Their Pitch Is a Hit : Technology: Irvine entrepreneurs field high-tech system that scans and analyzes path of a baseball from every conceivable angle. It could change the way we see the game.

Their own home base may be a small office in one of this city’s nondescript business parks, but a couple of Canadians and a Singapore-born computer wizard are trying to change the way Americans watch baseball.

British Columbians Brian Harris and Donald R. Johnston, along with systems engineer Mike L.W. Lim, have been visiting the country’s major league baseball stadiums this spring, showing off a high-tech system that can track a pitch and instantly display its path, speed and curvature--all in mind-boggling, multicolor graphics.

The computer system, called Supervision, was invented by Harris’ brother, aeronautical engineer Michael Harris, after he attended a baseball game several years ago and found it difficult to see the pitches.

“You never see the ball,” said the inventor’s brother, Brian Harris, who left a real estate practice in Vancouver to help run the Irvine company, Sportsight Inc.

Patents on the system were obtained in 1985, and the company was formed a couple of years later. The publicly held company, whose stock is traded on the over-the-counter market in the United States and on the Vancouver Stock Exchange, is just entering its marketing phase, Harris said. It is still looking for its first sale or long-term lease of the system.

The system, which Sportsight hopes to lease for about $350,000 to $400,000 a year, could have applications in golf, tennis, cricket and other sports, but right now the company is focusing on establishing itself in the baseball world.

In recent weeks, Supervision has received some vital exposure on games broadcast by cable networks ESPN and SportsChannel America. Harris is also trying to interest major league coaches in using the system as a diagnostic and teaching tool.

“Whatever you want it programmed to do, it will do,” Harris said.

The system consists of two cameras, mounted off the field behind home plate along the first and third base lines. Using an ancient navigational principal called triangulation--using two fixed points to determine the position of a third point--a computer uses the 60 pictures a second transmitted by the cameras to generate information about the pitch: its speed and height when leaving the pitcher’s hand, at several points along the way to the batter, and as it crosses the plate; and the distance in inches the ball drops, curves right or left, or, in the case of a rare rising fastball, climbs.

The computer then translates this information into colorful, viewer-friendly images that show exactly what the previous pitch did, from any angle imaginable.

Supervision can also store and quickly retrieve information about pitches in numerous ways: all the pitches thrown by a pitcher to a particular batter, in specific situations, in a given month, etc. Coaches can quickly spot, and quantify, tendencies, strengths and weaknesses.

But because of the system’s vast capabilities, Harris says he is careful not to overwhelm broadcasters and coaches when he introduces them to Supervision. “We don’t dare show anybody everything it will do right off the bat,” he said. “It’s too much.”

One obvious use of Supervision would be to complement instant replays during telecasts. Besides explaining that the pitch that just made Jose Canseco look foolish was a curveball, the announcers could use Supervision to show exactly how much, and at which point, the ball curved.

The system has been tried out a few times and is scheduled to be used at Anaheim Stadium tonight during a game between the Angels and Chicago White Sox. Producers and announcers are still trying to figure out just how to use the new toy without offending baseball purists.

“Technically, it’s quite a breakthrough,” said SportsChannel programming director Rocky Flinterman. “It’s an innovation that is really in the hands of the fans to accept. . . . We don’t want to intrude upon the baseball game.”

Harris says he understands that sentiment, and thinks the system should be used only as often as the game warrants. “If it’s a low-scoring pitching duel, you might use it a lot,” he said. “If it’s a high-scoring game, 13-11, with lots of home runs, maybe you wouldn’t use it at all.”

One thing Sportsight does not want the system used for is to show up the umpires. Supervision can show whether a ball was indeed a strike, but Harris does not want to antagonize umpires by proving to thousands of viewers that the men in blue blew the call.

“We don’t need that,” Harris said.

On Tuesday, however, a Chicago TV station, WGN, used the system for exactly that purpose, showing viewers that a called third strike against a Chicago White Sox player had actually been a ball.

“They showed it over and over again,” said Johnston, the executive vice president. “Maybe it will stir the pot a bit.”

Sportsight’s officers don’t expect major league coaches to begin using Supervision this year, since the season is well under way. But it has already caught the eye of some big league coaches and scouts, who could use the system to show pitchers exactly how good--or bad--their stuff is.

That could be useful to young pitchers, to pitchers struggling through slumps or recovering from injuries, and to teams engaged in negotiations with multimillion-dollar athletes. A quick review of the pitcher’s season on Supervision might show that his fastball has lost a few miles per hour, or that his curveball just doesn’t have the same bite.

Mel Didier, a scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers, said he saw several uses for Supervision after a demonstration during baseball’s winter meetings last December in Chicago.

“This machine . . . could help make a pitcher the best he can possibly be,” Didier said. “A kid can really look at himself, and say, ‘This curveball is not getting the rotation or break I thought it was,’ rather than just being told.”

Perfect Pitch The white ball shows the path taken by a curveball as recorded by Sportsight’s Supervision system. The gray ball shows the direction the pitch would have taken had it traveled straight, without any spin. The “break” of the pitch, i.e. its departure from the straight path, is indicated in inches. Two cameras placed behind home plate are linked to computers that generate three- dimensional images of the ball’s flight.