The rope bat
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I would recommend the Whip-Hit (if that's the rope bat you are meaning). DD occasionally works with the coach who help create the Whip-Hit version (think there are other rope bats out there too) and he turned us on to this. It is a fantastic tool for hand/barrel path training, and we found it to work well for extension too. At $80 it's a little pricey, but worth the investment. You can make something very similar with a bat handle and ball much cheaper, but this comes with a secure handle and nice "professionally made" feel. It's especially effective when hitting front toss. It takes some practice just to hit off a tee with it and when they hit a ball in flight they definitely have to have proper path/extension. The Whip-Hit is designed where the ball is at the approximate sweet spot of a 33" bat. Word of caution...use batting helmet when getting used to it. DD and both whacked ourselves on the head when first trying it. Like with any training tool though, it's best used for a specific purpose. We did find that she started to bar out her front arm to cheat the tool a bit after using it for a while. Worked best to switch between whip-hit and regular bat about every 10-15 balls when working specifically on path.
I actually made one several years back in 12U, if I remember right I made it for around $9.00. Of course I had an aluminum Tee ball bat to saw off and a softball. Tom is very right, wear a helmet because that "one" girl will crack herself in the head.......hard! I thought it worked great, the girls hated it.
Aluminum Tee-ball bat sawed off just above the handle/grip, drill a 1/2" hole through the center of the knob.
12" softball.
Buy 3 or 4 feet of 1/2" climbing rope.
Two 1/2" cable clamps.
I work at a collision center so I used 3M-142 epoxy to glue the rope down inside the handle and I filled up the end of the hole I cut in the top of the softball, the one I made was way overkill, it could have been used as a war club! The rope was run through the handle and out of the hole I drilled, I put a clamp around the rope and it butted up against the knob.
The hole in the ball was big enough so the clamp was flush with the top of the ball, then it was epoxied. I don't care who was swinging it, it wasn't coming apart!
The length I made it was from the bottom of the knob to the sweet spot of the barrel on a 31" bat, for 12U.
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