Posted by: daw (daw@bellevue-law.com) on Thu May 22 07:40:18 2008

> I always hear people teaching batters drills to keep their hands inside the ball.
>
> What does hands inside the ball look like? What does that mean?



The responses to your question are all well-reasoned and thought-out, yet different enough from each other to illustrate that perhaps "keeping your hands inside the ball" isn't an especially valuable coaching point, because it can and does mean different things to different people.

As someone already pointed out, it's essentially impossible to hit the ball with the bat, without the hands being "inside the ball", and this whether you're hitting linearly or rotationally.

If a batter swings using the more specific concepts and coaching points discussed on this site, a photo or video of his/her swing will show the hands "staying inside the ball".