Posted by: Major Dan (markj89@charter.net) on Tue Feb 11 09:39:03 2003

Interesting Interpretation
>
> Regarding the grip alignment: was doing an experiment last week, took some video comparing my right hand swing with my left handed swing (learned to switch hit when I was about 12, which was also many moon ago). With my right hand swing my bottom elbow dove into my side and jumped ahead of my hands. However, it did not do it with my left hand swing. Was trying to figure out why the difference and one of my sons pointed out to me that my knuckle alignment was much different righty vs lefty. My right hand door knuckles were fairly close together right handed , while left handed they were much stronger, like Bonds.
>
> Playing around with this concept, it appears that the stronger grip puts your elbow into a better position to allow everything to work together.
>
>
Just a side note to this thread...
The back elbow cannot just come down to the ribs independently. If it is not working in conjunction with the bottom hand and shoulder turn, all kinds of bad things can happen.
One of the most common swing flaws is the back elbow coming down and working under and past the top hand, dragging the bat behind.
When the elbow comes down, the top hand must come with it and the bat with the top hand. Additionally, the bottom hand and arm must be acting properly. See the thread on 'staying inside the ball'.

I suspect that grip affects things in part because it affects how the two arms connect to each other throught their mutual grip on the bat.
Grip will define bent-elbow angles, etc.