Tommy Vessella isn’t just a Tri-City ValleyCats pitcher. He’s also a baseball physicist.
Vessella passed along his knowledge to a group of children attending Saturday’s Physics of Baseball program at Troy’s Children’s Museum of Science and Technology.
Vessella ` a kineseology major in college ` and teammate Luis Pardo showed the children the different grips they use on the baseball and how those grips affect the ball’s flight.
`When we had to sign up for player appearances, I jumped at this one,` said Vessella, who wrote his senior paper on baseball physics. `Physics and baseball go along great.`
The museum held several clinics before Vessella and Pardo arrived, including finding the sweet spot on a baseball bat and the bounciness of different balls. Each clinic was designed to teach the children how physics relates to baseball.
`You can sit them in a classroom, you can tell them everything and the words might get into them, but they won’t understand until they get their hands on it,` said museum educator Dawn Baldwin.
`We try to approach education as entertainment,` added Laurie Miedema, the museum’s director of member and guest relations. `This is just an example of what we do here.`
Some of the physics lessons might have gone over the heads of the children, who ranged in age from 6 to 12, but they enjoyed participating in the activities.
`My little guy just wanted to learn how to throw a curve ball,` said Mike Roizman of East Greenbush, who brought his two baseball-playing sons to the museum.
`They’re baseball fans, and they want to have a fun time,` added Delmar’s Scott Tenenbaum, who brought his three sons. `We’re all into baseball and science, so this was good for them.`
Tenenbaum’s oldest son Max enjoyed the baseball bat experiment, where each of the children got to swing at tennis balls aimed for the sweet spot on the barrel.
`When I get home, I’ll probably get the hammer out and mark the sweet spot,` said Max, who hit a couple of long fly balls.
This was the second year of the museum’s `Physics of Baseball` program.“