Posted by: rahkling7 () on Fri Aug 24 14:20:35 2001

jack I have BENT OVER BACKWARDS in all this..... kow towing to your presumptive brilliance, giving you the benefit of the doubt, showing FAITH in your system and you repay it with a comment like this? Let ANYONE read all these threads an evaluate the civility I have exhibited for themsleves. The gloves will be off now and while the best thing to do would be to ask for a refund of my hard earned 40 bucks I think I would rather come to this board and test your theories and your stated willingness to tolerate all opinions.

1) Is "Melvin" your hand selected attack dog??????? I would love to find out the REAL truth on that one. Perhaps that is just your alias.

2) why wouldnt you SIGN your name to your personal attack on me? HMMMMMM?

3) you want me to throw good money after bad, invest "months" in showing FAITH in your system while at the same time PRESUMING that I cannot understand your system. Your system isnt THAT complex jack.

4) You also want "months" of investment of my son's swing it what could be, IMHO, disasterous muscle memory repitition? I DON'T think so!

5) do you REALLY like open and honest questions jack? Or do you just AVOID them unless words like "fundamentally flawed" are used.

6) You offer no evidence that I don't understand your system OTHER than I don't agree with you.... ergo.... I don't agree with Jack therefore I am BAD! Or, I can't begin to understand the complexity of this system since it took you 12 years of work to figure it out. HORSEAPPPLES! Real brilliance is in making the complex simple. Sorry Jack but cults got a bad name with the Jim Jones incident.

7) THE ANSWER TO ? NUMBER 1: after reviewing my son's performance in my mind today I can tell you why he is popping up>>>> your system doesnt allow for enough control over the barrel of the bat to allow for consistant solid contact! Again it is like swinging a ball on the end of a string.... tremendous bat speed but at a horrendous cost in average and strikeouts! FYI my son can hit 100 balls off a tee with his old swing and NEVER knock it over! His hand/eye coordination is first rate! Truthfully your system diminishes hand eye coordination for ANY batter and would be disasterous, IMHO, for a player with limited power tendencies.

8) Question 2: there appears to be no doubt that a pure linear system would give the best chance of contact but at the price of power. Your system jack is pure rotation with no linear movement.. maximum power at the cost of contact. It is too far at the other end of the spectrum just as a pure linear system would be equally bad. Best results would be found by examining a players natural tendencies and finding a happy medium somewhere along that spectrum based on the individual and not a rigid rule. Without any linear movement directing the barrel of the bat at the target which is the pitched baseball the pure rotational method allows the batter nothing but an OPPORTUNITY for contact by SLINGING the bat in the general position of where the batter believes the pitch will be. Your statement that "of course, the hands are propelling the bat head at the ball" is an exercise in deceptive semantics. Yes, oh great one, we understand... THE HANDS ARE CONNECTED TO THE ARMS THAT ARE CONNECTED TO THE SHOULDERS THAT IS CONNECTED TO THE TORSO/WAISTE THAT IS TWISTING ON AN AXIS! "Propelling" isn't directing is it jack?

9) Question 3: Although you seem unwilling to admit it there is NO explanation for Foxx' tight grip and his ability to hit the ball tremendous distances vs. the tenants of your system. The answer: obviously, Foxx is an example of a reasonable compromise or hybrid system. I can think of no others but I am sure there are several accomplished hitters in history of the game who ALSO held the bat tightly.


On your home page jack you say you welcome questions. I suggest you change that because my questions have not been welcome... they are, admittedly, tough ones and that is obviously the reason. I think I have "showed you"... but your behavior has been more akin to that of a MISSOURI MULE.


Well - you're displaying a lot of impatience and arrogance - these are pretty "bad" questions for such a "good" mind. Since you're not as familiar with the system as you believe, I'll give you a few basic answers.
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> 1. If he is popping up off a tee - you can't evaluate the "system". One has to have the hand eye coordination to hit the ball squarely to determine if one can hit the ball farther, this may take time to develop with a new way of swinging. The "system" cannot make a person hit a ball squarely - it can only make the ball go farther once the ability to make solid contact is developed.
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> 2. Of course the hands are propelling the bat head toward the ball at impact, the forces that are being applied are just not linear (circular hand path - remember?). The bat is moving fast enough at this point that the swing plane is established and is difficult to change - the consistency comes from establishing a consistent swing plane and choosing the right pitches at which to swing. The high strikeout rate among home run hitters is due, in part, to the lack of ability to make last minute adjustments to major league pitches (which move all over the place, if you've noticed). This is an inherent problem with tremendous batspeed - it's hard to change it midstream. Power hitters always have a trade-off between distance and the ability to put the bat on the ball.
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> 3. In reference to Jimmy Foxx - there's tremendous variation in the way players hold the bat. He was on of the strongest hitters in the game, he probably could hit it out holding the barrel and making contact with the handle. Personally, I always hit farther when I have a tight grip, mostly because that's the way I learned to hit and it's comfortable. If I spent a long time developing a more relaxed grip, I might hit farther. You can't look at one example that goes against the grain and call it proof that the concept is flawed.
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> > > 1) I have a GOOD understanding of the system, ie I am sure he was executing the syatem properly, and when I took my son out to hit on the tee with these mechanics he was popping EVERYTHING up... weakly! Comments? fyi.... we went back to his "old" system and he was immediately hitting line drives again.
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> > > 2) while "dragging" the bat in the above post may have not been the appropriate term in essence it does transmit the concept because we are told to apply no pressure to speak of with the hands on the bat. How then are we to hit a baseball while exerting no real direction and control over the bat. It is indeed much like having a ball on the end of a string and trying to make contact with an incoming pitch with that same ball... an extremely difficult task anyone would admit. I simply do NOT see how you can make the barrel of the bat strike the incoming pitch with any consistancy without linear motion, ie directing the barrel TOWARDS the incoming pitch with the arms/hands. Perhaps if this system is indeed a reasonable explanation of of the mechanics of Big Mac, Sosa, Gonzales, Griffey Jr. et al then I submit that their HORRENDOUS strike out numbers are a vindication of what I just said.
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> > > 3) I consider myself a pretty fair student of the history of the game. Jimmie Foxx once said that he held the bat so tightly with his grip that he expected sawdust to come out of the knob at any moment. Foxx was one of the greatest, he hit balls OUT of old Tiger stadium. Indeed, prior to Big Mac nobody hit LONG HR's as consistantly as Double X. Can anyone reconcile this success with the fundamental "no tension" tenant of this system?
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