XKCD: The physics of relativistic baseball

XKCD, Randall Munroe’s comic strip, today considers the question “What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?”

Even if you find the game of baseball to be confusing or uninteresting, the answer might please you. The drawing below is but one detail:

BONUS (for baseball historians only): The description of an item for sale on Ebay hints that question may have been put to an actual test in the 1940s. The item for sale is  described in these words: “1946 July 1 LIFE Magazine Bikini Atomic Bomb Test – Ted Williams – Joe Louis”