Posted by: Scott (stwinton@netzero.net) on Mon Apr 4 22:34:08 2005

> >>> Tell him to stay, 'inside and on top' of the baseball, hit the ball squarely with back spin <<<
>
> Hi Scott
>
> Would you mind explaining your advice a little deeper. I have made frame-by-frame analyses of thousands of swings, Little League to the Pros, and not once have I found hands “outside the ball.” What is this cue meant to accomplish? – What is meant by “stay on top of the baseball?” All video shows the best hitter’s have their bat-heads below the ball and headed upward at contact. – Will not hitting the bottom-half of the baseball create backspin?
>
> Jack Mankin

...I went back an looked at my post to see where I said ‘outside’...? Couldn’t find it..? If you disagree with “inside and on top” then you must favor “outside and under?” How dose Barry Bonds take a 97 mph fastball an inch off the inside black and hit it on a frozen rope fair with no hook into MaCovey cove…I guarantee you its not by being outside and under!

I’ll bet you chunk and hook the golf ball with the outside and around philosophy…any golf pro will tell you that for you to get the ball off the ground you must strike with a descending blow…to maximize spin you must pinch the contact between the ball and a preferably tight lie…same holds true in baseball to maximize backspin on a baseball one must aim one top …in all reality is really only an aiming point…however, to get caught up in attempting to manually lift a ball by aiming underneath will lead to more 0-4’s then you can imagine.

I disagree with what you would like to say you see in the thousands of hitters you have looked at, granted Williams was in favor of a slight uppercut…but I see it as an afterthought…pay close attention to the path the hands a good hitter takes…hands ahead of the barrel, barrel above of the hands, hands working inside the ball, hands stay on top of where the ball is going to be when it enters the hitting zone, great hitters like Williams have the uncanny knack for squaring everything up at contact to deliver the blow, if and when they do slide slightly below its only for a split second just prior to contact, which by no means in my mind would justify committing to a ‘under philosophy.’

Furthermore, you model in your frame by frame is gross…why select a career .270 hitter that has his lifetime BA and HR totals marred by a corked bat a steroids?