Posted by: MissouriDad (zach3737@aol.com) on Wed Dec 22 19:45:19 1999

I think the lower body initiates the swing. The hands should stay back as the large muscles of the lower body develope a beautifully level rotation. This creates a tension in the lead arm. This tension pulls on the lead arm and therefore the bottom hand. The first movement of the bottom hand after loading is forward and its due to this tension. The back hand has had no reason to move forward (it should not try to drive forward see Jack's "keeping the back elbow down" for reasons). Therefore the bat handle pulls against the fingers of the top hand much like a bow string pulls against an archers fingers. This creates the first movement of the bat head back toward the catcher as seen by Jack (check out his frame c and frame 1 of batspeed mechanic diagrams). Jack sees every movement of the bat and hands of good hitters and just trys to relate them to his listeners. He sees that movement you see in frames C and 1 and calls it top hand torque. I think it is better termed bottom hand lead / top hand wait.