Posted by: Coach C () on Tue Dec 30 22:15:14 2003

In talking with Lamber, I was reminded of some great clips I have of Ruth playing pepper. Even in those pepper drills one can see the differences with the modern day amateur pepper player and Ruth. I have no knowledge of it, but my assumption is that pepper was rampid back in those days. Is there anyone else that buys the notion that great hitting mechanics can be seen even in a game of pepper?
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> > > > I've got some other clips of great hitters just taking soft swings (Bonds, Palmeiro, etc.) Their mechanics are very detectable to me in those soft swings.
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> > > > Jack,
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> > > > Do your theories hold up in a nice game of pepper. Would Griffey's mechnics be evident in a pepper game? Pepper anyone?
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> > > > Pass the salt!
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> > > > Coach C
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> > > Coach C, The sad truth is that very few guys play pepper any more. Heck, there are signs all over big league parks saying "no pepper".
> > > The first time I noticed was in the early 80's when guys (mostly pitchers) started playing "flip" instead of pepper. Now, I don't even see guys playing flip. The most exciting thing I see is the pitchers up against the fence with their rubber bands stretching. When the wood bat left amateur baseball, the pepper games became fewer and fewer. With the wood, the guys loved to play pepper so that they could feel the head (sweet spot) of the bat getting to the ball. With the metal bats, there is no feel with the head of the bat.
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> > > Doug
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> > doug i think you missed coach's point....the point i was agreeing with coach on is this: pepper, where permitted does not accomplish anything...taking half swings at "pitches" no where near the strike zone does not help timing or anything else...
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> >>>I always played pepper growing up and we played it just having fun but the way we played it I can say created linear placement hitting but it also helped hand eye coordination and learning how to make an inside ball go right up the middle.This however is not what we try to accomplish today.I felt the hand eye helped alot ,I even began seeing the ball and closing my eyes as soon as possible and taking the bat to the ball square,[THE WHO,pinball wizard ]had me feeling the game.


RQL,

I know what you mean about the linear placement. The point I'm trying to make is that in watching Ruth play pepper, he did it differnetly than I did....I know it sounds strange, but he would angle the bat to the ball and not throw the head at in front with the hands. It's realy quite differnet than my instincts told me to do it back in the day. If you ask any kid today to play pepper, they can not do it without breaking their wrist (hands hitter), Ruth didn't do it that way....there never was a wrist break and my impression is from watching him, that he never played pepper in a linear (snapping wrists) fashion and he never hit that way in games.....the wrists seem to roll over naturally. Ruth would pull the bat across his chest to stay inside the ball, rather than throw the bat forward inside the flight ball to create the angle. This probably sounds confusing, but let's just say he played pepper diferrently than you or I did based on your comments.

Would you say that situational hitting is a linear concept (bigger version of pepper)? Or do rotational mechanics allow one to work the ball all over the field. I can work the ball all over the field and stay rotational, so I can play pepper in this fashion as well. Do you agree with this?

Respectfully
Coach C