Posted by: () on Sun Oct 12 15:44:31 2003

I've noticed that the better hitters in baseball stand more straight up. Griffey, Ted Williams, Sheffield, Sosa(bent legs, but his back is fairly straight up, like he's sitting on a chair), Shawn Green, Roberto Alomar, Ivan Rodriguez, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, ARod, Frank Thomas, Giambi, Palmeiro, Manny Ramirez, Jeter, Nomar, Mag Ordonez, Piazza, Olerud, Paul Molitor, Ripkin(sometimes), Bret Boone, Garret Anderson, Helton, Thome, Ichiro, Edgar Martinez, Juan Gonzalez, Carl Everett, Renteria, Vidro, Jaun Pierre, Lofton, Jim Edmonds, Chip Jones, Andrew Jones, Guererro, Jeff Kent, and the list goes on...Jackie Robinson. Why is this? Does the stance affect your swing in any way?

>>>look again. you'll see that any functioning hitter at any level has the hips kinked at about the same angle as the knees; kink-and-counterkink. without the right counterbend balance is shot so that leg action causes a veer either in the bucket or forward. to simply fight against such a veer is probably too stressful for a clean precise stroke.

some will insist you only need to pass through your key checkpoints on the way to launch, which might be half-true because some pros make it consistently from a wildhaired stance through the key points and to clean productive strokes, but it doesn't mean i'd advise a kid to "take a comfortable stance" because the stance is the dead-Zero-Reference point of the swing. best to start balanced, to stay that way.
sammy's a nice guy but does pull away from outside bait every day, the target is nearly never inside, and he does sit down often. that he'll cream it inside so well is a product of the bucket balance that moves him at it. but why has he so much trouble sorting bad outside strikes from good outside bait; is there an associated perception problem involved in that veer?