Posted by: The Hitting Guru () on Wed Dec 27 09:28:27 2006

> these 3 things come to mind while thinking about how to generate power for the competitve slow pitch player. back in november,we were finishing up a softball fall league in connecticut. after my games were finished that night, i saw a few friends from another team taking bp on one of the fields. i decided to join them. there is this big guy (6'7" 260 lbs) named josh hitting. he was trying to hit the ball over the fence. 300 ft all around the park with a 16 ft high fence. he was swinging with an uppercut type swing. needless to say he was having limited sucess at best. after we all took turns hitting, he got back in the box ready to hit. this time i was pitching to him, and asked him to try something a little different. he is a great student of the slowpitch game and is always willing to learn. he's about 21 0r 22 years old. i told him to try and hit the kid that was standing in at third base shagging balls. basically i wanted him to pull the ball hard as he usually does,but with a downward swing plane. a tomahawk swing type. well let me tell you, the balls that didnt go over the fence, which was near 30 out of 55 pitches, were absolute missiles past the 3rd baseman. he was amazed aswell. i myself have adopted this type swing 2 years ago with great results. its not so much of an exaggerated tomahawk but a level swing at contact with a downward path if that makes any sense. gary sheffield has a similiar type of swing plane. anybody that watched the hr derby a few years back with the ( Astros )lance berkman hitting bombs might have noticed it in his swing also. there is definately some truth to this in the slowpitch game. we call it "cutting" the ball. i dont think this application would be all that effective in baseball due to the conditions,ball size, pitch angle, etc. just my .02 on slowpitch

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Jason. You bring up an interesting observation as well as example of a player who puts what you speak of into practice. I to have noticed how Lance Berkman cuts the botton half of the ball and applies the level cut to the ball. And as you know, he is among the top homerun hitters year after year. I have also noticed that Berkman has a very controlled swing and seems almost effortless when he swings. Lastly he appears to use a short bat we further adds to the fact that he is doing a lot right. His technique should be studied further. We need to be open to more forms of successful techniques.