It's baseball season again.

And that means that from sandlots to stadiums

the great face off between pitcher and batter is back.

And there are lots of pitches a pitcher can throw.

But every pitcher is judged on their fastball.

The fastball is the best pitch in the game of baseball.

[Robbie] And that's because a heater thrown

with precision, is really, really hard to hit.

[Fleisig] Everyone has a fastball and it's the pitch

that gets thrown the most.

The very fastest throws 105 miles per hour.

And that can be havoc at the plate.

Batting legend Ted Williams once said,

Hitting a fastball is the single most difficult thing

to do in sports.

[TV Announcer] And a home run.

[Robbie] And he was probably right.

Batters barely have time to see and swing at the ball

before it reaches home plate.

They should not be able to hit the damn ball

you see is the interesting issue.

And there are more and more guys

throwing harder and faster.

In 2008, only 18 pitchers were throwing

triple digit fastballs.

And they collectively threw 196 of them.

By 2017, there were 40 pitchers throwing that fast.

And they together threw 1,017 fastballs

at or above 100 miles per hour.

But what if the fastball got even faster?

Today we're going to look at why throwing and hitting

a 110 mile per hour fastball is almost impossible.

To find out what it takes,

I threw my fastest fastball with a scientist

who's been studying pitching for decades.

I tried hitting a former Big Leaguer's pitch.

And stepped into the virtual world

to bat against a super human pitching avatar.

Nope (laughs)

Let's start with the pitch.

Baseball fans have long been thrilled by the pure speed

of the fastball.

[TV Announcer] Bob Feller, pitcher

for the Cleveland Indians takes time off

to demonstrate his cannon ball delivery.

[Robbie] Before radar guns, Army ordinance equipment

had to be brought in to measure pitch speed.

[TV Announcer] Rockets along at a world record speed

of 98 and six tenths miles per hour.

Legends like Bob Feller and Nolan Ryan

threw incredible fastballs that left batters reeling.

Today's marvels of the mound also sling serious speed.

At the top of the radar gun is Yankee's relief pitcher,

Aroldis Chapman, he was once clocked throwing a stunning

105 mile per hour fastball.

He pitches an average of 101 miles per hour.

And last year threw over 345 triple digit fastballs.

Alright, so what does it actually take

to throw a ball that fast?

I talked to Glenn Fleisig,

one of the world's leading authorities on pitch mechanics.

So do we have any sense of what is distinguishing people

who have a range that peaks out at 100 mile plus?

Is there something about them physiologically?

Proportionately, height wise?

Yeah that's one of the cool things about baseball.

And the answer is no.

They tend to be tall.

There are some guys who are six feet

who are throwing faster than the guys who are six foot ten.

[Robbie] Fleisig uses motion capture software

to map and correct throwing mechanics.

But that doesn't mean just anyone can hurl heat.

You and I do every thing right we're not going

to throw 100 miles per hour.

Maybe your range is you're going to throw between 70

and 80 miles per hour.

And someone else's range is that they're going

to be throwing up between 90 and 100.

All we can do with proper mechanics

is get you to the top of your range.

[Robbie] So I asked Fleisig who works with pitchers

from Little League all the way up through the Majors

to look at my mechanics.

The energy is now gone up your body

and your arm is in the cocked back position.

What I see here is your arm does not have enough

of what we call external rotation at the shoulder,

meaning that if I drew a vertical line up your trunk

I would want your forearm to be perpendicular to that

to make an L shape.

So I would want your hand to be much lower,

maybe a foot lower, so that your arm is cocked back more.

Even with Glenn's advice,

I was only throwing about half the speed of the pros.

So what is the outer limit in terms of velocity

leaving the hand of today's pitchers?

The top pitchers have always been about 100 miles per hour

and I think that is the limit.

100, 105 miles per hour.

I think the thing that could change is the average velocity

could go up because more guys can optimize

and maximize themselves and get to that limit.

[Robbie] But Fleisig says there's been a price

for such speed.

There are more injuries and part of the problem

is that more pitchers are throwing at top velocity

and constantly throwing at top velocity.

And the body can only take so much.

[Robbie] He and his colleagues measured

the force required to actually rupture elbow ligaments.

Turns out it's actually the same force

that a pitcher puts through his arm

when throwing at top speed.

Every time you go back and forward

is about 100 newton metres here and here.

A hundred newton metres is the equivalent

of holding five 12 pound bowling balls.

