Posted by: Patrick (pmgeoeiiee@yahoo.com) on Sat Oct 16 16:24:15 2010

> Recently, I have read several things from so called "hitting coaches" that say that Stan Musial, Hank Aaron, and Roberto Clemente were linear. The "hitting coaches" say this because all three ended with almost all the weight on their front feet. I believe that this is because some of the swings of Aaron's, Clemente's, and Musial's time tended to be a little more "lungy" in that the weight was transferred to a fairly stiff front leg during rotation and all the weight moved to the front leg after wrist "snap or roll". Does anyone actually agree with these so called "coaches"?

I don't really agree with those coaches assessment of those players swing. Just because the weight lands on the front leg doesn't mean that the hitter is linear. The hitter just has more weight on the front leg. More information is needed to gather a proper assessment. Also, just because a hitter has more weight on the backside this doesn't mean that they are rotational either. More information is needed to gather a proper assessment. At any given point, a hitter could be considered more "rotational" or more "linear" depending on how they react to the pitch presented. Ted talked about the so called "weight shift" in an article in sports illustrated w/ peter gammons, wade boggs, and don mattingly. Bascailly he said that the "weight shift" upsets balance at the plate and that he stressed the importantance of the "cocking of the hips." He also mentioned that a hitter does have a slight shift in weight during the swing (he said that this was a hard thing not to have). In the Science of Hitting, he says that the weight is evenly distrubuted throughout the swing. No mention of shifting weight. This is not to say that there are no rotational movements in the swing, because there are. Ted stressed that the power of the swing is applied before the wrists roll, and that the hips bring the bat around not the wrists. Yes, the power comes from the rotation of the hips into the ball, and the hips clear the path for the bat to travel on. But the direction of the swing is supplemented from the "forearms" (arms, wrists, and hands).