Major Leage Equivalent Pitch Speed during LLWS??

Whew! I'm sure glad no one got nasty with me, and I'm sure you know the question was more to make people think about what they were really doing.

I really believe we all get too carried away with the "toys" sometimes, and its just nice to stop and take a look.

CADad made an excellent point about how the gun can and will affect kids. Last year, during a disagreement with a dad who insisted on breaking out the gun in the middle of games and announcing the "scores", BTW, that what the reading really is, a challenge was issued.

I told him that by doing that, he was being unfair to the kids because it changed the way they were throwing. He agreed to a "test". I mounted my gun in the snack bar where it couldn't be seen easily, and the next game his boys team played, I sat in the snack bar and wrote down the speed of every pitch. He did his "normal" thing, and I noted which pitches he was doing that for.

I know it wasn't scientific by any stretch of the imagination, but there was a definite increase in velocity for at least the 1st few pitches he was gunning the kids on. I wish I had made provisions to track it better, but it also seemed that when he was gunning pitches, the pitcher lost some control.

Since I was only trying to make a point, which he agreed I did, we didn't do the "right thing" and continue the experiment over a several games and with several pitchers. I'm hoping to get a gun mounted at our HS field this year and a friend has promised to write a program so we can run the readings real time into the computer.

If that happens, it will be a lot more "scientific" when someone shows up with a gun because we'll have a great deal more data, but I'm guessing it will show pretty much the same thing. I know there's no better way to accurately measure things like how hard Tommy is throwing compared to Billy, or how much difference there is between Joey's FB and CU.

But, IMHO, there is a definite way those things should be done, and one way is not to suddenly whip out a gun in the middle of a game. I think if the gun is going to be used, it should be used continually so the "novelty" wears off, and the readings should be written down.

Even in practices or at pitching lessons, checking something a few times in a controlled environment is absolutely different than seeing what happens in a game.

Love the toy, love the fun, but if its gonna be used, I just think people should use it so that it give the best results. It just drives me "NUTS" when some dad with more money than brains whips out his Jugs and starts telling people what the readings are. Almost invariably a small crowd gathers and that takes the focus away from the game and the kids.