How would a pitcher do if they had to throw an apple instead of a baseball. Besides the apple being destroyed of course.

39 comments

  2. Because the shape is not perfectly spherical, I think pitchers would have an easier time throwing nasty junk. You’d see a lot more swing and miss.

  5. The hole at the top would give an INSANE amount of leverage when spinning it. Some pitchers would literally be impossible to hit

  15. As a side note, I met an old Marine who said they used to practice trying to throw curve balls with grenades when bored in Vietnam. He said one guy could get really good action on it.

  17. In college we (baseball nerds) lived next to a stretch of railroad.

    Once we discussed the math of throwing an apple (for safety reasons, obv) between two train cars of a passing cargo train, and whether it would make it out the other side. IIRC, we had someone throw an apple around 65mph before the typical spin force applied by a D3 pitcher made them split. 

    This was waaay before Rapsodo type tracking. Hope theres kids doing stupid stuff like this still. Dont remember what type of apple. 

  18. According to Conan O’Brien, in the old days, pitchers were “hurlers” and the baseball was referred to as an apple.

  19. I live in Russia, and I love baseball, but there’s nowhere to play it. So when my dad was alive we were literally throwing apples to each other, and we used shovel grips instead of bats. Sounds dumb, but damn we had a lot of fun, especially when we’d hit ‘homeruns’ (apple showers for everyone!)

  21. Once I was watching the bullpen warmups at Coors Field, and as usual there were some kids hanging out hoping to have a player toss them a ball when they were done. It was the lucky day for the kid right next to me – the reliever (I forget who) pointed at him, reached into his glove, tossed him up an apple, and walked away. The kid had such a bewildered look on his face lol.

  23. I worked at an Irish pub for a semester at college and we used to play hr derby with salt potatoes out back and a rolled up piece of cardboard for a bat. It was fun, in hindsight we wasted a lot of potatoes, didn’t work there for too long.

    Anyway, I think they’d have to ban red delicious and I expect round apples would have wiffleball action coming from a major league arm.

  24. Trevor Bauer actually did a video on him trying to strike people out with random fruit. I couldn’t find it on YouTube. I saw it on FB.

  25. YouTube content creator should throw different fruits with a track man to see the spin rates

  26. Fun fact: grenades were specifically designed to mimick throwing a baseball. Because in the 40s, a basic skill men were generally expected to have was being able to throw a baseball.

    Which I can support bringing back as a life skill

  31. Jered Weaver was in a commercial pitching apples instead of baseballs to a bunch of people. Most couldn’t make contact, but when they did it was an apple shower.

  32. T-Ball games would be impossible. Not only are the kids sitting down playing in the dirt, but they’re also eating the ball.

  34. There was actually a commercial where Randy Johnson was chucking apples at people from the pitching mound

  39. Ok, well it depends greatly on the apple being used. There’s dozens if not hundreds of apple varieties. I think we want to look at what type of Apple being used first.

    Red delicious, Granny Smith, etc are all out. Much too large. My money would be on a pink lady. One, their size matches up. Two, I particularly like pink lady apples

    Pink lady apples average in circumstance at about 9.4 inches in diameter (baseball is 9.25 inches) and weigh on average 5.3 oz (baseball is 5 oz)

    So they are actually pretty close in size, especially considering one is a fruit and one is used for competitive sports.

    The bigger issue is the texture of the apple and lack of seams. The seams are integral to the flight of the baseball. They create what’s called a seam-shifted wake or more broadly as the magnus effect. Basically rhe roughness of the seams creates turbulence around a ball that spins over 2300 rpm while simultaneously having a horizontal velocity of 95mph+. The turbulence creates drag on the ball in certain areas, depending on the pitch and grip, which causes the moment. But the seams also allow the ball to be thrown at higher rpm, which will allow for a more stable projectile. Think of how rifling of your barrel works in firearms.

    Now this isn’t even taking into account how if the Apple was hit into play how it would be fielded…

    So, long and short of it, I don’t think the pitcher would do very well at all. They could likely manage the throw the apple, but at much slower speeds and with little to no movement. Batting practice

    Edit: source – ex minor league pitcher who is also a bored nerd. It’s also been a while since I read “The Physics of Baseball”

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