Posted by: () on Tue Apr 22 20:51:31 2003

No Name,
>
> "If the top hand drives past the bottom hand just before contact, that means you "roll over"."
>
> That is absolutely not true. You may, but it does not mean that you exclusively do.
>
> ray porco
>

THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE. I challange you to describe to me how that is possible. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you are saying, but I don't see how you could not roll over. Take a right handed batter. His right hand starts above his left hand. As the swing starts, the hands flatten so that, from the pitcher's view, the left hand is in front of the right hand. Now, if the right hand drives past the left hand, that means one of two things:

1) The right hand is now in front of the left hand, which is roll over.
2) The hands are now paralell with each other. From the pitcher's view, they are right next to each other with the right hand closer to the outside part of the plate. This may not actually be roll over, but in the next few miliseconds, the hands will roll over.

As I said before, roll over is the enemy. When the hands roll over, the bat changes its position and most likely will cause you to hit the top half of the ball. #1 is clearly bad, and IMO what will happen if you tell someone to drive their top hand past their bottom hand. #2 may not be bad in itself, but unless your timing is perfect, you will roll over and ground out. Plus, in a good swing, you're not going to get much from pushing your top hand.

I'm not sure where it is, but I believe somewhere in this thread Teacherman made a post that contained the statement that you can push off the ball, just like you can pull off the ball. Telling most hitters to push with their top hand will result in a linear, push off the ball swing. Unless I'm misunderstanding you. Please explain what you mean when you say "the top hand drives past the bottom hand."