Posted by: BMill (brumil2@hotmail.com) on Thu May 8 18:14:54 2003

Hi everyone
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> I have just switched from baseball to men's fastpitch softball. I find it's a better game at my post-college age, at least in my area, for many reasons, some social.
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> Also, there is a shortage of pitching everywhere, and in fastpicth, two starters can get you through a weekend tournament. In adult amateur baseball, the games often become tiresome drudgery because no one can pitch.
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> Anyway, I have been adapting my swing, which in the past two years has adopted many of Jack's ideas, principally accelerating a circular hand path with rotation, not an arm push. The top hand stuff is beyond me at present. The results were great in baseball the past two years, and it took me that long to learn those rudimentary mechanics.
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> In adjusting to fastpitch, I have come to believe that many aspects of the swing do need to be modified, at least for me. I play "B" level and we face some pitchers who throw the equivalent of 90 miles per hour from a baseball distance.
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> I have had some success by eliminating my stride and slightly breaking my back knee in toward the front knee in my stance, with the back heel just a bit off the ground. I make a slight bump forward of weight toward the front leg and then go if I like the pitch. Connection with the body and front arm are very important, I believe, and also, so is the lowering of the back elbow that sets the hands palm up/palm down before they get in front of the chest. I have found success performing the elbow/hand action very aggressively, and it happens after I decide to swing.
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> I have found that if I lose the connection between the top arm and the chest, my hand action is wasted and the swing is bad.
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> Theoretically, a hitter could achieve more bat speed with a Sheffield-type bat head waggle. I am also sure that all the pre-setting I do in the stance probably results in a little less bat speed than if I performed the motions from scratch. You move faster if you move THROUGH the motions than if you start there, right? Or at least some say, and it sounds reasonable to me.
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> The caveat, I believe is this: for me, the fuller and more elaborate swing that employs a stride and rotation from a landing that has both heels down is simply too difficult to coordinate under the time pressure in which I am hitting.
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> The bat speed it might generate is not worth the poor swings my nervous system produces when having to coordinate all those movements.
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> Perhaps striding and top hand waggling do produce more bat speed. They also produce more complexity, and perhaps hitters need to be aware of that trade off.
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> Certainly, accelerating with rotation into a circular hand path is the baseline essential. And that can easily be produced with neither a stride nor a top hand waggle.
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> This short little swing gets me a lot of up the middle line drives and the occasional gapper to the wall in right. Pulling to left field is harder, but maybe that's what I will do with change-ups.
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> Striding, waggling the bat head and rotating from a position that doesn't pre-set the back knee seem like great ideas. From fastpich distance, at the speeds I am facing, they are beyond my athletic ability.
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> Melvin
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> I have a High School daughter in fastpitch and have coached it many years and you have described what most girls stuggle with. For the most part the girls can't generate the speed boys do so it is really hard when they face the top notch pitchers. Your "trade off" isuues are right on the mark. Really makes it interesting doesn't it?
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