Posted by: Donny Buster (donnybstr@aol.com) on Fri Sep 19 04:47:47 2003

I occassionally work with kids of all ages.I am writing about the senario of vertical/ flattening bat during the stride. Teds book shows his sequence clearly. He did it without question. Gwynn said that the hands must come cocked at toe touch and the closer you were to that positon , the better off you would be. My experience with youth ball suggest that flattening of the hands is difficult to teach and that starting closer to the launch positon does work well for many kids.Many kids never get the hands/bat to the proper launch position. It seem like vertical start makes that more unlikely. They don't take the time TED did to time it all and they are chronically late to the ball.