Many players, both professional and amateur, invariably ask me this question: "My coach tells me to swing down through the ball. But, whenever I watch the really good hitters on TV, they don't hit that way. I'm really confused about this."

And, I can understand why. In fact, many coaches also say to swing "level." But in reality, does he mean "level to the ball" -- or level to the ground?" If the hitter is instructed to swing "level," how does he hit the pitch at the knees? My mentor, Ted Williams, had it correct over 60 years ago when he said a hitter must swing level to ball - not level to the ground. A huge difference.

The more I teach hitting the more I am convinced that coaches screw up more hitters than help them. A number of years ago, I was watching four or five six-year old kids swinging bats at a small playground. Their swings were very natural, very pretty. Better than most older hitters. Nothing fancy. Just good, solid swings. From then on, I made it a habit to watch young kids swing. More often than not, their swings flowed perfectly. And why shouldn't they? After all, I reasoned, no one had imposed their hitting "knowledge" and personal "bias'" on them yet! 

When you trace the "natural" swing, it starts at one shoulder and ends up at the other. In other words, the swing path is slightly down from the launch position, levels off somewhere in front of the lead knee, then gradually slopes up and finishes in the vicinity of the opposite shoulder. Can you see this below? (The Science of Hitting by Ted Williams)

So, somewhere between the "youngsters" and their "natural" swings -- and the "older" players who come to me for help -- someone has intervened. I am not sure why, but the graphic above is what we should all be shooting for. Not "down," not "level," not "up." The natural swing contains all three!

I never say one swing is better than the other. I merely ask the hitter which type swing would he prefer to have; I can teach any of them. But I have not had one player in 20 years say he would not like to have the largest impact zone possible. But this isn't the only reason to have a natural swing: it produces fly balls that have backspin and ground balls that have over spin. Say what? The best of "both" worlds?

Being a first baseman, I found the really good left-handed hitters in the American League hit ground balls with tremendous overspin, picking up momentum, and either shooting past the infielders for base hits or causing the balls to "jump up" at the last minute, producing hits or errors..

Analyzing why this occurred, when a hitter was "late" swinging, he hit under the ball. When he was early, he swung over the ball. So if the hitter had good mechanics and matched the plane of his swing to the plane of the pitch, and he was a little bit late, he would hit the bottom-half of the baseball, creating backspin and more distance. Just what you want! However, if the player was a little bit early with his swing, he would hit the top-half of the ball, resulting in a grounder with overspin, creating tons of momentum. Ideal. But this was certainly against the "popular" notion of many coaches who teach their hitters to produce backspin on every ball they hit. Why would someone want backspin on ground balls?

So there you have it. With the "natural" or slight upswing, the hitter has the best of all possible situations:

So once the player has the hitting mechanics that promote this type of swing, one can see how important the terms "depth perception" and "timing" play in a hitter's success. Being a little early -- or a little late -- can make all the difference in the world!

It all starts with a natural swing.

For more detailed information, click here for Mike's Collegiate Baseball News article, "What is the Perfect Swing?"

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