IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 48

sport

in sports-the pressure of delivering something when it's needed. I thrive in those
kinds of situations." The other third of the
year he worked in Sportvision's Mountain
View offices, doing more extensive software development in preparation for the
next racing season.

professional athlete, he says, because he traveled to
sporting events as part of the event, not as a spectator.
That summer Perry built an interface between a database containing golfer statistics and a system that created display graphics as part of a TV broadcast. It wasn't
a huge project, but it was all his.
As college graduation approached, Perry applied for
jobs at a number of large Silicon Valley companies, but
without much enthusiasm. He really wanted to work for
Sportvision. So he kept e-mailing the company's chief
technology officer, begging for a job. It worked: A week
before graduation, he got an offer-a position developing
software for the Indy Racing League, a series of races that
culminates in the Indy 500. He started in January 2006.
As part of the new job, Perry traveled around the
country to Indy events. It was a blast. "I was newly 22,
just graduated, and I got to see the nation and watch
sports," he says. For about eight months out of each
year, he was on the road almost constantly. The graphics
and tracking system for the Indy races was new, so bugs
needed to be fixed and features added on the fly. Sometimes he stayed up at the racetrack all night coding and
released the updated software in the morning, without
any reasonable time for testing. "It's not the best way to
code," Perry admits. "But it's a stress that I was used to
48

fEb 2014

nORTh aMERICan

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

MaRk
PERRy
IEEE Member
age 30
What he Does
Creates tracking,
data-collection,
and televisiongraphics systems for
professional baseball
stadiums.
For Whom
Sportvision
Where he
Does it in mountain
view, Calif., and in
major- and minorleague ballparks
around the world
Fun Factors Gets
access to the press
box, clubhouse, and
field during baseball
games and gets to
throw pitches in the
parking lot as part of
software testing.

this was in many ways his dream job-
with one catch: Auto racing wasn't baseball. But in 2009 Perry became managing
engineer of the team behind Pitchf/x, software for tracking baseball pitches and displaying their trajectories on TV.
Major-league ballparks were already
using Pitchf/x. Perry's assignment was to
help roll it out into minor-league ballparks.
While major-league Pitchf/x was then primarily used just to enhance television
broadcasts, the minor-league system was
going to go further-it would collect and
distribute data and video to teams in real
time. And more than just the path of the
pitch would be available. "We always had
the equation of motion that defined the pitch," Perry
says. "We use that to draw the trail of the ball and show
where it crosses home plate."
The equation includes nine parameters, including
initial position, velocity, and acceleration. Coaches and
scouts find some of these parameters useful because
they can reveal minute changes in a pitcher's delivery.
Perry's group has also developed a system called
Hitf/x, to track aspects of hitting, including the contact
point and the angle the ball takes as it comes off the
bat. As with its pitching data, Sportvision has found
that this information is valuable to coaches and scouts.
More recently, Perry started working on software for
tracking the position, angle, and velocity of different
parts of a player's body.
Perry's not at all sour about giving up his youthful aspiration of becoming a pitcher. "I'm okay with
not playing pro sports, because I am really part of pro
sports," he says. "I see the games from the sidelines,
next to the athletes. And they treat you like you're
just like them. You're not there to harass them; you're
working together."
The only downside of being a sports professional
instead of an ordinary fan, Perry explains, is that now
he can't ask for autographs. -tek l a s. Per ry
photograph by

Gabriela Hasbun

http://SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum February, 2014