Posted by: Jeff Atchley (jatchley@farmerstel.com) on Thu Jun 30 09:45:08 2005

> If you are not suppose to move down at ball why is it that they say A-rod has a downward swing that creates a backward spin. This is suppose to have the ball carry farther. My son is now trying this and the ball carries farther but I see more pop-up and not as many line drives. Another boy is also been working on this for 8 or so months and the ball is just shooting of his bat.

The ONLY reason you should swing down at the ball is if your goal is to hit ground balls. If you know anything about physics at all, you know that force is applied and transferred both in amount and direction. This means that a ball hit squarely with a downward swing will come off the bat in a downward direction. The only way to get a ball in the air with a downward swing is hit it with a glancing blow(bottom half of the ball). While this will cause a ball to get up in the air, it will be a much weaker transfer of force because the impact doesn't occur near the center of mass for both objects. Another reason NOT to swing down at the ball is because this is perpindicular to the path that the ball is traveling and gives you only 1 point of intersection thus greatly decreasing you margin for error. If you swing with a slight upswing(matching the path of the incoming pitch) you will see a more direct transfer of force from the bat to the ball which increases power, and you will have a higher margin of error because the bat will be traveling in the path of the ball for a longer period of time. If the swing is perfectly in line, you will see hard hit line drives, if the hitter is slightly you will see long fly balls(home runs). Slightly over, you'll see hard ground balls or line drives over the infield with top spin that drop before reaching the outfield.