Posted by: TARatko () on Tue Jul 10 11:10:06 2001

I noticed my son is hitting alot of ground balls(hard) but ground balls. Apparentley the proper angle or swing is not correct. His swing appears to be downward. Should I lower his hands slightly below his chest in order to develope a level swing.

TJ: From your message I infer that you believe hitting hard ground balls is somehow a bad thing. IMHO that cannot be more wrong, and a reflection of what has become a growing cancer on the game. A hard ground ball, preferably hit straight up the middle, forces the defense to make two good plays - fielding and throwing - plus a quick decision as to which base to throw to. My 14U son trains with an old school collegiate coach, who has sent a great number of players to the pros and is a colleague and disciple of the great Gordie Gillespie. Tony constantly preaches taking the ball hard on the ground up the middle. His approach is that the good hitter hits down on the ball - then, if he makes a mistake, drops his hands, a hard line drive results, not a worthless fly ball. The essence of good hitting is to put the ball in play, hard, hitting it where it is pitched. Unfortunately, the game has become dominated by homerun thinking and the misleading and sadly mistaken concept that singles/doubles hitters are no longer of value. I will take good consistent hard line drive, opposite field gap hitters any day over those that hit towering flyballs and a HR every few games with intervening popups and flyouts.