Posted by: Major Dan (markj89@charter.net) on Fri Jun 29 06:00:26 2001

Contributors said Ferroli's advice to move hands straight at the pitcher can't produce torque which would rotate the bat around a vertical axis situated between the hands. However . . .
> > Ferroli advises to hold the bat deep in the lower hand (wedged into the crotch between thumb and palm) and to hold the bat in the upper hand where the fingers meet the palm. The effect is to make the upper arm longer than the lower arm. Therefore driving both arms at the pitcher tends, especially as the bat passes the hitter's body, to rotate the bat about a vertical axis situated between the hands. This was not Ferroli's stated reason for holding the bat this way, but he might have stumbled upon the desired effect. OK, OK, it's probably true that the sooner torque is applied, the better. So consider...
> > Ferroli suggests the flat bat, i.e., the bat held with its long axis nearly parallel to the ground, with the barrel in its starting position lying behind the batter in roughly a line from pitcher to catcher. Bringing the bat forward from this position to a hitting position will unavoidably apply torque about the desired axis, beginning with the very initiation of the swing.
> > I haven't seen everything, by a long shot, but everybody I've seen who has switched to a Ferroli style immediately improved vastly.
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> >ferroli's idea of holding the bat parrallel to the ground is only one of his several ideas i find bizarre......how about his "lighted baseball" theory?..........ferroli has no professional baseball experience, at least to my knowledge......not that professional baseball experience is a prerequisite for teaching baseball, but it seems like in his book he spends an excessive amount of time bashing charley lau.....and if someone doesn't have professional experience, while it might be ok to propogate your his own theories, he should at least be careful about attacking someone else's theories........besides his strange theories and lau-bashing ( and i certainly do not agree with everything lau SENIOR said), maybe he just formed a bad impression and that's why i don't like him.......the pictures in his book are horrible.....he looks like an overweight truck driver, and he's dressed in shorts instead of a baseball uniform.....maybe i'm being too nit-picky, but if you look unprofessional, and you bash unprofessionally, and you have unorthodox ideas with not a lick of experience to back them up, i think your (meaning ferroli's) credibility suffers...........and yes, i know ferroli's book has ted williams's "blessing"......but i really wonder if williams read the book.....williams never said many of the things ferroli is saying...........just my opinion of someone who has even less credibility than charley lau junior.......respectfully, grc......

>>'everybody I've seen who has switched to a Ferroli style immediately improved vastly.'
who are these everybody's? LL players? fps linear hitters? professional players? Only Knoblach has anything close to this and he pulls the bat back up toward a proper slot position before launch.
The grip idea you mention is interesting...
A Ferroli swing would promote a body swing rather than an arm swing. It would promote a more circular hand path with the bat in the swing plane. Those are good things and are probably why you see improvement. You lose top hand torque, you lose the gravity assist of the bat dropping into the swing plane (instead you must muscle the bat to get it going), you lose a lot of preswing rhythm and movements that feed the swing system.
IMO its a limited intermediate step toward a good swing, not unlike the demo's on Jack's tape - arm taped to body, sitting in a chair. Demo's the right things but Jack doesn't advocate the chair and tape as part of game at-bats. Jack doesn't show tht at that point.
IMO Ferroli is confusing a core swing training drill with a game swing.