The Importance of Pitch Speed

The term velocity has become a modern term for what used to be called speed. The first newspaper reference I could find dates from a 1966 excerpt from Branch Ricky's book, the American Diamond. So as best as I can tell, Branch Ricky started this or at least popularized it in the mid 60s. It was definitely becoming a lot less common as I went back. But if you just say it's a 100 mile per hour exit velocity, batted ball, technically that should probably be exit speed.