Three S&T faculty helped strike down claims that “juiced” baseballs were the cause of a spike in Major League home run hits in 1987. Dr. Lee Bain and Dr. V.A. Samaranayake in mathematics and statistics, along with Dr. Terry Lenhoff in mechanical engineering, were hired as independent testers. Bain and Lenhoff brought to the project more than a dozen years of testing baseballs for the National and American Leagues and several manufacturers to ensure rigid specifications were met. The team’s testing methods included “pitching” baseballs with a cannon as well as taking measurements and conducting statistical analysis.
Their findings? There was no foul play. The baseballs all met major-league standards. When juicing speculation resurfaced in 1994, the S&T research was cited in USA Today, causing one writer to call the rumors “ball-oney.”
Now that’s a win for the home team!
Share This Story
Spark a Memory?
Share your story! Fill out the form below to share your fondest memory or anecdote of S&T. If you'd prefer not typing, you can also share by phone at 833-646-3715 (833-Miner150).
The house that Michael Lancey built
The original Yankee Stadium, completed in 1923, came to be known as “The House That Ruth Built,” in recognition of…
Houston, we have a slight case of nausea
NASA referred to its KC-125 aircraft as the “weightless wonder” because it carried college students and their experiments into micro-gravity…
Endurance was her middle name
The first woman to earn a degree from S&T, Eva Endurance Hirdler Greene, class of 1911, received the general science…
Ron Epps: getting the job at NASA
After earning a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1967, Ron Epps began a long and illustrious career at NASA...
Harvest Collier on student success
Harvest Collier, a professor of chemistry, served several years in the early 21st century as vice provost...
Erin Hayden and Matthew Garger
Although Erin Hayden and Matthew Garger were both students at S&T for an overlapping year, they didn’t meet until the…