The Key to Powerful Leg Use: The Hands

Before pitchers began to come set even with no runners on base, hitters had a wealth of windmilling activity upon which to key their own long recoils and potent strides. Once a pitcher lifts his forward leg, he can’t normally do very much to change the time involved in the rest of his delivery. Satchel Paige was one of the few exceptions: his ability to balance over his back leg for perhaps several seconds before driving home was the essence of his “hesitation pitch”. You can understand how devastating this pause must have been if you reflect that typical hitters of the day were gathering their own weight over the back leg about the same time as the pitcher. A hitter who can “hesitate” over the rear leg for several seconds is about as rare as a hurler who can do the same.

So in general, we may say that sluggers of the thirties, forties, and fifties were almost touching their forward foot to their back one as the pitcher executed a high leg kick, then launching forward at about the same moment (maybe a split second after) the pitcher started home. In many respects, the hitter’s movements were a mirror-image of the pitcher’s. This was nowhere more true than in the stride of Mel Ott, whose spectacular balancing act over his rear leg as the forward one kicked high in the air was not unlike Juan Marichal’s wind-up. Other sluggers dispensed with the kick and settled for a recoil into a crouch followed by a huge stride, often taking them the length of the batter’s box. Lou Gehrig, Stan Musial, Willie Mays, and Frank Thomas (the Caucasian player who was a Pirates superstar before the tight-fisted Branch Rickey chased him off) spring to mind.

Is this enlistment of power from the lower body gone forever now that pitching from the stretch is almost universal? Japanese players, who cut their teeth looking at leisurely deliveries like Hideo Nomo’s and Daiske Matsuzaka’s, still generate tremendous drive from their legs—but they also have to make major adjustments if they enter American baseball (as Ichiro did, chastening a high leg kick into a modest recoil). Yet I think there remains one way to harness lower-body power—a way that allows the hitter to recoil early and then stay balanced on one foot, like Satchel, for as long as he needs to. It involves (or would involve, if anyone employed it) using a better-proportioned bat than today’s and—much more importantly--extending the top hand farther back than the bottom one during the “cock” or “load”. If the bottom hand goes farther back, as it does with most hitters, then the bat rides up and cannot counterpoise the front side’s weight. If the top hand leads the way to the rear, however, then the bat more or less flattens out between the rear shoulder and the waist, and the hitter can wait and wait while Nomo or Luis Tiant twists around—or, alternatively, he can set up rearward early and wait for a contemporary flame-thrower to burst out of the set position.

Stan Musial hit this way. He was ridiculed for it, of course… but he was also able to regroup after a career-low .255 average in 1959 and hit .288 in his final year (1961), and I’m convinced that he did so by gathering his balance a little earlier to compensate for quicker deliveries. Old photos suggest that Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker also carried their top hand farther back than their bottom, though they lifted their forward leg rather than coiled back with the forward toe to the ground. Thicker-handled bats must surely have made the balancing act easier. Cobb’s bat was a mere 34” long (modest by his day’s standard), and Musial’s was about the same; but both instruments were notably more balanced, less severely tapered, than today’s typical stick.

It’s an idea that stands ready to be tried again, for anyone who has the nerve to face smirks around the batting cage. Just remember that success tends to wipe away mocking smiles in a hurry.

Why I Seldom Mention Ted Williams

It must seem odd to some that a column dedicated to hitting the old-fashioned way should almost never refer to the man judged by most to rank among the three greatest batsmen ever. I do not harbor any secret animosity toward Teddy Ballgame. I think his Science of Hitting is presumptuous at many points but also delivers many very important insights. He seems to have been obnoxious and even tyrannical as a manager (as when he ended John Roseboro’s active career because Rosey would not humiliate a pitcher during a game who couldn’t get his curveballs over)—yet these qualities were not in short supply among the managers of Williams’s day. His instructional videos, wherein he enlists stars like Harmon Killebrew to shill and play mannequin so that the brilliance of the Williams system may shine, are actually no more didactic than more recent products I have seen—sometimes much less so.

