Posted by: Mark H. () on Sun Jan 26 14:47:05 2003

> >By the way I noticed a mistake in my intial posting. I ment --top hand palm up, bottom hand palm down at contact like you say--sorry about any confusion.

(I figured that's what you meant.)


> >Your right about the decision thing. Once the swing is intiated it is the same. Since you played both do you think fastpitch has less time to react to pitches? It seems to me they do because of the distance but once again it might be the physical thing between boys and girls.

(The reaction time is similar. The girls pitch from closer but they don't throw as hard so it comes out about the same. I do think a softball can be made to do things a baseball, or an 11" softball for that matter, just won't do. Another factor is the almost total absence of any non breaking pitch, other than a change, being thrown in high level fastpitch. Another factor may be one of the few times I agreed with Joe A. Even though the flight time is about the same, the shorter flight distance in fp may give less visual feedback to the hitter for ball flight path prediction.)



> I agree on hand postion but the popping up theory persists. Maybe it has to do more with shouder position. The palm up/palm down hitting style might lead to a shoulder dip flaw more readily and if not corrected or detected leads to the popping up. It's probably like alot of these myths that just won't go away.

(How long do you want the shoulders to remain level? Or what do you consider a shoulder dip flaw?)

Mark H.