Posted by: Jack Mankin (MrBatspeed@aol.com) on Thu Jul 20 00:26:26 2000

>>>One of my coaches always tells his son to hit the top of the ball since his son seemed to always fly out. On this thoery of hitting line drives, does it go back to not hitting down at the ball, or would it be ok to swing level, but somehow try to hit the upper half of the ball.<<<

Hi Mike

Welcome to the site. --- When the mechanics of the swing is correct the bat will be like an extension of the lead arm. In other words, the bat and the lead arm should be in the same plane from initiation to contact. But if the swing mechanics are flawed the bat-head will wobble above and below the true plane of the swing. This will cause the batter to continuously pop-up or hit weak grounders.

Take the premature rolling of the wrist type of flaw as an example. As the wrist start to roll, the lead elbow will also roll causing the path of the hands to lower as the bat-head raises. This most often results in a weak ground ball. --- Would a good coach tell the batter to compensate by aiming at the bottom of the ball -or - would it not be better to correct the flaw that is causing the problem?

Jack Mankin