Author: Edmond Dougherty

When I brag and tell people that we’ve developed a virtual reality training system for baseball players (PITCHvr™) , some angrily say “That’s ridiculous! Just get out in the fresh air and sunshine and hit the old ball around.”

I have to agree with the common sense that a good way to learn baseball is to play baseball. But, yo, it is no longer the best way.

Hold on, don’t yell at me. I’ve got nothing against fresh air and sunshine, but honestly it has a lot of limitations that do not exist in PITCHvr’s virtual world.

To defend myself, here are 10 reasons virtual reality (VR) will make you into a better ball player.

1. Only one person is needed for VR training – you. You don’t need a pitcher, a catcher or someone to shag baseballs. You just need a headset and good concentration.
2. You do not need a baseball field to practice in VR. I grew up in the city and didn’t have access to large areas suitable for baseball. Many emerging players do not have the luxury of a convenient and available baseball field. With VR you can train in a very small indoor space.
3. VR is ready when you are. Time is important in our busy world, and players don’t all have the advantage of being able to schedule specific times to practice. With VR you don’t have to travel to a field, and you don’t have to waste your time waiting for your turn at bat. Just grab the headset whenever you have a few minutes and get to practicing.
4. The weather is always perfect on the VR playing field. It doesn’t matter what the real weather is outside; put on your headset and you can play baseball in perfect conditions. Plus, you can play 12 months a year. Sure, if you really want it, we can add simulations for rain, snow, wind, shadows, sun glare and fog. If you think that will help you train, we’ll add it, but for now we’ll stick to perfect weather in our VR simulation.
5. VR lets you face repeatable quality pitches. The best pitcher, the best, most expensive pitching machine is not able to accurately and repeatably throw quality pitches the same way in the same strike zone location over and over. VR can do it endlessly.
6. Real life pitchers get tired. Your PITCHvr™ hurler can throw for hours. The first pitch is as high quality as the hundredth. OK, a pitching machine can throw for hours too, but do you have exclusive access to it for hours? Does a pitching machine really seem like a real pitcher? Nope.
7. Most real-life pitchers can’t throw more than a couple different types of pitches. PITCHvr™ can throw three types of curveballs, two types of sliders, four types of fastballs, as well as change ups. The “quality” of the pitches can be set from high school through pro all-star levels.
8. Most real-life pitchers can’t throw using different arm slots. The VR pitcher can throw overhand, ¾ arm, side arm, and submarine.
9. PITCHvr™ provides training tools difficult to replicate in real life. PITCHvr™ lets you use colored balls for different types of pitches (e.g., RED = fastball, BLUE = curveball). PITCHvr™ can paint arrows on the baseball to allow you to better track spin and understand different types of pitches. If you like you can ask the pitcher to throw you golf balls … they keep you on your toes.
10. PITCHvr™ provides training tools impossible to replicate in real life. PITCHvr’s Eye Sync™ lets you view the exact same pitch over and over (and yeah, over). Soundscapes™ uses your hearing to scientifically train your eyes to better recognize and track pitches. A pitch release point graphic hangs in mid-air just behind the pitcher to help you better focus on the pitch release point. A similar graphic hangs in mid-air between the pitcher and home plate to help you focus on the pitch path tunnel zone.

I’ll stop at 10 reasons VR helps in baseball training, but I could go on and on about safety, the importance of seeing as many thrown pitches as possible, and automatic customized performance analysis.

Certainly, traditional baseball training is great, but VR can supplement it and, more importantly, VR can make baseball training accessible to many more players around the world.

I watch every inning of every Philadelphia Phillies baseball game. This is finally our year.

OK, maybe not, but it’s somebody’s year; as long as I’m enjoying baseball, I’m good with it.

I’ve aged out of actually playing the game myself, but as a college engineering professor with access to great technical talent and super-fast computers, I‘ve become more and more interested in the physics behind the flight of the pitched ball. I carefully observe every throw; I study every slider, 12-6, slurve, flame thrower, Uncle Charlie, and even the occasional Nuke. I gasp at every brush back and laugh at the batter’s reaction when the pitcher pulls the string on a changeup.

