I was reading the Hardball Times and came across this little doozy of an experiment conducted by psychologists in 1921 on Babe Ruth:
The scientists discovered exactly how quickly Ruth's eye functions by placing him in a dark cabinet, setting into operation a series of rapidly flashing bulbs and listening to the tick of an electric key by which he acknowledged the flashes.The average man responds to the stimulus of the light in 180 one thousandths of a second.
Babe Ruth needs only 160 one thousandths of a second. There is the same significance in the fact that Babe's response to the stimulus of sound comes 140 one thousandths of a second as against the averages man's 150 thousandths.
Human beings differ very slightly in these sight and sound tests, or rather the fractions are so small that they seem inexpressive; yet a difference of 20 or 10 one thousandths of a second indicates a superiority of the highest importance.
Translate the findings of the sight test into baseball if you want to see what they mean in Babe Ruth's case. They mean that a pitcher must throw a ball 20 one thousandths of a second faster to "fool" Babe than to "fool" the average person.
Now that's interesting. I wonder if anybody conducted similar tests on the late Sir Don Bradman at his peak?
- Art Neuro
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