Making sports an exact science
MIT throws its brainpower at equipment research
CAMBRIDGE - With the first game of a late March doubleheader scheduled for noon, members of the MIT baseball team and a Rawlings representative meet at 8:30, gathering in a back corner of the school's Aero/Astro hangar. Lefthanded reliever Mike Vasquez stands behind an air cannon, launching baseballs at a mannequin wearing a chest protector. Righthanded starter Jay Turner records electronic sensor data each time a ball makes contact.
Not your typical pregame routine. But as a result of their work, Vasquez and Turner could "make it" to the major leagues.
By this time next year, professional catchers such as Washington's Paul Lo Duca, St Louis's Yadier Molina, and the Chicago Cubs' Geovany Soto could be wearing new and improved padding. Since November, six students - under the guidance of sports equipment company Rawlings and the MIT Sports Innovation program - have been developing a testing system for chest protectors. The goal is to help equipment designers determine the best mix of materials and best thickness for padding, giving catchers greater mobility and making it easier for them to throw.
"It's all about finding your passion," said Vasquez, the group leader and a Material Science and Engineering major. "All the guys on the [project] team love sports. It's more fun than what you typically think of with an MIT research project.
"There are very few sports companies that put value in good engineering, in terms of projects that make engineering sense rather than just marketing sense. When you get to see how your research can actually be used, it's pretty cool."
The testing prior to the doubleheader marked an important milestone for the project. For the first time, the students saw preliminary results from months of brainstorming and creative problem solving. With balls traveling 6 feet at speeds of 20-25 miles per hour, the sensors and high-speed video recorded the force at impact, how long balls stayed in contact with the chest protector, and the trajectories of rebounds coming off different parts of the padding.
"If Jason Varitek is blocking a ball with a guy on third and two outs and the ball hits him on the chest, the ball's not going to fly 30 feet down the first base line and let the guy on third score," said Turner. "Hopefully, the ball will just stop.
"But it's not going to stop because it's hitting Varitek. It's going to stop because the whole chest protector gives in such a way that it dulls down all the forces and absorbs everything. So he's not hurt and the ball's not flying away."
The project appears on track, with a few weeks of experimentation remaining. That is no small feat considering Rawlings makes only occasional visits to campus and most communication among the students, the company, and Sports Innovation program director Dr. Kim Blair takes place by e-mail and teleconference. Whether scheduling group meetings, ordering mannequins, or interviewing sensor companies, the students take charge of all aspects of the project.
Even with the MIT baseball season in full swing, the undergraduates will continue construction on a grid of 32 sensors and affix it to the mannequin's chest, develop software to better analyze data, and launch balls at speeds approaching 70 miles per hour in testing sessions between now and mid-May. Rawlings will use the results to establish the happy medium between protection and performance.
Hands-on research
Turner describes himself as "a fastball pitcher who throws the knuckleball for comic relief." The Computer Science and Electrical Engineering major gets as good a laugh as anyone from confusing batters. But the project team needed Turner's knuckleball more for science than comedy, recording the pitch to test the resolution of its high-speed video equipment. Considering Vasquez carries a copy of the book "The Physics of Baseball" for recreational reading, the students know textbook.
The MIT Sports Innovation program, though, was designed to give undergraduates hands-on research experience away from textbooks and classrooms. Working in a Building 17 laboratory cluttered with experiments, where the hum of the wind tunnel can make conversation difficult, the undergraduates brainstorm and build different components of the test setup.
Inside the laboratory and Aero/Astro hangar, the MIT baseball research project looks like a combination of shop class and horror flick: Power tools, quick-drying cement, PVC pipe, handsaws, and mannequin parts are scattered around.
Making his usual rounds one chilly, midwinter night, an MIT campus police officer spotted a couple students on a landing outside Building 17. One student held a handsaw. The other steadied a decapitated mannequin. After the students gave the officer a nod that seemed to say, "Everything's OK here," he moved on as the students resumed sawing the bottom of the torso. Such is the strange progress of sports innovation.
"Everything that seems easy is not easy," said sophomore second baseman Stewart Park. "There's always little things that can go wrong and it takes a lot to fix even a little problem. We assumed we could just put sensors on the mannequin and it would work, but we realized the mannequin doesn't act like a human body and doesn't deflect balls the same way."
With all the time spent sawing the mannequin, filling it with sand and cement and smoothing out its six-pack abs to ensure better contact with the sensors, the students seem far from stereotypical science geeks. The undergraduates are also far from stereotypical college baseball players, often discussing problem sets before practice. They never worry about the difficulties of designing their own software and never contemplate spending some of the $20,000 Rawlings budgeted for sensors on beer and pizza.
"A major Division 1 kid is at school most of the time to play baseball," said MIT baseball coach Andy Barlow. "They're sitting in class thinking about baseball. Here, it might be a little different. They're coming to the baseball field and they might have their minds back in the classroom."
But as jack-of-all-trades Turner and project leader Vasquez switch their attention from drilling holes to reviewing the pros and cons of various sensor systems, the project clearly benefits from the students' engineering and baseball backgrounds.
"We're getting real data rather than going by guesswork and feel," said Vasquez. "Pro players are a little different because once they find something they like, they tend to stick with it. Most people are traditionalists. If a bat or a glove feels good, they don't really care what's behind it. We're trying to create more awareness of how things work, how it will protect them, and maybe keep them off the 15-day DL."
Rawlings connection
When MIT established the Sports Innovation program in 1999, it presented a perfect opportunity for cooperative efforts between students and equipment manufacturers.
"They're not doing stem-cell research," said Blair. "It's not at that level. But it's creative problem solving and critical thinking and you can apply that to any field. There are always problems to be solved."
Students in the program have developed running shoes for New Balance, compared the acoustics of different golf clubs for Cleveland Golf, and studied bat-handle flexibility for Rawlings.
In many ways, the relationship between MIT and Rawlings serves as a perfect model. Rawlings engineer Greg Williams and colleague Brian Hoying both participated in the Sports Innovation program as undergraduates. As a shortstop on the MIT baseball team, Williams recruited his younger teammates, Vasquez and Turner, into the program.
In turn, Vasquez and Turner have recruited their younger teammates, Park and freshman catcher Dan Hyatt. Football player and Mechanical Engineering major Elliott Perez and Turner's neighbor and fellow Computer Science and Electrical Engineering major Kjell Tovander complete the project team.
"Greg and I know that the type of students who work for Kim love sports and love trying to do new development," said Hoying, a former multisport athlete at MIT. "We have some of the same passions and it's an easy working relationship because of that.
"MIT students are as capable of getting stuff done as we are in the industry sometimes. We have plenty of other projects on our plate, so it's good to have the support of students like that, especially when their expertise might be a little bit different than ours."
The baseball project, however, may be the last in a line of successful partnerships between MIT and sports companies. While Blair will keep his MIT affiliate appointment, he accepted a role as vice president of research and development at Xenith in February. The new job limits the time he can spend mentoring students. Consequently, the future of the Sports Innovation program is in jeopardy.
So far, neither a department nor an individual has stepped forward to support and guide the program. The students may learn that critical thinking cannot solve every problem.
Shira Springer can be reached at springer@globe.com.
