Here's an idea, little different. Teams each build two machines; one to pitch a baseball or softball, one to hit it. Trick is, each team's hitting machine has to hit the ball pitched by the other team's pitching machine. You could rig the pitching machine to throw speedballs, or even put in some kind of randomizer so the pitches are each unique. Then there are a lot of different designs that could be used to return the ball, from a standard swinging bat to a trampoline that rebounds everything, but not necessarily accurately. The engineering is flexible enough, and what is more American than Baseball? They can't make an Apple Pie machine.

-- david ley (david.ley@tyc.state.tx.us), February 18, 2001

Answers

Sounds boring....Actually, It would probably more exciting that real baseball. Maybe you can get the pitching machine to stall around, scuff the ground with his foot, scratch his balls and spit too. And Rosanne could do the National Anthem!

-- John Gap (mindthegap64@hotmail.com), February 19, 2001.

Along the same lines, I saw a "bowling machine" that could accuratly launch bowling balls down a lane and "play" a perfect game. This was actualy made to help design competition grade bowling balls and, I think, bowling lanes. The machine had a throwing arm, and could spin the ball as well, so this was a lot more intricate than rolling a ball down an incline....

Any other odd "sports machines" out there?

-- Arthur Majoor (a_majoor@hotmail.com), February 19, 2001.

Boring? Would you rather they play cricket? C'mon, bring in a few cocaine addicts and wife-beaters, oops, sorry, I meant to say professional athletes, as experts, and it would be far from boring!

-- david ley (david.ley@tyc.state.tx.us), February 19, 2001.

It sounds kind of interesting (if you want to see a real man's pitching machine, see http://www.srl.org/yard/pitching/).

Forget hitting, though. Build two wooden sheds and the winner is the one who levels their shed first by shooting baseballs at it. (See the above Web site again for details). My pitching machine would be powered by a small block V8. How about yours?

Yours in junk,

-- Rick Tyler (rick@raf.com), February 23, 2001.

For levelling a shed with a baseball machine, I will look for a turboshaft engine from a helicopter. With that amoount of RPM to power a rotary throwing arm, and a simple gravity feed/hopper system for the balls, I should be able to flatten the shed in a matter of seconds.....

-- Arthur Majoor (a_majoor@hotmail.com), February 26, 2001.