Getting bat to meet ball at the right instant is the difference between a home run and a foul. An error of five or six milliseconds too early or late will spoil the shot. Parallel processing Professor Adair's calculations do make the feat of hitting a professional baseball pitch seem unlikely. In practice however, many of the calculations are made simultaneously and a good dose of practice and supreme talent are also present. It's obviously not impossible to hit the ball, but the difficulty is expressed in just how few swings actually produce good shots.
Similar problems face professional cricket players during summer in other parts of the world.
Cricket balls are bowled at similar or slightly faster speeds than baseballs. The batsman's job is made more tricky though by the fact that the ball strikes the ground during its flight. Depending on how the bowler made the delivery, there can be great variation in the speed, direction and height of the ball afterwards. Also, unlike baseball players, cricketers have to worry about balls being delivered either side of their body and then playing strokes around a 360-degree playing field. To top it all off, a cricket pitch is only 22 yards long, roughly a third of the distance the ball travels in baseball.