I am an arm hitter. When you snap the bat with your wrists just as you meet the ball, you give the bat tremendous speed for a few inches of its course. The speed with which the bat meets the ball is the thing that counts.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
All it takes to play baseball is a strong arm, good speed, and the coordination to hit the ball. That's it.
The harder you grip the bat, the more you can swing it through the ball, and the farther the ball will go.
Hitting a baseball well, as in cricket, is a very rare skill. One of most difficult things to do in the world to do, hitting a ball coming at you at ninety miles an hour with a round bat. Wonderful to watch.
If a pitcher sees you fiddling with the bat, he'll stall until your arms are tired before you even get a chance to hit.
I'm not like a 90-mph fastball kind of guy, but I can hit 70 on radar gun. I hit 70 one time on a radar guy at one of those pitch-and-throw kind of things. I have a pretty good arm for somebody who's not a baseball player.
There are certain things I can't do, certain pitches I can't hit. You stay away from them. You try to wait for pitches you can hit. The bat speed isn't what it used to be. You make up for it by using your head, working counts, getting ahead in counts and getting pitches to hit and hitting them hard.
I don't need to practice my swing. I grew up with a bat in my hands.
When your arm gets hit, the ball is not going to go where you want it to.
A lot of hitters stay away from the plate, some are close up, some are forward, some are back. The thing about hitting is this: You have to know the strike zone. That's the most important thing. Hit strikes and put the bat on the ball.
When I throw a softball, there's no time to think about the motion of my arm. I just look at the first baseman's glove and react.