Article 3 - Visual Memory, St. Louis and Albert Pujols

This is the third in a series of articles on the Visual Memory Index©.
To read the entire series to-date, click here.

The 2011 World Series was interesting from this standpoint: In October, St. Louis can turn quite cold in a short period of time. In Texas, Arlington can be very warm at World Series time. It turned out that way during the Series of 2011.

Armed with the “Neeley Scale” (see Article 2) air density gauge, it was easy to predict the first two games of the World Series would be pitchers’ duels. Then, upon moving to Arlington, Texas, the games could become slug fests.

St. Louis Cardinals vs. Texas Rangers
1 October 19 Texas Rangers – 2, St. Louis Cardinals – 3 Busch Stadium
2 October 20 Texas Rangers – 2, St. Louis Cardinals – 1 Busch Stadium
3 October 22 St. Louis Cardinals – 16, Texas Rangers – 7 Arlington
4 October 23 St. Louis Cardinals – 0, Texas Rangers – 4 Arlington

Neeley Scale - Maximum Lift and Tail Off from a straight line at ¾ arm slot on 95 mph four-seam fastball

Air Density	Heavyweights	Welterweights	Lightweights	Featherweights	Bantamweights
Neeley Scale	70’s	60’s	50’s	40’s	30’s
Max Lift	7 inches Lift	6 Inches Lift	5 Inches Lift	4 Inches Lift	3 Inches Lift
Max Tail Off	9 Inches Tail Off	8 Inches Tail Off	7 Inches Tail Off	5 Inches Tail Off	4 Inches Tail Off
Venues	California teams, Seattle, Philly, Boston, Wash., New York & Balt.	the Midwest up to 1,000 feet and warmer temps	Atlanta, Arizona, Texas, Kansas City	Denver Coors Field	Denver Coors Field

Game time temperatures in St. Louis identified the game as a “Heavyweight,” but neither St. Louis nor Texas had played in a “Heavyweight” game for at least two weeks. Albert Pujols went 0 for 6 in the two games in St. Louis, as did most of the two teams’ players. When switching to Arlington’s “Welterweight” air for Game 3, Pujols went 5 for 6. I mention this because Albert Pujols is one of the game’s best hitters, but the performance was predictable and is opposite a presumption made in the book, “The Physics of Baseball.” Dr. Adair, who admittedly never played baseball, predicted that a Colorado team would have an advantage in MLB because they play 81 games at close to “sea level” locations.

The opposite is true. They do learn to play well at home, because they are the most familiar with Coors Field, however, short-term memory is more accurate than long-term and the distant memory of ball movement at sea level takes several games to become similar to the home team. Regardless of the team, as the movement increases (not surprisingly) the struggle to square up on a ball increases. Similarly, as the movement decreases, the performance goes up, until (as I have frequently observed) a team becomes fully adjusted to a particular environment. Watch out for game 5 at a similar ADI.

Visual Memory by Clifton Neeley, creator of the Visual Memory Index© and the web-site www.baseballvmi.com. Clifton pitched and played baseball and fast-pitch softball in the mountainous southwest Colorado area (from 4,000 feet in Grand Junction to 6,000 feet in Durango to 9,000 feet in Telluride) prior to his college experience in baseball.