No, the reason for my reticence is simple and innocent: Williams really wasn’t a very “old school” hitter. He disdained using the whole field, and—despite his legendary .406 batting average in 1941—he preferred hitting for power rather than average. Ballplayers of his day occasionally criticized him for being too picky at the plate, charging that he would get just his pitch or else take a walk when the winning run needed only weak contact from him to reach home. (DiMaggio usually occupies the favorable end of this contrast.) In many ways, Ted was the exemplar of the fifties style—not its guru so much as its offspring: the “guru” days would come later, with the book and videos. Guys may not have talked about opening the hips before he did, as Williams always claimed; but they were certainly leaning back and hacking, from Mantle to Colavito to Gus Triandos and Dale Long.

You don’t know all those names? Well, I’m not surprised. The “lean back and hack” technique is not a recipe for longevity, though it may catapult offensive stars into prominence for two or three seasons. Throwing the front hip open and hitting off the back leg turns out to anchor the swing around one focal point and, thus, to prohibit any kind of forward glide. Only when the weight can carry somewhat forward is the swing flattened into an ellipse, greatly multiplying its chances of making contact—especially with an outside pitch—and of staying squared to the ball. Most hitting coaches call this “staying inside the ball” or “leading with the hands”. They seldom remark that the maneuver works best in tandem with a mild forward transfer of weight. Ted’s method (as taught to him and then by him) produced a generation of dead-pull hitters who either nailed the pitch, missed it entirely, or weakly popped up: shades of today! This was not the method which aging batsmen like Red Schoendienst employed, and the emerging talents from the Negro Leagues like Bob Boyd were so “old school” resistant to the Williams style that managerial preachers of power benched many of them for not hitting enough home runs. The whole trend probably had far more to do with “The Year of the Pitcher” than did high mounds and small strike zones.

The irony is that The Splendid Splinter didn’t really follow his own advice. (After all, he won six batting crowns!) Neither did Mickey Mantle: more often than not, Mick was trailing his rear foot upon contact, though he always seemed to believe that his weight had settled upon it. Hitters of Williams’s and Mantle’s day didn’t have the luxury of reviewing their stroke in slow motion on tape, but we may do so today. Ted’s weight routinely leached forward on him (perhaps somewhat less than Mickey’s), and his hands therefore trailed his body and came forward very level. (To be fair: his book explicitly recommends a slight upper-cut in defiance of the Kiner/Kluszewski school of swinging down to create backspin.) He even spread his hands sometimes, though he denied ever doing so. He was, in short, a great natural hitter—so great that he could get away with using only half the field, so natural that he didn’t really understand why he enjoyed dazzling success.

Long Swing... or High Chance of Contact?

When I wrote last time about what some coaches call the “load”—i.e., the rearward transfer of the bat to the position from which it will fly straight at the pitch—I emphasized the importance of shifting the shoulders forward while the pitcher is releasing the ball. I don’t think this produces a “long swing” simply because most of it is accomplished before the hitter actually decides to drive at the ball with his hands… but say, for the sake of argument, that it is long. After all, cutting an arc from behind the rear shoulder to far in front of the plate as the shifting body rises more erect on the front leg is... well, pretty long. It’s more so, anyway, than merely lopping down on the ball with quick hands from above the rear shoulder. Why not opt for quickness?

I’m covering old ground, but from a new direction—and I want to be very clear. So let me put it this way. Long is good if most of that length is traversed in the plain of the ball’s flight. The swing I described moves in just such a plain: I actually want the bat, yes, to be in the ball’s plain of flight a long time. That way, if I’m a little late, I may still hit a shot to the opposite field, or at least foul the pitch off and earn myself another offering. If I’m a little early, maybe I can get just enough of the pitch to loop it over the infielders’ heads. I am increasing my chances of contact, however you add the figures.

If, on the other hand, I am quick to the ball from a point outside its plain of flight, I may be less fooled inasmuch as I’m relying minimally upon any timing movements beyond my hands—but my bat will also intersect the ball’s plain of flight in a single line (or, if you prefer, its sweet spot will be able to meet the ball at just one point). These odds don’t appeal to me. Sure, we’d all like to smack the ball in just the right place at just the right moment. Texas-leaguers and fisted bloopers are not “aesthetic”, and may even elicit laughs from our teammates in the dugout. But they get the job done.

