Hitting in baseball v fastpitch softball

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Nov 26, 2010
4,784
113
Michigan
It’s kind of funny that you posted this we used to go to a facility in Chattanooga, TN (it’s closed now) they had the Irion Mike baseball pitching machines in three cages one at 55, 65 and 75 MPH at 60 feet. DD hit in all three cages at 38 feet and did well in all three. She got to where she was doing really good in all three even the 75, the facility owner asked her one day why she moved to 38 feet when she hit and she advised him that in FP the release point is somewhere around 38 feet and she tries to simulate what she sees in FP.

The phone rang one day and it was the owner of the facility who at that time coached the Chattanooga Lookouts, he told us that some of the boys were complaining that the 75 MPH was too fast for them to hit from and he told them a girl was hitting off the machine at 38 feet, of course they did not believe it could be done. He wanted to know the next time we planned to come up to call him so he could have them come up to see her. We called the next time and of course none of them showed up, but I thought it was cool.

She goes to cages that has 70 baseball and does the Bond’s Drill.

View attachment 2983
Off topic The Lookouts have one of the coolest logos in baseball I have. Hat that must 15 years old that I refuse to toss out. Even though its the grungiest thing
 
Oct 19, 2009
1,827
0
Off topic The Lookouts have one of the coolest logos in baseball I have. Hat that must 15 years old that I refuse to toss out. Even though its the grungiest thing

My grandfather, my dad, me and my daughter all attended games at Lookout Stadium. Dad would hitchhike to the stadium when he was a kid stand outside the stadium during batting practice and if you caught a ball and turned it in you got in to the game for free and if you turned another you got a coke and hot dog. I have souvenir gloves, bats, helmets and balls they would give away to ticket holders going back many years.

My dad was at the game below.
In 1931, the New York Yankees played an exhibition game against the Lookouts. During the game, a 17-year-old girl named Jackie Mitchell pitched for the Lookouts and struck out Major League greats Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. A few days after the game, baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis voided Mitchell's contract, claiming that baseball was "too strenuous" for women.[2]

Chattanooga Lookouts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Oct 19, 2009
1,827
0
SB one of the first things I noticed in the 18 gold teams and college is the kids who maintained a good batting average by getting those soft liners and bloopers find themselves struggling. You have to hit solid line drives that get down to the ground quickly.

The article has good info on evaluating where a hitter is. Do you use the same numbers with ball exit speed in softball as he uses in the article for baseball?
 
Aug 4, 2008
2,364
0
Lexington,Ohio
Yes. Here is something I think a quote from Don " When you consider bat speed before you hit the ball and then IF you do not hit it squarely the bat speed means very little prior to hitting the ball " Howard says you can hear a solid hit when kids are hitting balls if you are a good hitting coach. I know many think the TCB balls are a warm up device, but they do give you instant feedback if a kid is not hitting the ball squarely. I think many over looked this fact. I wonder how many hitting coaches work on hitting the ball squarely? If you have ever worked with Howard , you will notice how all the balls are marked with a target. It is not just hitting the ball , but hitting it squarely into a marked target.
A coach stated this via e mail to me.
There should be a solid statistical correlation between these 3 factors:
1: bat speed : center of ball contact= total ball speed when checked with a radar gun
 
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