Posted by: Patrick (pmgeoeiiee@yahoo.com) on Wed Oct 13 16:07:33 2010

> Hi Jack > You wrote only a small percent of early 1900 hitters used Tht and Chp .Mike Schmidt in his book( the mike schmidt study) pretty much said the same thing.He stated the reason the early 1900 hitters used a linear hand path was they were playing in a dead ball era and it did them no good to hit the ball in the air. The ball just wouldnt go any where. Balls hit air in the dead ball era were just fly ball outs.He also said that about 1920 they jacked up the baseball put some life in it.And thats were the rotational hitter came in to dominate .Players like Hack Wilson ,Babe Ruth, and others with the live baseball and there rotational mechanics changed the game forever .The slugging percentage and home runs started to fly.

In every era, the hitters are going to make adjustments. In every era so will the pitchers. In the dead ball era, hitters simply got on top of the ball more instead of trying to get under it so much like later on. In the dead ball era and up until 1969 the mound was 5 degrees higher than what it is now and the strike zone was approximately 35-55% bigger than what it is today. (Check MLB's offical strike zone rulebook vs. what pitches are actually called balls and strikes for verification). The game has always been about adjustments and what combinations will bring about optimum performance(legally/morally). As far as the terms linear and rotational go, quite frankly I think these terms are a barrier to our true understanding of the nature of hitting. It's like we are in separate camps being divided by unnecessary terminology that's used to fixate our thinking on one side only.