This isn't about the Cubs, but it is an amusing baseball science speculation. What if a pitcher threw a pitch at nearly the speed of light?
http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/
Let’s set aside the question of how we got the baseball moving that
fast. We'll suppose it's a normal pitch, except in the instant the
pitcher releases the ball, it magically accelerates to 0.9c. From that
point onward, everything proceeds according to normal physics.:
The answer turns out to be “a lot of things”, and they all happen
very quickly, and it doesn’t end well for the batter (or the pitcher). I
sat down with some physics books, a Nolan Ryan action figure, and a
bunch of videotapes of nuclear tests and tried to sort it all out. What
follows is my best guess at a nanosecond-by-nanosecond portrait:
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