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\"At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big-league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the i fates of five people are upended.\"--From publisher's description.

Diet is closely related to exercise performance. To improve athletes' performance and manage their condition, it is important to get sufficient energy and various nutrients. Thus, it is necessary that athletes understand their nutritional intake status to improve performance and maintain health. This study aimed to explore the nutritional intake status of college baseball players using the Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ). Furthermore, the characteristics of their nutritional intake status with respect to athletic performance were evaluated. The result of this studyprovide an opportunity for many under-developed college athletes with irregular lifestyles to recognize and improve their nutritional problems. In October 2022, a questionnaire survey of 116 male members of a college baseball club was conducted. Of whom, 100 (94.3%) members responded to the survey and 92 (92.0%) provided valid responses. The survey items included basic characteristics such as college grade and type of living arrangement, and information on living conditions, e.g. whether the participant ate breakfast. Nutritional intake was evaluated using the FFQ. Players were divided into the first (regular players in official games), second (bench players in official games), third (players who may join the second or higher team in the future), and fourth teams (players who do not belong to the first to third teams); these categories were used as a marker of performance level. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to analyze the association between the performance levels of baseball players and the intake of each nutrient and food group obtained by the FFQ. For items that showed a significant association, inter-group comparison was performed using the Dunn-Bonferroni method. Carbohydrate intake was greater in the second team compared with the third and fourth teams; saturated and monounsaturated fatty acid intake was higher in the third team compared with the fourth team. Calcium, zinc, copper, manganese, insoluble dietary fiber, iodine, and molybdenum intake was higher in the second team compared with the fourth team. Intake of grains, sugar, dairy, and total energy was significantly higher in the second team compared with the fourth team. However, the protein intake ratio was significantly lower in the second team compared with the fourth team. Overall, energy deficiency and associated deficiencies in protein, fat, and carbohydrate were observed, in addition to dietary fiber and calcium deficiencies. The intake of several food groups appeared inadequate, such as potatoes, beans, vegetables, fruits, eggs, milk, and fats. The study showed deficiencies in the amount of energy and nutrients such as protein, fat, and carbohydrate in college baseball players. Differences in the intake of carbohydrate, calcium, and insoluble dietary fiber among different performance levels were observed, with significantly higher intake of carbohydrate, calcium, and insoluble dietary fiber in the second team. Implementing organized and strategic remedial measures and athletes' identification of nutritional problems are vital to overcome nutritional and energy deficiencies. This study provides useful information for the development of strategies to support nutritional intake in college baseball players.

Baseball is one of the most beloved sports in the southeastern United States. While most elements of athlete and coach development have been examined, there is limited research concerning the demographics of baseball umpires. Purdy and Snyder (1985) explored the social profile of high school basketball officials over 30 years ago. Using many elements from their survey instrument, the purpose of this study is to explore the social profile of college baseball umpires. A total of 122 collegiate baseball umpires in the south east region of the United States completed the social profile survey. Frequencies and correlations were performed to investigate the characteristics and their relationships with aspects related to umpiring. The results found officials to be mostly Caucasian males, married with zero to two children, college educated, and in their 40's. The majority of umpires had less than 10 years of experience officiating at the collegiate level and identified enjoyment of the sport and the challenging aspects of umpiring as reasons why they umpire collegiate baseball. The major drawback of officiating was travel and being away from family. Understanding the social profile, the positives and negatives of officiating, and stumbling blocks of collegiate baseball umpires will add to the research base of sports officials.

[...]to make sense of this information, most elite football teams now employ data analysts, including mathematicians, data scientists and physicists plucked from top companies and labs such as computing giant Microsoft and CERN, Europe's particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. In return, insights from analysts are altering how the game is played: strikers shoot less frequently from a distance, wingers pass to a teammate rather than cross the ball and coaches obsess about winning possession high up the pitch - tactical shifts all backed up with hard evidence to support a coach's intuition. In his 2003 book Moneyball, Michael Lewis detailed how Oakland Athletics' manager Billy Beane relied on player statistics to deliver a winning baseball team on a shoestring budget in 2002. Baseball is a natural stop-start game in which only one team at a time is trying to score, and baseball statistics had been collected routinely and studied on a large scale for decades.

Dynamic visual acuity (DVA) is the ability to resolve fine spatial detail in dynamic objects during head fixation, or in static objects during head or body rotation. This ability is important for many activities such as ball sports, and a close relation has been shown between DVA and sports expertise. DVA tasks involve eye movements, yet, it is unclear which aspects of eye movements contribute to successful performance. Here we examined the relation between DVA and the kinematics of smooth pursuit and saccadic eye movements in a cohort of 23 varsity baseball players. In a computerized dynamic-object DVA test, observers reported the location of the gap in a small Landolt-C ring moving at various speeds while eye movements were recorded. Smooth pursuit kinematics-eye latency, acceleration, velocity gain, position error-and the direction and amplitude of saccadic eye movements were linked to perceptual performance. Results reveal that distinct eye movement patterns-minimizing eye position error, tracking smoothly, and inhibiting reverse saccades-were related to dynamic visual acuity. The close link between eye movement quality and DVA performance has important implications for the development of perceptual training programs to improve DVA.

Several studies have investigated factors influencing baseball pitching velocity. However, some measurements require expensive equipment, and some tests need familiarity to perform well. In this study, we adopted field tests executed using affordable equipment in a tryout event for a professional baseball team in Taiwan, 2019. We use half day to test 64 players, and the result of measurement are used to develop a model for predicting pitching velocity of amateur adult pitchers (age: 23.9 ± 2.8 years; height: 180.3 ± 5.9 cm; weight: 81.4 ± 10.9 kg). The measurements and tests in tryout settings should be easy to implement, take short time, do not need high skill levels, and correlate to the pitching velocity. The outcome measures included maximum external shoulder rotation, maximum internal shoulder rotation, countermovement jump (CMJ) height, 20-kg loaded CMJ height, 30-m sprint time, height, age, and weight tests. Multiple regression indicated a moderate correlation between these tests and pitching velocity (adjusted R 2 = 0.230, p = 0.0003). Among the measures, the ratio of loaded CMJ to CMJ, ratio of first 10-m sprint time to 30-m sprint time, and height were significant contributors to pitching velocity. Overall, these measures explained 23% of the variance in the predicted pitching velocity. These field tests can be adopted in tryout events to predict a prospect’s potential and to identify underestimated players. Coaches can obtain an expectation of a pitcher’s performance by comparing his pitching velocity with the predicted value derived from the statistical model presented herein, and the room of growth by comparing his current strength to average strength growth after being drafted and trained with professional coaches.

Previous research shows that there is a correlation between attitudes and academic achievement. In this article, we analyze for the first time the impact of interactive groups (IG) and dialogic literary gatherings (DLG) on the attitudes that students show towards learning. A quantitative approach has been performed using attitude tests validated by previous research. The data suggest that in both cases, the participants show positive attitudes. The social context has an important influence on students' attitudes. The items with higher correlations include group work, mutual support, and distributed cognition. In the case of IGs, group work is much more appreciated, while in the case of DLGs, self-image and self-confidence are the two most clearly valued attitudes. The positive impact of IGs and DLGs on students' attitudes may have potential for teachers in transforming their practices and decision-making within the classroom.