Many of the hitters I’ve listed on this Web page's bottom were able to amass scores of hits precisely because their bat spent so much time in the ball’s path—not necessarily because it met the ball at a “high impact” instant. Outfielders had to play guys like Al Simmons and Stan Musial (not to mention really free swingers like Gehrig and Clemente) deep because they so often drove the ball to the wall (if not over it). Hence the less solid connections had an increased chance of falling in the vacated zone just beyond the infield. I strongly suspect that even Ty Cobb profited from such a style. I grew up imagining him a Jurassic Tony Gwynn, probably able to cast a frisby anywhere between the foul lines and then serve up the next pitch to that very spot. But the photographic record suggests that Cobb brought his bat very far off his rear shoulder with a high recoil of the forward leg, then sent the stick trailing lengthily through the ball’s plain of flight with a stride of about a yard. His famously split hands, by the way, were together once the bat surged forward from its “load” position (the top hand being held rather loose).

A hit is a hit, and hits mean victories. Why would you choose to take an instrument to the plate with a very small zone for solid, productive contact and then swing so that it has but one possible point of intersection with the ball? I like the feel of a resonating sweet spot, too—but I like safeties even more.

Why a Longer Swing May Also Be Faster

I suggested earlier in this space (and a million others have said it before me) that the metallic bat inspired the short, thin-handled, thick-barreled sticks used by today’s professionals. Such a tool does not lend itself to the maneuver I described last time as “separation”. It’s hard to let your hands slip off your back shoulder and wait as the rest of your body shifts forward when you’re holding something about as thick as a ballpark hotdog—you just want to slash down with that massive barrel. A longer bat gives you the balance you need to keep the hands back, while a mild taper in that bat would give you the control you need to whip it forward in a level sweep once the rest of your weight has shifted.

The whole dynamic, I repeat, is very hard to replicate with today’s bats. I used to think that the intrusion of aluminum into Little League and college programs, where the cost of replacing fractured wood models was always a nuisance, owned sole title to disrupting classic hitting technique. A second (or chronologically prior) cause of the old style’s waning, I now realize, was pitchers’ abandoning of the “windmill wind-up”. When an ace of yesteryear went into his deep pump, you were cued to inaugurate whatever preparatory foot and hand movements were necessary to get your yard-long stick leveled and cocked. Then hurlers started to deliver out of the stretch even with no runners on base. Don Larsen did so in his World Series perfect game—a 1956 showcasing of the style (Larsen had vetted it during the regular season about a month earlier) which made other pitchers sit up and take notice. Bob Gibson was still pumping away in the late sixties; but in general, pitchers were allowing hitters less time to get ready as hair grew longer and music grew louder.

Hence the criticism that I most often hear from young hitters about swinging off the rear shoulder: it creates too long of a swing. It need not. In fact, if done properly, this technique still generates a faster attack upon the ball (in my opinion) than the “all hands” swing down from above the rear shoulder. True, Car 22 will beat Car 33 in a drag race if 22 need only travel from A to B while 33 must travel A-to-B+50 meters. But if Car 33 gets to use its extra 50 meters to accelerate before the light turns green… well, that’s the trick. As a hitter, you must already have your weight moving forward when the pitch is released. (No pitcher releases so quickly that he gives you nothing at all to key on, though Roy Oswalt comes close.) Only the hands will remain back as the ball crosses the halfway point to the plate, and the decision to swing is a message sent only to those hands. The rest of the body surges into the pitch before the hitter has any inkling of location or rotation.

“Then you’re s sitting duck for a change,” my young hitters protest. Well… every hitter is always suckered by a good change unless he’s looking for it or the pitcher is giving it away early—and in either of those cases, the hitter whose lower body is actively involved in a weight shift can hold back just as well as the “all hands” hitter. In the second place, I really don’t think the old-school hitter has this vulnerability at all. In practice, a moving body allows the hands to stay back on a good change-up because the body can continue to move, outdistancing the hands all the way until the hitter is erect on his forward leg. The “all hands” hitter, in contrast, has nothing to help him keep his hands back—so he is really the one whom the good change puts at a distinct disadvantage.

Again, I’m convinced that you would need a long, well-balanced bat to give the old-fashioned technique a fair trial. Don’t expect it to feel right with the first $300 Catalyst you pull out of your bag.

