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.