Posted by: Torque (roscoethewestie@comcast.net) on Sat Mar 14 20:24:30 2009

> > > "knob to the ball swings and related college coach garbage?"
> > >
> > > Tony Gwynn would beg to differ with you on the knob to the ball concept.
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> > > Look Coach Ab Tony Gwynn Doesn't know much man. Yeah he was great but he teaches swings thta good hitters do not do. He might have thought he did some of the things he talks about but he didn't. And Besides it's not what you did it's what you know. Otherwise San deigo State would hit which they do not and they are always at the top of the recruting feild getting good players but he ruins them. It can't always just be my hitters suck. Coaches like Gwynn need to take a look and say am I really helping or is my ego getting in the way.
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> > > > Jack, aren't the swings of the Cubans just gorgeous? Weren't they one of the first groups you identified years ago that used efficient transfer mechanics?
> > > >
> > > > All the swings are the same, 1-9, and anybody can go deep and anybody can double the other way and anyone can draw a walk.
> > > >
> > > > Remember the college teams we used to send to get massacred by them in international tournaments, with their stupid college coach downswings and knob to the ball swings and related college coach garbage?
> Torque dont hold back just tell us what you think,just kidding,I feel that the knob is less and less able to be used as a teaching device,if they can use it as a guide since it is at the hands and understand the chp and know the hands and knob are a very small chp that matches the barrel rotation then it can be useful to help from pulling off the ball,to understand the correct hand action at initiation helps to see how the knob rotates.

Sorry if I held back too much, joking. My perspective is from being around very young hitters. Because of this, I really have to take a simple communication approach which breaks the swing down into less than 3 or 4 components (seeing the ball, weight shift, leverage, which part of the ball to hit). So anything more causes a glazed over look with kids and confuses me too. I hear a lot of instructors spend a lot of time on the hands. Particularly throw your hands at the ball which is extremely misleading to hitters. Speaking of the knob seems complicated and changes the focus of the hitter away from the bat head and mechanics. The Dodgers hitting coach was commenting on what it would take to get Manny Ramirez ready to hit. The hitting coach said it would take very little to get him ready because he has an incredibly simple swing which never changes. Manny says he really just works on timing in the spring. No mention of mechanics. I think that if we really are to add value for hitters we really have to keep it simple and consistent. I do think the Dominicans are better hitters. Youth instructors here take a short term approach which is to keep the parents happy by having the kid get the bat on the ball and not strike out. No doubt this teaching will produce some form of contact and keep the parents happy but the long term affect is lack of power. My son watched a Dusty Baker hitting video and he was talking about knob and other irrelevant factors. My son finally looked at me and asked if Dusty Baker knew anything about teaching hitting.