Separation: Key to a Smooth Stroke

If I get around to saying nothing else this month--or if I had to describe just one lesson that I think I have learned from studying great hitters--I would begin with the word "separation". Aaron had it. So did Jackie R and Clemente. So did guys like George Kell and Harvey Kuenn (whose swing almost cloned Kell's)--and of course Musial and Cobb and Speaker. I'm talking about the trailing of the hands behind the head and shoulders as the hitter's upper body surges toward the pitcher (and the pitch: but the surge takes place automatically even before the hitter's eye sees the ball released). The hands stay behind: they are separated from the upper torso.

I used to think of separation as a quality distinctive to front-foot hitting, where the batsman has already transferred most of his weight forward before contact. A strong correlation certainly exists, but not (I've decided) a necessary one. Strides seemed to lengthen throughout the thirties and forties as hitters searched for more power. A really long stride like Gehrig's or Mays's would keep the weight back even as it left the hands behind. And then again, some of the long-striders would be leaning back on an inside fastball but almost vertical on their front leg as they met a change-up. Keeping the hands back allows for such adjustment. Personally, I'm not a fan of long strides--I think they grew unwieldy once pitchers dispensed with their windmill wind-ups and left the hitter with less motion to use in his timing. Separation is no more dependent on a long stride, however, then it is on front-foot contact (which is to say, it is somewhat but not completely so). Nick Markakis, for instance, appears to me to get good separation without hurling himself into the pitch. I think the Brett/Raines generation did this same thing by spreading out in the box, so that they had already taken their stride (as it were) and needed only to launch forward off a strong back leg.

Why is separation so important? Two reasons: it levels the swing out so that the planes of bat and ball intersect for a much longer time, and it creates a dynamic whiplash effect to shoot the bat forward should the hitter decide to attack the pitch. The contemporary style seems to me to devalue the level swing in pursuit of the power contained in a strong downward cut (enhanced by today's heavy barrels). With more homers come more pop-ups and strikeouts, though--far more than an old-school hitter would have thought acceptable. We will save a discussion of forespin and backspin for another day: enough to say now that batsmen who achieve good separation are redoubtable line-drive hitters.

That's my kind of ballplayer. You can start building your Team for the Ages with Arod if you like. I'll take Aaron, and we'll have no quarrel. You'll sell more jerseys, and I'll win more games.

Changing Times: New Bats, New Swings

The ball, of course, is not supposed to change. Insiders know that it does, whether by accident or design. Former big-league pitcher Pat Maholmes admitted to me as the new millennium began that the late nineties had seen a very lively ball--just in time, I pointed out, to fuel an exciting home-run derby after the '94 strike had alienated the public from the game. (Mr. Maholmes, I should add, was far more concerned about the effects of steroids on play.) As a hitter, I have no control over what ball is given to the pitcher. But I can certainly choose a longer or shorter bat with a thicker or thinner barrel and/or handle, etc. It is obvious that bats before World War II, in comparison to those used today, tended to be a) longer, b) thicker-handled, and c) thinner-barreled. Today's wooden bat is as much a clone of the metallic kind that all kids grow up using as is technologically feasible: all barrel and no handle, one might simplify, with an alarming flare at the point of transition. These bats break so easily that Blue Jays player John McDonald was recently left with little more than a knob in his hand after tapping the plate during his settling-in rituals. Tony Gwynn told George Will (author of Men at Work) in no uncertain terms that he chose a wooden bat after turning professional that would replicate his aluminum model from college as much as possible.

In between, you have the bats that I grew up with. They were still typically about 35" long, with handles of variable thickness and barrels rather less thick than today's models. Sluggers like Mantle often favored a thin handle. Diminutive lead-off man Bobby Richardson used one of the thickest, heaviest bats around: he choked up on it and tried to get some piece of it on some part of the ball.

In my opinion, there's no definitively right or wrong bat--but to use a certain kind of bat, you have to take a certain approach to the ball. This is a large part of what I want to discuss in subsequent posts. I hope younger players may at least "fool around" with unusual models to get some productive ideas and bring some variety back into a game too characterized now by home runs, bloopers, and strikeouts. Of course, where CAN you find a 39" thin-barreled bat with little taper unless you make one (as I've done out of an old hickory limb)? If you get your hands on such a thing, however, you will notice--after getting past the "utter impossibility" of swinging it--that it responds pretty well to a kind of swing you've never seen in your life. But you can see parts of it in old photos. Or you may just barely glimpse it all in an old newsreel.