/333-6280).
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Contact: Professor Emeritus Alan M. Nathan, Department of Physics, 217/333-0965.
If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, Engineering Communications Office, 217/244-7716, writer/editor.