UNDER THE HOOD
The rules of baseball haven't changed much since Abner Doubleday. But for fans watching at home, the national pastime has gone decidedly high tech. Sportvision, a broadcast-technology company, has added some new math to ESPN's baseball coverage with Bat Track, a system of seven radar units mounted behind home plate.Bat Track measures the velocity of a batter's swing and the speed of the ball, both before and after the bat makes contact. The raw data is uploaded to a Windows NT workstation, and the results are sent via cable to a mobile production van. As baseball rolls into the postseason, here's a closer look at the new technology stepping up to the plate:
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