Posted by: grc (grcrackel@yahoo.com) on Mon Jul 10 20:11:04 2000

My son who bats lefthanded has been hitting nothing but grounders to second and first, once in awhile one gets through for a hit but usually they are right at someone, i dont know what to do ,i dont want to change anything because he is hitting the ball hard and making good contact, any suggestions? ed...does your son by any chance throw right? if he throws right/bats left than his solution will be completely different than if he throws left/bats left ...but assuming that he is lefty all the way, here are some possibilities....(1) he could be rolling his hands before contact (need palm-up/palm-down).....(2) he could be trying to pull outside pitches (and afterall, probably 70 % of all hitable pitches at this level are away)....(3) he could be contacting the ball when the bat is headed down...gotta wait until bat is back on the up swing (4) some coaches have taught that you should swing "down" on the ball, and this will surely cause a lot of ground balls!!! (5) has any coach had him do the fence drill? this drill which has been increasingly become discredited has ruined many swings and many careers.......BUT MOST IMPORTANT ADVICE: you need to film him ; hopefully you not only have a camcorder but also a vcr that has freeze-frame capability...a typical swing will have about 5 freezable frames and you might be amazed at what you can see and analyze.......i hope this helps.....grc....