When does a batter start to swing?

Way back in the spring I found myself caught in a debate over when a baseball batter starts his swing. The opposing view contended that the batter began to swing his bat before the ball was even released from the pitcher's hand. Having both pitched and batted, I knew that this wasn't correct, but I wasn't able to produce any evidence to support my convictions. I remembered that when I played the game, I had enough time to see where the pitch was coming and how the ball was spinning before determining whether or not I wanted to swing my bat. The only time I've ever had to consistently swing before the pitcher let go of the ball was while playing Earl Weaver Baseball on the Amiga computer!

Being April at the time, I was unable to find any suitable baseball photos or video on the internet. Sadly, I withdrew from the conversation; however, this issue still ate away at me.

One night as I was working on a video project for work, I happened to be recording the American League playoff series. So I had a chance to locate a good fastball pitcher and step frame by frame through the action. Lets review my findings, shan't we?

	Here we see the pitcher beginning his delivery to the plate. The ball has not yet left his hand. OK, so far so good.
	There... he's launched it. What's this? The batter has only lifted his left heel but the bat hasn't moved.
	The ball is getting closer but still, no bat movement forward.
	OK, it's go time. If he's gonna swing he had better start something now. But look how far away from the pitcher's mound that baseball is.
	This frame is about 150 milliseconds after the one above. In that time, the batter finally swings. And guess what? He swings EARLY. The ball is fouled off his left foot and caroms toward the first base side of the field.
	And don't think this pitcher is lobbing them into that batter. That last pitch was clocked at 91 MPH.

So to summarize, the pitcher threw a 91 MPH fastball that the batter swung early at and fouled off. The bat didn't start moving until the ball was 20 or less feet from the mound, about two thirds of the way on its journey.

Well, I rest my case... and my insides have stopped churning.

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