Posted by: The Hitting Guru (hitman3527@aol.com) on Tue May 16 15:11:24 2006

> If you watch videos of Piazza's swing in the peak of his hitting career, you'll see that his power was generated from the tremendous extension of his hands through the strike zone - and he smacked them 450ft + - I might add! Analysis will also show that Griffey would roll his wrists on contact, producing that most treasured back-spin the experts subject to.
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Not that I am disagreeing with you, but Piazza is said to have had tremendous hand strength. He uses more wrists and upper body strength than a lot of hitters. But as you alluded to he always takes a complete swing (extension) even though he gets jammed quite a lot, but still manages to hit the ball a long way.

Griffey has a natural homerun swung as was alluded to in some of his early homerun contest victories during the all star games. It was noted that he did not have to alter his swing in anyway as opposed to other hitters. He just does it naturally. His slight upswing is what Ted Williams preached in his teachings.

(Hitting the bottom half of the ball produces backspin)