The two morning hosts had left the subject of sports for a moment to discuss national headlines. One story involved a Ku Klux Klan ceremony at which….some Klan member was firing a gun straight up into the air. You’ve probably guessed by now that a bullet came back down, which they tend to do. Well, all the bullets came back down. But one in particular found its way to the ground only after going clean through the top and then out the bottom of the skull of one of the celebrants, critically injuring him. (A British newspaper headlined this story “Ku Klux Klan Man Shot as Initiation Goes Wrong.” Which raises the question: What Klan initiation has ever gone right?)


Anyway, the talk show hosts were incredulous that a bullet could have come down hard enough to do that kind of head damage “just from gravity,” as one put it.

Now, I wouldn’t expect Klansmen to go in for the kind of book learning that would reveal that a bullet returning to earth after being shot straight up could return fast enough to cause serious injury. What did surprise me was that the two men who…watch the trajectory of projectiles for a living — batted baseballs, for example — would be incredulous at the speed at which some objects return to earth. Hadn’t they ever noticed that when a catcher fields a major league pop-up, where the baseball has gone almost straight up and down, the ball smashes into that catcher’s mitt pretty darn hard?


In summary, as a public service for guys waving guns or news copy: stuff that goes up fast comes down fast. In a vacuum, where air resistance is not a factor, an object sent on a flight has a final downward speec that is, amazingly enough, equal to its initial upward speed. I’ve seen equations — it’s true! Closer to home, air resistance does indeed slow down a bullet or baseball, but both still gallop back to earth at quite a clip. And a bullet is pointy.