Posted by: brumil (brumil2@hotmail.com) on Tue Feb 24 10:08:48 2004

I am currently attempting to take my daughter to a new level with her hitting. She is a power hitter but far too often she hits grounders and I'd like to see her hitting more line shots. While she plays tournament ball her coaches are all volunteer and, while good intentioned, are not real students of the game. I mean don't get me wrong they are great with the kids its just that I have been doing a LOT of reading on rotational mechanics and am convinced that a rotational method is what I need to teach my daughter.
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> OK, here is the question..... is there a difference between the softball swing and the baseball swing? I have heard various answers to this question. Some believe that the softball swing has to be more level because the ball is pitched from a lower level and is rising up. Others state that even though the softball is released from a lower point than a baseball by the time it gets to the plate its trajectory is in a downward path so a softball swing should not be any different than a baseball swing.
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> Frankly it is very frustrating because if you talk to 10 different people (all of whom can be knowledgable to varrying degrees) you will get 10 different opinions.

I'm going through the same thing with my daughter. She played u18 travel ball last year and really struggled batting. I knew there was a better way than the conventional--throw the knob of the bat at the ball and let the bat whip around-- teaching method. Through observation I noticed some common things among the better batters (both softball & baseball)-- Quick shoulder rotation on a tilt and a weight back, front leg straight type of form. I luckily ran across "Batspeed" which explained what I was seeing. It is the way to go. Just watch the college world series softball and you will see a big change in the hitters from just a couple of years ago.
Don't be fooled by some college clinics, most still teach the old method. The biggest differences between girls fastpitch and baseball from my observations is that on average the girls just don't have the quickness or strength of the boys and therefore can not afford to have bad mechanics (boys can get away with bad mechanics and still hit the ball decent sometimes). I also think that pitchers in softball are way ahead of the hitters because of the individual pitching coaches and year round training that has been going on for along time. I also think on average the girls face more consistent better pitching coming up than the boys do in baseball. Observe how watered down Major League pitching is now days.
The biggest problem now is trying to change 12 years of bad habits. (Yes, I have been one of those volunteer coaches that (I realize now) didn't understand the real mechanics of hitting).
Good luck and lets hope our girls will learn rotational hitting for a successful season.