Posted by: phil (philipland@aol.com) on Fri Sep 16 17:53:04 2005

>It is difficult to describe what I see to some one else. Unfortunately I don't have the capability of uploading clips, but one of the clips I was referring to was posted by Dave A on 9-4 at this site. The others were on invision, but I can't remember when.

In my opinion, the bat head should describe a circular path towards a line described by the pitched ball moving towards the plate. Contact should occur as the bat head's path becomes tangental to the line of the pitch. For this to occur, the arms must move away from the chest as the shoulders open so that the bat head can maintain its circular arc rather than being pulled back away from the line of the pitch. At contact, the hands, secondary to the arms moving away from the chest (the type of action that occurs with a centifugal clutch), should be perpindicular to the sternum. I agree all these motions depend on timing, but I'm speaking of the situation where the pitch was correctly judged, or in just hitting off a tee.

The faults I was trying to describe were 1. the bat head falling below the plane of the pitch and swinging back up through it (ie as in trying to "lift" the ball, and 2. a situation in which the arms do not leave the chest sufficiently such that the bat head descibes a more parabolic plane where it moves out towards the line of the pitch wiyh the rotation of the shoulders, but then pulls away as the shoulders approach full rotation pulling the left arm with them. At contact, even though the sweet spot is hit, the bat head is "cutting" across the ball. The result can be seen as a ball hit by a right handed hitter that starts to the left, but curves back to the right in flight.

That being said, and based on your potential for video analysis, when do you feel, in an ideal situation (because in trying to reenforce mechanics mith my son I try to work under ideal conditions) as in hitting off a tee, should the arms begin to move away from the body, and where should the hands be relative to the chest at contact? Also, when should the bat head begin its upward approach (assuming that if the plane of the swing is circular and the bat head must swing down, parallel to, and then up relative to the ground), relative to contact.