Pete Rose Was Right: Sliding Head First *Is* Faster
It turns out that Pete Rose was right to slide head first into the bag for years: It really did help him get to the base faster. WIRED says that a physicist has concluded that baseball players do gain an advantage by sliding head first versus leg first into a base. No word on how much extra time Charlie Hustle picked up by having his aerodynamic, Moe Howard haircut.
The difference, according to Washington University’s David Peters? About 0.02 seconds. While that might not sound like much, when calculated for a baseball player running 90 feet at 15 mph, that’s about five inches - enough to make the difference between beating out a play at steal attempt at second versus getting thrown out.