Obviously, I’ve become good at baseball slang, but through observation, modeling, and thousands of calculations, I’ve learned a ton about recognizing the various pitches and quickly predicting balls and strikes. Over the past five years I’ve been working with another professor at Villanova University to create a highly accurate, physics-based virtual reality software training system called PITCHvr™ Vision to teach those skills – and more – to players at all levels of baseball.

But it kind of makes me sad.

I’ve gotten so good at pitch and strike zone recognition, but I just can’t play anymore. Yeah, yeah, I know you saw some 90-year-old guy on TV running to first base in a league for geezers. Nope – not going to happen.

Here’s what I am thinking: I can’t play anymore, but maybe I can use my acquired skills to become an umpire (a good one).

With PITCHvr™ you can walk out of the virtual reality batter’s box and stand behind the plate. It’s the perfect umpire view. The same training techniques PITCHvr™ provides for batters can also be used to train umpires. You can so clearly see the pitcher’s release, the spin, the ball motion, and the location of the strike zone. The software will even grade you. 

Hmmm. I’ll bet you could make a business out of using PITCHvr™ to train umpires.  Maybe.

What’s that? Do we really need more umpires?  Yes – especially good ones.

Major League Baseball is looking at “robots” calling balls and strikes in the near future, but that’s not going to happen at your local ball field. At least not for a couple of decades, I’d bet.

So, if you enjoy the game, still want to participate, but don’t feel up to playing, learn to be an ump.  You can do it ‘til you’re ninety.

…hey, I just noticed something, if I crouch down using PITCHvr™, I’ve got the perfect catcher’s view.

How’d you like to be a high school catcher and safely train with the 105 MPH fastballs that PITCHvr™ can fire at you? Or some ridiculously nasty 100 MPH sliders? My knees won’t take it, but if you are an aspiring catcher, it’s worth a look.

Baseball has been in my family since the game was invented. My grandfather played and then managed. My dad was the neighborhood star pitcher. Me? I played in high school a long time ago. I once led my Summer league in triples. Never hit a home run though.

I blame the Devil’s invention – The Wiffle ball.

I grew up in the city. I loved urban life a lot, but we lived miles from the nearest ball field. We’d put in the effort to get to the park for a game or two a week, but it was almost impossible to make the trip more often than that.

Outside of a formal game, we kids rarely saw live pitching. We loved the game so much and wanted to excel, but how could we practice and get better if we could not experience pitches?

Then it happened — someone went out and bought a Wiffle ball set.

Hmmm. It was baseball-like. There was a ball and a bat. The ball was city safe – wouldn’t break a window or even scratch a car. The plastic bat would hurt if you walked into it while someone was swinging, but it was otherwise pretty safe; so we spent hours every day pitching and swinging.

The pitches were amazingly cartoony, whizzing in like a rocket and yet moving as unpredictably as a butterfly. I can still imagine Bugs Bunny winding up and hurling an impossible physics defying pitch.

We had fun though.

We saw hundreds of those Looney Tunes pitches every day. The bat was so light we could start our swing when the pitch was just inches in front of the plate and still make contact.

We thought we were training ourselves to be great baseball players…we were so wrong.

With every Wiffle ball pitch we devolved as ballplayers. The Wiffle pitch trajectories were absurd, with no connection to real life. Maybe we were improving ourselves for games like badminton or ping pong, but certainly not for baseball.

To become a good baseball player you need to train as a baseball player.

It is widely known that hitter development in baseball requires that the player see pitch-after-pitch-after-pitch thrown by a good hurler. It is how you learn to recognize the type and location of the pitch being thrown.

Whether you are a high school student or a seasoned pro you need to practice repeatedly against realistic pitching. You can’t just practice against a robotic pitching machine. You can’t learn to recognize pitch type or location hitting with a tee, or with soft toss batting practice. And you can’t expect a live pitcher to throw to you for very long periods of time per session.

So what should you do?

Well, if you are a serious ball player, don’t run out and buy a Wiffle ball. Honestly, it ruined me. If it weren’t for Wiffle ball hurting my timing, recognition, and swing, I’d be getting ready for Hall of Fame induction by this point in my life – if not MLB, at least for my neighborhood.

Check out PITCHvr™ Vision, where you can enter a virtual reality ballpark and face all types of pitchers throwing all types of pitches – for as long as you like. It is an affordable, one-time cost with no subscription involved. Do your future fans a favor, and make it to the Hall!