Posted by: tom.guerry (tom.guerry@kp.org) on Tue Jun 19 18:30:16 2001

Mark-

Whether or not you meant to,you invited speculation about why baseballers have a hard time hitting the likes of Joyce/Fernandez.Most recently,it was Wade Boggs who was whining about trying to hit against Michelle Smith.His main complaint was about reaction time as he claimed she was throwing 70 mph with release at well under 40 ft.Beyond the reaction time challenge however,is the fact that baseballers have developed hand/eye coordination over a lifetime that is based on a different release point/ball size/range of movement.I would suspect with enough practice they could recallibrate and hit well,but maybe not.Reaction time is an even bigger factor for men's fastpitch.

The easiest thing would be to recognize the rise and not swing.Teaching your brain/visual system to reliably anticipate the contact zone/timing for a good riser would take a longer time,assuming you had good mechanics for all locations in the zone.