Posted by: Brian (support@batspeed.com) on Sat May 8 11:57:58 2004

Brian, I have mentioned many times on this message board that I feel that your Dad is a good teacher. My problem is not with him, as I enjoy reading many of his posts and agree with much of what he says. I never bring up pro ball unless someone with no pro background takes a pot shot at the pro guys. The only people who do that are people that did not play, and I feel it is out of jealousy. As far as taping and using slow motion and frame by frame, I have been doing that since I bought my first VCR in the eary 80's. How long have you been studying the swing? You don't have to be a rocket scientist to watch a swing and look for good and bad points in the swing. Mechanics are about half of the challange of hitting successfully. Learning how to hit is the other half. How to approach hitting is where the guy with 3000 AB's comes in. You don't have the experience to help a hitter with that part of the game, and tape won't get it done.
>
> Doug

Doug, we are discussing who is teaching the proper swing mechanics, so it is silly to suggest that someone is jealous because they did not make it to the pros. If pro coaches would have understood and taught proper mechanics swing in the 80s, Jack would not have devoted two decades to learning the swing. Instead, the instructional videos (Pete Rose, Vida Blue, or you name it) were worthless. The baseball camps were not productive and did not teach good mechanics, despite that pro players/coaches were running them.

I've wondered whether every pro team would be better served by having a swing mechanics coach and a batting coach. One who understands swing mechanics and one to teach batting in the box (how to hit a curve ball, what to do with a 3-2 count and so on). The reason is because most pro batting coaches do not (or did not) understand proper swing mechanics, and would be better served by a swing mechanics coach, who could pass along useful information/flaws to the batting coach and player. The batting coach could then use his professional experience to teach the player how to handle certain situations in the box, and correct flaws. Players may spend less time in slumps with this method. I imagine that you will disagree because you think pro batting coaches are all God-almighty, but as I've indicated, I disagree. Do all pro batting coaches teach proper mechanics?

I don't want to get into separate discussions on the same point, so I'll defer to my other post to you in the same thread for the remainder of my response.

Brian
BatSpeed.com

I'll give little background on Jack's baseball career in a future post. St. Louis (I'm not sure if it was the Cards then) traveled to Jefferson City, MO to sign him up as a pitcher in his early 20s, but he declined because he wanted to do other things (everyone will be surprised to learn what). I think its an interesting story about him and why he ultimately devoted so much time to the swing. I'll post that in the future.