Posted by: RQL () on Tue Oct 9 20:57:22 2001

I just finished a celebrity charity golf tournament however pete rose and alex rodriguez did not make it.I hate golf so I chose to drive the beer cart around and talk baseball to anyone I felt should know more than I.One ex major league pitcher now coaching college had no idea of what I was saying but said it did seem to make sense and wants to talk more about the rotational method.This same guy also told me a hitter that crowds the plate wants to go the other way with the pitch,I ques. how they ever got to the show with their logic.A 1st base coach in the show said that some of his hitters were rotational and some linear ,yet when I asked which hitter he felt used the most top hand torque on his team and did a hitter land with front knee bent or straight he was ready to move to the next hole.Bobby Thigpen did say that a guy who leans forward alot with his posture had a tougher time with the high pitch,I found this statement one I could agree with.While talking with Wade Boggs he did say that the linear hitter stayed in hitting zone longer and he had a problem with some of his hitters going in and coming out of the zone to fast with rotation.We also discussed swing training/over /under and he did not mention his guys doing that but did know of weight training shortening muscles,and guys like McGwire losing some of their elasticity and potential for separation.The most important info I got was that Boggs said he would swing a fungo when on deck sometimes and Ichiro may swing even a dowel or fungo before going to hit.The opposite of most who swing a weighted bat.The idea was it helped quickness instead of the donut that would slow the bat down and make the regular bat feel lighter.Supposedly many Japanese hitters do that while on deck.When I brought up why the fungo made you quicker there was a little head scratching and I suggested that it incorporated the fast twitch muscles to fire.What I got out of the day was that some in the game could'nt find their ass with a funnel and trying to make contact is still the name of the game for some weaker hitters who are trying to stay long in the zone,and on golf an anology that I thought worked well on being on the plane of the ball for the most transfer of energy was,a driver has a flat head and alot of weight at the end,this helps for direct collision into the ball to drive it the furthest,the irons are angled that create glancing blows,the more the angle the more glance and the shorter it goes.So in baseball why swing down at a ball going down creating a glancing blow and losing energy into the ball.