When Was the First Radar Gun Used in Baseball?

Short answer: the fall of 1974, at Michigan State University, and it started with a police car parked on a baseball field.

Before radar

Baseball has wanted to measure pitch speed for over a century. The Baseball Hall of Fame notes that Walter Johnson and Nap Rucker were tested at the Remington Arms plant in Bridgeport, Connecticut, by 1912, and people came up with all kinds of inventive ways to time Bob Feller's fastball after he arrived in the late 1930s. None of it was practical for everyday coaching or scouting.

Radar speed guns themselves weren't new. Police were using them by the 1960s to catch speeders.

Danny Litwhiler and the police cruiser

Danny Litwhiler, a former big league outfielder, coached Michigan State's baseball team for nearly two decades (1964 into the early 1980s) and was known for inventing things. In the fall of 1974, according to the Baseball Hall of Fame and The State News, he read a campus newspaper story about MSU police getting a new radar gun.

Litwhiler wondered if it would work on a baseball. The radar only worked when plugged into the cruiser's cigarette lighter, so the police brought a radar-equipped car to practice. In Litwhiler's words, as quoted by the Hall of Fame: "They timed one of my pitchers throwing from 75 to 80 miles per hour on level ground. That seemed about right and I was more convinced when they clocked the same pitcher throwing about five miles faster off a mound."

The JUGS Speed Gun

Litwhiler then went to John Paulson, the man behind the JUGS pitching machine, and together they built a battery-powered prototype that became the JUGS Speed Gun. On October 28, 1974, Litwhiler wrote to Commissioner Bowie Kuhn about the discovery. He wanted every team to have the same chance to use it. His JUGS Speed Gun is now in the Hall of Fame's collection.

Radar caught on quickly with scouts and teams through the late 1970s and 1980s, and JUGS still makes radar guns today. See our JUGS radar gun page.

The "fast gun" and the "slow gun"

A pitch starts slowing as soon as it leaves the hand, because of air drag. Early radar guns from different makers caught the pitch at different points in its flight. Guns that read closer to the plate showed lower numbers, and baseball people nicknamed them "slow guns." Guns that read closer to release earned the "fast gun" label. As newer guns, like Stalker's, read nearer the release point, the labels shifted.

The takeaway: don't compare a 1980s radar reading straight to a modern one. Modern systems report speed at release, which is higher than a reading near the plate.

From radar guns to ball tracking

2015: MLB's Statcast tracking was installed in all 30 ballparks.
2017: Statcast's pitch speed came from TrackMan radar, measured at release.
Today: MLB uses Hawk-Eye camera tracking for Statcast. Scouts and coaches still carry handheld radar guns, and portable trackers like TrackMan and Rapsodo are common in college and pro bullpens.

Want one of your own? See our guide to the best baseball radar guns →

FAQ

Who invented the baseball radar gun?

Michigan State baseball coach Danny Litwhiler is credited with bringing radar to baseball in 1974. He tested a police radar on his pitchers, then worked with John Paulson, the man behind the JUGS pitching machine, on a battery-powered prototype that became the JUGS Speed Gun.

Were pitchers in the 1970s and 80s slower than today?

Partly it's the measuring. Many early guns read the pitch later in flight, after it had slowed, while today's systems report speed at release. So old readings look lower than they would on modern equipment.