Baseball reaction time
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Chapter 4 endnote 15, from How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett.
Some context is:
Your brain has about half a second to prepare to catch a baseball in a typical game. [...] On a regulation-sized baseball diamond, you have about 688 milliseconds to move into position, unless you are a professional baseball player, in which case you have more like 400 milliseconds.
A major league pitcher throws at a speed of 80 to 100 mph, giving the batter between 400 and 500 milliseconds to react.[1] This is not enough time to see a ball, then decide to swing the bat, plan the action, and execute it. But a brain that works by prediction is fast enough to make baseball possible as a game.