WebBall.com - Visual Perception & Hitting

You can't keep your eye on the ball

... and you can't see the ball hit the bat.

But you can come close!

Despite the opening comments under hitting, making contact may have less to do with the size of ball or the size of the bat, and more to do with the way your eyes spot and track objects. Here are some of the vision principles involved.

The Dominant Eye

Before you get into the details of how vision works and how eyes track baseballs, you need to know which eye is your dominant one. Why? Because most batters hit better if their dominant eye is the one closest to the pitcher.

Try this... Form a diamond-shaped frame between your hands — forefingers and thumbs touching. Sight through the opening on an object spprox. 30-50' away — a pole for instance — with both eyes open. Then close one eye at a time. If the pole jumps out of the "frame" then the eye you just closed is your dominant eye — the one that should be closest to the pitcher.

Seeing and Believing.

Research has given us some new truths...

Curveballs do curve and sliders do slide, but they do it predictably on arcs based on gravity, momentum and spin. (What they don't do is suddenly change direction.)
Fastballs drop, but they don't really rise - they just sometimes drop less than we expect.
Our heads can't turn fast enough and our eyes can't shift fast enough to track a ball all the way to the bat, but we can use modelling and experience to complete the picture.

Eye Mechanics

Four separate systems control eye movement...

Saccadic - the spotting system that jump-scans from one point to another, i.e. when you spot player positions on the field.
Smooth Pursuit - the tracking system that can stay on a moving object across your field of vision, like a hit ball.
Vergence - the focusing system between objects closer or farther away, whether it's the ball rotation, or the base you're about to step on.
Vestibulo-ocular - the compensation system to keep your eyes fixed on an object while your head and/or body is in motion, during a swing or rounding the bases.

What to look for.

Here are some tips to improve the way you read and react.

Watch the ballcap At the start of the pitch focus on the logo on the pitcher's cap. Shift eyes to throwing hand as it comes into view.
Read the spin but don't try to keep stitches or label in focus. That's the vergence system and the shift from 60 feet to 6 feet won't help you read speed or direction.
Start a slight head shift to the plate first, because the head moves/tracks slower than the eyes. The V-O system should adjust for the head turn and keep your eyes on the pitcher's arm.
Track with smooth pursuit until the ball is 9 feet from the plate.

Now you have a choice...

If you read a breaking pitch arc/spin, continue smooth pursuit as far as you can. Your eyes will lag, and the ball will get ahead of your fovea (central focus) when it's still 5 feet out. But you'll catch enough white blur in peripheral.

Or read the break and shift your eyes to the plate. During this jump-scan your vision will blank out briefly, so do it early in the pitch and your vision will come back as the ball crosses the plate - not to swing at (your muscles can't react fast enough) but to learn how this pitch moves. Form a mental model to predict where the same pitch will end up next time it's thrown.

Either way, if you misread the break or speed and jump-scan, as your eyes pick up the ball it won't be where expected. That's what causes the perceptual illusion that the fastball has risen or the breaking pitch has dropped off the table.

Remember...

To track and read a pitch, you need to use the right systems at the right time - while compensating for the visual systems that don't help. Whatever you do, keep your shoulders level and head down toward the pitch zone - too much movement and the V-O system will over-compensate, making it too hard for your eyes to read the pitch.