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[Mark H]

Works for Lotief.

[PDad]

Ted Williams wrote he could smell the ball burn when he hit it. Impossible even for Ted

The ball or the bat? I can find several quotes from Ted about smelling the wood bat burn and none from him about the ball. Perhaps you can provide one.

FWIW, I've seen several MLB hitters smell their bat after they foul one off, usually on ones straight back, and talk about it. From http://www.espn.com/gammons/s/2002/0705/1402438.html:

When I was driving Ted and Wade Boggs to Clearwater for a dinner of hitting talk with Don Mattingly in spring training of 1986, Ted asked Boggs, "Have you ever smelled the bat burning?"

"What are you talking about?" Boggs replied.

Ted didn't reply.

At dinner, Ted repeated the question to Mattingly.

"People think I'm crazy, but yes," replied Mattingly. "It takes a perfect rising, four-seam fastball, a perfect swing, a foul straight back ... and you can smell the burn of the seams and the bat."

"Only the guys who whip that lumber have smelled it," said Ted.

When all those great players surrounded Williams at Fenway at the '99 All-Star Game, he motioned for McGwire to come closer. He asked the same question.

After the game, McGwire repeated the story of how Ted called him over and asked if he'd ever smelled the bat burning. "I told him I had," said McGwire.

[Mark H]

Ted Williams wrote he could smell the ball burn when he hit it.

No, he didn't. Get your story straight. You are close but no cigar. Google is your friend. I'd explain your mistake but I tire of your misguided persistence.

Impossible even for Ted, he also never could get over Joan Joyce striking him out. .

No, It didn't bother him at all. See how that works? I can make an unsupported statement as well. Difference is mine sounds believable and yours doesn't.

Ted was truly a great hitter and teacher, but was contentious at best when he was a player. .

Whatever.

Hitting coaches hate to hear that anything is natural,.

Natural, to most kids, seems to be, as I said before, to use their arms to hit the ball in a casting motion some describe as bat drag. I've been watching 18U Houston area and national level ball closely for 20 years. For years I saw less than 10% that I would describe as high level swings. Another 30% that weren't just awful. Now that has improved in the last ten years but great swings are still the exception rather than the rule. So how you figure swinging a bat is natural?

and that leaving kids alone at any age is awful..

Letting young kids use a swing that counts at .23 seconds or worse because they are crushing weak to average pitching is awful unless that's the highest level of softball the kid plans to play.

After all without their help the world would just not turn. It's a miracle that kids learned how to play before professional hitting coaches came along..

Stipulated before...most hitting coaches teach something that is obviously not what elite hitters do if you check video of elite hitters so don't think I'm defending the majority of hitting instructors. If we can agree the state of instruction is bad enough that the overall average competence would be improved if all hitting instruction ceased, then I might be with you.

Professionals coaches are not the only ones that can help teach hitting, parents and and unpaid coaches help also,.

No kidding.

it takes a village..

No, it takes individual hard work and study. Regardless of the competence of instruction or understanding of the kid about what he/she is doing, hard work will usually win out. At least until it meets hard work combined with biomechanical efficiency.

This idea that if kids are taught wrong they can never be fixed, is a bit pretentious too..

See, you keep doing this. You keep attributing positions that NO ONE on here has taken. Just stop. It's getting tedious.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Kids are physically and mentally flexible, and good professional coaches can easily make those changes.

I'm with you except for the easily part. Sometimes it's easy and quick. Sometimes it's not. Why would I want my kid to swing poorly until some later time?

[Mark H]

Well now Pdad has explained it to you while I was typing. He's a better man with a deeper well of patience than I apparently possess.

[jtat32]

Professional coaches have their place, but no one thing, person, or strategy makes that much difference. Kids simply don't need professional hitting lessons before they are able to grasp what the basics in softball are all about. I believe you guys have the best intentions for kids, and many may need your help before their softball career is over, but a there's a time for parents and regular coaches.

This, in and of itself, is an entirely reasonable statement. That said, Mark is entirely on target with his assessment of rec-ball conventional wisdom with regard to how to hitting should be coached, at least in my own personal experience. I'm sure there are leagues that have a stronger knowledge base than others, but most are pretty poor.

Here's the fundamental misconception - most rec coaches (and many travel as well as hitting coaches) describe hitting as being primarily a function of the hands and arms, whereas analysis of the best hitters (softball or baseball) indicates that it is primarily a function of the core muscles with the hands and arms being more akin to levers that connect the bat to the core muscles. This description is a huge oversimplification of the swing and coaching misconceptions, but it might help fill in some of the gaps in the discussion. That said, I'm not pretending to speak for Mark - he can provide a much more detailed and insightful description of what he considers to be the core issues with how hitting is taught than I can.

This disconnect isn't isolated to rec ball, or softball - even Don Mattingly describes a swing that way, although there is no video or picture evidence that he ever swung that way. This is a hard habit to break at any age. Leaving hitting instruction up to rec ball coaches is fine if conventional wisdom approaches reality, but in this case, it doesn't.

Natural talent is certainly an important factor in a player's success at the plate, but sometimes natural talent simply means being non-compliant, consciously or unconsciously, to poor coaching.

[Mark H]

TItan- I don't believe you can read? Please read the whole post. I just turned 32 years old and don't remember these gentlemen your talking about, but my grandfather told me about most of these players. I'm a historian when it comes to women's softball, and Joan Joyce herself said he, Ted Williams, was mad about the whole thing. Were you guys MLB players, you know so much about hitting. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but the reason most people didn't and don't play in the major leagues is that they're just not naturally talented enough. You guys think you can change that, but you can't, and neither can anyone else. You also think you over important when it comes to training young players. It takes a village to properly train a child, so stop believing your so important. Professional coaches have their place, but no one thing, person, or strategy makes that much difference. Kids simply don't need professional hitting lessons before they are able to grasp what the basics in softball are all about. I believe you guys have the best intentions for kids, and many may need your help before their softball career is over, but a there's a time for parents and regular coaches. There are also too many hitting coaches that live off the hard work of young inexperienced softball player's parents.

Well that's at least some second hand anecdotal evidence Ted was annoyed or mad. That sounds possible but that's a long way from saying he never got over it. As to your new straw man arguments in this post, I have neither the time nor inclination to point our your logical fallacies. Carry on.

[Mark H]

Your personal believe about the correctness of a softball swing, I can assume reading your posts, would get down to sub nuclear particles. So I definitely don't want to go down that road without a neutron microscope. However, this idea that women softball players can get along without you guys teaching them how to hit is completely bogus. There were really good coaches that helped my hitting when I was in college, but that information wouldn't have meant a thing to me at a earlier age. I talk to a lot of college softball players and their belief on this matter is similar to mine.

Wow. Best wishes to you C77. If I started in on that I'd feel bad.

[slapperdad]

Friedrich Nietzsche

I'm sorry, I can't hear a Nietzsche reference without thinking of this scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsHuNFEa8H4

[slapperdad]

slapperdad- Nice post, that down home country humor is so refreshing. (From C77Fastpitch; AKA Smarty Pants)

Down home country humor.....you realize Mel Brooks is a Jew from Brooklyn right?