Posted by: FiveFrameSwing (lyons.chris@yahoo.com) on Fri Nov 28 09:38:55 2008

> Question: Is it better for a hitter to track the pitch by moving the head with the eyes in a fixed position? Or keep the head fixed and only track the pitch my moving the eyes.
>
> Background: I have always believed in the latter, which I had gleened/learned from several respected coaches. But I became an umpire for a period of time recently, and was trained to track the pitch by moving the head. I became comfortable in doing it, and seldom (almost never) really had coaches or players complaining about my zone.
>
> Now that I am back coaching 12-U girls fastpitch, I am inclinded to go back to my original beliefs. Including vision drills where the hitters do not swing at pitches, but just track with the eyes all the way into the catcher's mitt.
>
> What say ye?



The following book covers this topic in depth.

"Keep Your Eye on the Ball: Curveballs, Knuckleballs, and Fallacies of Baseball".

http://www.amazon.com/Keep-Your-Eye-Ball-Knuckleballs/dp/0716737175/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227892915&sr=1-2

From memory ... they went on to describe that the head and eyes could both be used to track the ball. They gave data showing tracking ability with just using the head to track the ball, with just using the eyes to track the ball, and using both eyes and head to track the ball.

They concluded that using just the eyes to track the ball was superior to using just the head to track the ball. Eye movement was shown to be faster than head movement.

From memory, they gave a technique in which a combination of head movement and eye movement gave the optimal solution in terms of tracking.

I believe the idea was to initially use the head in the earlier stages and primarily use the eyes in the later stages. Further, to accomplish this, the orientation of the eyes and head was important. Again, from memory, for a right handed batter you wanted your eyes to be able to shift from left to right rapidly towards the later portion. I believe the idea was ... 1) initially the eyes were centered in the orbit prior to delivery, 2) initial movement in tracking the ball was performed with the head, 3) during the initial tracking with the head the eyes would shift from the center to left portion of the orbit ... head is tracking but the eyes are shifting from center to left, 4) during the final portion of tracking the eyes, where tracking needs to be the most rapid, the eyes would dominate the tracking process and would shift from left to right with little head movement.