So imagine I hung 60 pounds from your hand.

But that's about the equivalent of what happening

in your elbow and shoulder at that instant.

[Robbie] That force makes for tiny tears in the ligaments

and over time a pitcher who throws too hard

too often is basically throwing his arm out.

Fleisig says that fastball mania has led

to a jump in Tommy John procedures.

That's the surgery to repair torn ligaments in the elbow.

He says that is the limiting factor for fastball speed.

I know it would be very exciting to see the limits break

for other sports where the ceiling keeps going up up,

I think we're at the ceiling

that the ligaments and tendons can't take it.

[Robbie] So why do pitchers even bother

throwing that hard?

Because a well placed fastball is the gold standard

for striking out batters.

To understand what a batter is up against.

You have to look this incredibly short period of time

that they have to decide if a ball

is even worth swinging at.

It's 60 feet six inches from the pitchers mound

to home plate.

But the actual distance is shorter.

The pitcher releases the ball about 55 feet from the plate.

And a fastball moving 100 miles per hour

takes about four tenths of a second to make that trip.

And here's the thing.

It takes 50 milliseconds for the eye and brain

to even register the pitch.

Another 150 milliseconds to swing the bat.

That leaves just a split second for the batter to decide

if the pitch is worth swinging at.

The batter has to pretty much make his decision

within 200 milliseconds.

That's why some people have argued

that batters should not be able to do it.

I can tell you that it is incredibly difficult.

That curved a little bit.

I went to Villanova University where Kevin Mulvey,

who is the baseball coach there

and a former pro pitcher himself,

smoked a few fastballs past me.

I made contact, twice.

I was just concentrating on keeping

the ball away from him.

I didn't want to hit ya.

I didn't want to come inside

I didn't want to get anywhere near you.

Which I appreciated, he was throwing in the 80s

and was incredibly consistent.

But here at Villanova they've got a tireless pitcher

who can throw everything from high school speeds

right up to the truly impossible.

There, nailed it.

So I am inside the cave at Villanova.

And right now it's virtual batter's box

inside a virtual stadium

and I'm hitting against a virtual pitcher

who can throw throw any style of pitch we want.

They can throw a change up, it can throw a fastball

it can throw a curveball, or a slider,

it can even do impossible pitches.

But no actual bats allowed.

This screen alone costs $50,000.

Engineer Mark Jupina created the system

by inputting actual MLB pitch data

so what batters see is a real pitch delivered virtually.

What we're doing here as much as we can

is to develop a training tool

and then we're also look at to add in EEG sensors

to measure focus level.

Eye trackers to properly see how well

the eye is moving with the ball.

We're developing something,

not only to help the baseball team,

but we're getting other scientists

and engineers involved in this project.

Jupina can do things like freeze the ball in mid air

and have batters identify the pitch.

It's gonna be high.

Yeah high and inside.

It's harder than it sounds.

But some of Villanova's players took right to it.

Curveball wall.

I wasn't right all the time.

But it was definitely very beneficial to try to pick up

and really focus in on arm recognition

and where the slot with the ball's coming out of it.

Strike, fastball.

We can even show you what realistically

a 120 mile an hour fastball would look like.

I tried one of those.

Nope (laughs)

121, 121 miles per hour.

For psychologist Gerald Long,

the cave batting simulator could answer questions about

our ability to track moving objects.

121 miles per hour.

Good grief.

You could have hit that.

Oh yeah.

Like is it really true that you've got

to keep your eye on the ball to hit it?

What if the ball disappeared after 200 milliseconds?

The presence of the ball should almost be unnecessary.

Is that true?

I don't know the answer to that.

I'd love to find that out.

I also tried one of Jupina's other creations.

A hacked ocular shift that he's rigged

so a player can swing for the virtual fences.

God the timing is completely different.

Alright, this is fastball moving at 111 miles per hour.

Fifth or sixth time is a charm.

Hey, finally, right?

[Jupina] Yep. - Yes.

Alright, finally so in the 6th or 7th attempt knowing

exactly when and where this ball is coming,

standing way in the back of the batter's box

so that my sweet spot is perfectly aligned

with the incoming trajectory of this pitch

I was able to make contact with a 111 mile per hour

impossibly fast fastball.

So will we ever see a pitch like that in real life?

Probably not.

But, virtual reality could help us better understand

how batters track and connect with the ball.

Because what they're doing now is already almost impossible.