I think you are underestimating how fucking scary it is to have a 90MPH fastball coming at you. If the batter is someone who has been playing competitive baseball even at a lower level they are somewhat conditioned to it. Take someone off the street and they won’t even be able to tell if the ball is coming at them or at the strike zone. You have maybe .25 seconds to figure that out. I’m not sure if someone off the street would stop bailing out after 50 pitches.
Disclaimer: I have done no actual scientific studies of this. Blame the internet.
90MPH has long been shorthand for a strong fastball. Nowadays 90 is pretty pedestrian at the pro level. Current player Aroldis Chapman has the record for fastest pitch at 105.8. That’s speed measured at the point of the throw. Due to mostly wind resistance the pitch slows about 10% by the time it crosses the plate.
There is one obvious difference with a tennis serve. The bounce. I was curious so I looked it up and the serve loses a lot of speed on the bounce. It loses about 50% of its speed. There is also the psychological factor. If you get hit with a tennis ball going 60+mph you know it’s going to hurt. If you get hit in the head with a baseball it may kill you. Getting hit in a vulnerable part of the body could break a bone.
Hitting a serve with those giant rackets has got to be much easier than hitting a round ball with a round bat. Of course that’s not the same as a proper return where you need to hit it properly with the proper spin otherwise it will sail over the court or straight into the net. Apples and oranges due to the much different mechanics. I would put my chances at putting the racket on the ball much higher than being able to foul off a baseball. The chances of actually returning a serve would be about the same as getting a hit. Right around zero.
I played tennis at the high school and college levels. With respect to returning a tennis serve, as described above would be extremely difficult if you were playing in a vacuum with a perfectly elastic racket (i.e. hard surface without strings).
In experience though, there is a surprising amount of ‘slop’ tolerance when you consider muscle memory of your swing, the comparatively huge amount of time that the ball stays on the racket strings, and the aero effects of spin and air resistance of the returning ball. I could consistently return ridiculously fast serves, as can most players of high enough skill level. Most of the return errors come from the far-stretch serves into the corners, or getting pinched by a fast serve that you can’t develop a good swing position on.
In the Kournakova example, if I was able to at least get ‘racket on’, i.e. not a clean ace, I’m confident I would have at least betting odds of getting the return into the court. She’s a pro, but simply doesn’t serve with the velocity of the average male college player.
Not saying tennis is easy, but hitting a baseball is orders of magnitude harder.
I think you’re reading too much into my post. Obviously if Joe Layman is too scared to swing they’ll never make contact. But pitches with consistent speed over the middle of the plate provides a chance to make contact for someone who swings away, but not a hit.
This is a good point. A baseball pitch has to go through a fairly small window (3-4 ft^2), while a tennis serve has to hit a large box (284 ft^2).
But as a former college tennis player you’re not exactly close to an average layman–you’re in the top 0.1% of tennis players. I’m curious what a former minor-league baseball player thinks of returning a tennis serve.
I was shagging flies with some high school kids c. 25 years ago. They had a pitching machine set up, and it was throwing gas, may indeed have been 80 MPH. I got contact on 2 balls in 20 pitches, a foul and then a fair popup, so I did about as well as you all did. Note I was a line drive machine when it came to slow-pitch softball, and like Happy_Lendervedder impressed some kids once with c. 10 straight hard hit lasers.
A racket’s surface area is tons larger than a bat’s too (read Pleonast’s post then Loach’s, snippage), but yes the target across the net is much smaller, and the effective target (a return which gives you a chance at actually winning the point) is even tinier. That said I also didn’t have any better luck against a fairly gifted tennis high schooler once.
Cricket would be at the other end of the scale in terms of the playing area and in the middle in terms of implements, but there you have to avoid outs as much as you can, so 1 failure in 5 isn’t all that hot.
Legend has it that Sam Snead and Ted Williams once argued over which sport was harder—Ted said it was baseball because you have to hit a moving target, but Sam supposedly won the debate: “Ted, you don’t have to go up in the stands and play your foul balls. I do.”
Which means that Nolan Ryan should be the Speed King. He was measured at 100.9 at the plate. Which given the 10% slow down means it came out of his hand at around 109-110.
