More on the inertia generated by "Sport Science"
(Photo by BASE Productions/FSN)
Arizona Cardinals quarterback Matt Leinart displays his entire throwing range in this high defintion photo shot at thousands of frames a second laid over each other during the production of the FSN show, "Sport Science."
Following up on today's Daily News media column on the new series, "Sport Science," where FSN will have original shows airing Sundays at 9 p.m.:
The sight of Miami Dolphins linebacker Joey Porter using a sledgehammer on a crash-test dummy makes you think: Doesn't an All-Pro like him have better things to do than risk injury with this TV stuff?
John Brenkus, the show's co-creator and on-air guinea pig, said the first thing FSN asked him the project was what athletes would be attached to it?
"We took the approach that: If we build it, they will come," said Brenkus about the airport hanger in Hawthorne they converted into the lab. "They're gazillionares. But if you build the most high-tech sports facility that's cutting edge and tell them we want to give you insight on your abilities, they'll come. It ended up as an easy sell. When you can teach something to some athlete that you idolize, that’s an incredibly reearding experience. Guys like Chad Johnson, who has this bad-boy image, showed up on time and was only supposed to stay an hour. He was there four or five hours later asking us, 'What else can I do?'"
Softball pitcher Jennie Finch ended up shattering a piece of plexiglass in a segment trying to see which had a greater impact, a baseball or a softball. The experiment was trying to measure the reaction time a batter has against either a baseball or softball pitcher. As it turned out, they discovered that a batter can't see a 90 mile per hour pitch during the last 25 feet of flight. The eye blinks at .83 seconds, almost the same as an MLB fastball. The brain can't measure it that close for a batter to make a decision.
Matt Leinart and others participated in a "empathy" test -- hooked up with all kinds of sensors to measure blood pressure and biorhythms, the athletes were put in front of a monitor and watched images.
"It was kind of like 'Clockwork Orange'," said Brenkus. "All the images were sports related, from a car wreck to a home run to someone getting kicked into the groin. The responses were measured as how the athletes empathized with what they saw. And as it turned out, if you watched something take place either in person or on TV, your body does respond to the feeling of watching someone else get hurt. We do experience some pain. You have a physical reaction."
Still, none of the athletes were hurt during the taping, whether or not a Humane Society representative was present on the set.
In one experiement, though, the pet-protection group could have flinched.
In an episode that tried to recreate things that have happened in the sports world, to prove that sometimes there's a one-in-a-billion chance that it could have occured in the first place, Brenkus had his crew launch cornish game hens out of a small cannon at 55 mph to see if they could be hit in mid-flight by a 90-mph baseball thrown from a pitching machine.
They were trying to recreate the time when a pitch from Arizona Diamondbacks buzzsaw Randy Johnson hit a dove in mid-flight during a 2001 exhibition game (it was ruled no pitch ... tell that to the bird):
"That got to be very comical," said Brenkus. "A crew member was loading these hens into a canon like a musket with a road, shoving it in. We tried it 100 times and you just can't control the flight of the bird or the ball. They were two completely random factors. We finally suspended it. I think it's safe to say it'll never happen again."
The cannon might not be the most high-tech of the equipment used, but the reason a show like this can pull off science experiments that are as visual and educational to the audience is because of the technology available these days versus five or 10 years ago. Even a camera shooting 1,000 frames per second that had immediate feedback, for example, makes the show work better.
A series like this has a shelf life that goes beyond just a regular sports TV audience. FSN arranged for the series to be included in the "Cable in the Classroom" initiave, where teachers can access the shows for students.
After Sunday's debut at 9 p.m., the show re-airs on FSN West Monday at 2 p.m., Tuesday at 8 p.m., Wednesday at 1 p.m., Thursday, October 4 at 8 p.m., Friday, October 5 at 4 p.m. and Sunday, October 7 at 8 p.m. leading into the debut of the second episode at 9 p.m.
