Posted by: tom.guerry (tom.guerry@kp.org) on Thu Feb 10 11:58:21 2000

Another of Jack's principles I have found helpful is the importance of initiating the swing well because changes later don't have much effect.Compared to the way I have taught and swung in the past,the big difference is how little a factor the arms and wrists are and cues about them often only serve to get them too active too soon which disconnects them from rotation and slows rotation and often manifests as dropping the bathead.If you teach a stance and develop a preswing that gets you in a good position for launch then the focus is on rotation around a vertical axis with a slight backward lean as powerfully as possible until the bottom hand is pulled backward through contact,the arms and hands are more quiet and used in a manner that gives torquing throughout the swing.In my experience the nearest thing to this is Dusty Baker's concept of maintaining the box,but a preswing position that ends up with the front arm straight and the back elbow up works better than Baker's description with Jack's swing.The breakthrough of Jack's description is the deemphasis of the arms and wrists and emphasis on transmitiing maximumtorso power to the bat by having the arms and hands in the right position,not moving them in some conscious way.These overly conscious moves seem to be what drop the bathead.