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Weekend


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September 28, 2001

Strange But True!

  • A weekly column of incidental information, off-the-wall observations and other random facts about the world.
    • By BILL SONES and RICH SONES, Ph.D.
    Special to the Journal

    Q. Umpire's baseball fan-aticism gets the best of him, so he decides to aid his beloved Yankees in a way more subtle than shading calls on balls and strikes. For his pinstripers, it'll be the Oven Treatment; for the opposition Cleveland Indians, the Freezer Treatment. What's he up to?

    A. Having read "The Physics of Baseball" by Yale's Robert K. Adair, this man in blue knows that a baseball put in the oven at about 175 for a day then sitting at room temperature for an hour for camouflage will bounce livelier by about 13 percent, whereas a ball kept in a deep freeze at minus 10 goes dead by 10 percent.


     
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