And he was throwing complete games.
Decent athlete takes on MLB pitcher
Ty is an athlete and a goofball, but played real ball. It’s interesting how the pitchers are maintained like high strung race horses. Which they are.
It’s hard to say since I’m not sure what “layman” means. Someone that never swings a bat? Beer league softball? Etc. For most layman, we are 100% in the “fuhgetaboutit” range (also, maybe needing PT since this isn’t a normal motion).
Go to a batting cage that serves up 90mph balls and see what it is like. If you are athletic, you can start to time it and hit, but wait till you go up against a human with more variation.
In tennis, isn’t it possible to have to move quite a bit - in either direction - to hit the serve? Just seems like it would add another bit of complexity.
Exactly. MLB pitchers can have a lot of movement on their pitches. Go try some wiffle ball batting practice 
The supposed scientific estimate I’ve seen is that Ryan threw 108.1mph. Bob Feller may have been close to that. Ryan was definitely a freak of nature.
The big difference is that now more pitchers are throwing harder than ever. Random middle relievers are throwing in the upper 90s. Of course pitcher injuries are at an all time high as well.
Fun video. He’s obviously much better than an average guy.
I played a good amount of baseball as a yout, some of it “fast” pitch (which, of course, wasn’t all that fast). So I was no stranger to batting a ball.
Many years later I had the opportunity to try my skills against a high-school fast-pitch underhand softball pitcher. She certainly didn’t serve up MLB-speed pitches, but from where I was standing it sure felt like it.
If anyone would like to know my success rate you must Paypal me $5.
mmm
I’d WAG the most likely hit for the amateur is on their first pitch, before the pitcher can get an idea of that person’s natural swing. And, in the unlikely event of hitting it, it will be more likely a clip than a solid hit.
After that, pitchers are so precise that I feel they would be able to trivially throw the ball too fast and too awkward for a non-professional. Your best bet might be to randomly swing at funny heights.
Wow, you must have been putting Pete Rose like numbers…
Wanna bet?
And here’s regular people trying to return a pro tennis serve. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz9OOtcI_Qs
I’m not a tennis or baseball player, but IMO doesn’t seem >100x easier than hitting a pitch.
I’ve seen both Ryan and Chapman pitch during my life as a baseball fan and I do not believe Ryan threw at a higher velocity.
In an era when most pitchers were topping out at 95, 96 MPH, we’re supposed to believe that hitters were squaring up 108 MPH fastballs? Ryan gave up 321 homers over his career.
Ryan was measured at 100.9mph. That’s not in dispute. It’s also not in dispute that the way they measured speed at the time gave a lower speed than what they use now. What can be argued is if the methods used to estimate his measured speed by today’s standard is accurate. No one is saying that Ryan routinely threw his fastball at 108. We know he did it once in 1974. Chapman doesn’t routinely throw at 105. He has done it 8 or 9 times. Ryan was throwing at a time when every pitch wasn’t officially measured for speed like they are today so we can never know how he really stacked up against Chapman or Ben Joyce.
Of course Chapman and Joyce are relief pitchers who are expected to get out 3 batters. Ryan threw 506 complete games and once threw 235 pitches in one game.
It also loses more speed in the air, as tennis balls are fuzzy.
The real added problem with returning Anna Kournikova’s serve isn’t the speed - by the time it gets to you it’s definitely much slower than an MLB fastball. The unique problem is that it could be on either side of you. In baseball the pitch can only be on one side of you; if it gets Ricky Vaughaned anywhere else it’s irrelevant. But Kournikova’s serve coould be to your right OR left. You cannot stand like a baseball hitter with one shoulder towards her and assume it’s going to be on the side your arms are; you must be prepared to move your racquet to either side fast enough to bring it back in a swing.
If Kournikova is playing a fellow professional, that pro is not only quick as hell, but could tell from her setup and motion which side the serve would likely come at them. An ordinary shmoe? Ha ha ha. Best of luck with that.
They’ll learn much faster than a normal person. A minor league ballplayer was an exceptional baseball player and a tremendous natural athlete.