For all those who love to heckle the guy standing at the plate, go ahead. Scream whatever you want, he can’t hear you. He’s wearing earplugs.
The best hitters don’t listen to most of what is said to them, whether from fans or coaches. Remember hearing your rabid little league coaching yelling, “Don’t uppercut?"
A former MLB shortstop and hitting coach used to yell at me overzealously in the cage, “Hammer down!”
I’ll just cut (see what I did?) to the chase. The best swings in baseball have the barrel trending up at the point of contact. Your youth baseball coach didn’t know any better. With all due respect, my shortstop friend didn’t either.
Here’s Kid Linea:
Here’s Mike Trout:
And here’s Manny:
Due to gravitational force, once the pitcher releases the ball, it is pulled towards the earth. Additionally, he’s throwing the ball to a target lower than he is at the moment of delivery.
It doesn’t take a physicist to know that swinging with a downward angle will more likely cause you to A) miss the ball entirely or B) beat the ball into the ground. Chopping at the baseball gives a hitter substantially less chance to hit the ball flush.
At least now you don’t have to feel bad that Miggy didn’t turn around that one time in Lakeland.
