Just What Baseball Needs: More Statistics!

Finally, a high-tech firm has found a way to put geometry to practical use.

When baseball’s all-star sluggers hit balls out of the park at tonight’s home run derby in Atlanta’s Turner Field, Sportvision will calculate exactly how far the balls would go if they plowed through the stands and landed on the ground. Two cameras mounted in the upper deck will be equipped with special sensors to track the path of each ball. The data will be fed to a computer program that will model the trajectory of the ball and extrapolate where it would land if it could hit the ground.

The technology, dubbed “ESPN True Track,” was developed in cooperation with the sports cable network. Sportvision was founded 2 1/2 years ago by the team that created the glowing hockey puck for the Fox network. Sportvision and ESPN previously teamed up to bring football fans 1st & Ten, a yellow line on the TV screen that highlights the boundary a team needs to cross to earn a first down.