Speed Impact of Sliding
The television series MythBusters tested participants' baserunning speed with and without sliding, and found that in cases where the runner need to stop on the base, sliding into that base instead of staying upright provided a split second of advantage, suggesting the more rapid deceleration as the key. However, when removing the need to stop, the general belief within baseball circles is that remaining upright and running all the way to the base at top speed allows a baserunner to reach the base faster than sliding. Consequently, on plays during which neither being tagged out nor being put in jeopardy by overrunning the base is at issue (e.g., when approaching first base after having batted the ball), players are usually advised not to slide. Nonetheless, this conventional wisdom is not universally accepted, and as such, some players may feel that sliding will get them to the base more quickly and will thus choose to do so despite advice to the contrary.
Read more about this topic: Slide (baseball)
Famous quotes containing the words speed, impact and/or sliding:
“The terror of the atom age is not the violence of the new power but the speed of man’s adjustment to it—the speed of his acceptance.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice—there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community. To discover how scientific revolutions are effected, we shall therefore have to examine not only the impact of nature and of logic, but also the techniques of persuasive argumentation effective within the quite special groups that constitute the community of scientists.”
—Thomas S. Kuhn (b. 1922)
“The consciousness in each man is a sliding scale, which identifies him now with the First Cause, and now with the flesh of his body; life above life, in infinite degrees.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)