AmyFreeze's Blog

WEATHER AFFECTS BASEBALL...the pitch, the direction of the ball, the speed of the all, where a fan might catch a homerun, how players perform...

Gone are the hot days of fun in the sun at the Cell and Wrigley... but really... it could be a blizzard and it wouldn't matter because both Chicago teams are still alive down the stretch!   But actually, the weather does have an affect on baseball... the player, the swing, the flight of the ball after contact, the pitch, and of course, the fans!  Weather has an undeniable affect on America's favorite past time... but since you can't control it... you're only option is to try and figure it out!

NASA knows that the flight of an object is affected by it's atmosphere... a scientist studying this has a computer baseball simulator that they use to do studies... I asked him to add Chicago as a location to his online experiment... here's the link. Click here to try NASA's BASEBALL MODELER! 

Prevailing winds have an influence on the flight of a ball. A fastball thrown at 90 mph into a 10 mph wind would have a ground speed of about 89.3 mph,  If the ball is thrown downwind, it would be about 90.7 mph.   A 10 mph crosswind will blow a fastball off its path by about three inches.  The stronger the wind, the greater the impact.

How much could a breeze or gust matter?   Even a small deflection can mean the difference between a ball and a strike, or a strike and a home run. A Harvard professor wrote about this concept in his book "The Physics of Baseball."   A crosswind has an even greater effect on slower pitches like curveballs and knuckleballs. Not to mention the pitcher himself. Remember when Giants pitcher Stu Miller was supposedly ``blown off'' the pitching mound during the 1961 All-Star game at Candlestick Park?  The pitcher moved, the umpire called a ball which let the runners to advance in the ninth inning and tie the score.  Mother Nature might have been the 10th man that day!

The winds also affect a baseball’s path. When the Philadelphia Phillies moved from Veterans Stadium into Citizens Bank Park in 2004, they noticed that it was more “home-run friendly” than their former home.  The Vet was totally enclosed... but now winds swirled through Citizens Bank Park. In Philadelphia, the prevailing southwest and south winds of summer blow directly out to center and right-center fields. When Citizens Bank Park was being constructed, the Phillies hired a Canadian engineering firm to study the air-flow patterns so that the prevailing winds would benefit hitters.  The study also noted that Citizens Bank Park is closer to the confluence of the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers, which could make the winds stronger and the air more humid. 

A pitched ball can be impacted by the weather, though somewhat less dramatically. Again, it's a matter of air density and how much friction the ball encounters. When the air is less dense, a pitcher's fastball would be slightly faster but his curveball wouldn't bite into the air as much and would be less effective.

Temperatures can also affect the ball -- but also the fans.. I was working at a Phillies game where a dozen fans were taken into the hospital for heat exhaustion... I asked Jim Thome (he was still a Philly then) about the weather and he said the players were not affected,  "It's never too hot for baseball."

Winds at the Cell and Wrigley can affect play... some might argue... sure the weather has an effect, but both teams have to deal with the same weather?!   Tonight at the Cell the winds will be gusting strong out of the Northwest which should help the batters... Tomorrow night at Wriglet the winds will be moderate out of the North which could prevent left field homeruns.  Go Chicago baseball... and may Mother Nature be on our side!

Meteorologist Amy Freeze