Baseball players spend much of their time trying to become better hitters. Hitting the ball hard on a consistent basis is very difficult. The best hitters will bat .300, meaning they succeed three times out of every 10 at bats. Consequently, that means the best hitters fail seven out of 10 times.
Batting Tee
This is one of the most distinct practice tools in baseball. Children who are 5 and 6 years old use the tee to learn how to hit. High school players use the tee to work on flaws and develop a level swing. Professional players use the batting tee to loosen up and keep good habits from turning into bad ones. Players need to use a level swing to hit the ball squarely off the tee, and that translates into a level swing in game conditions.
Pitching Machine
When a coach throws batting practice to his team, he can look at the swing from the pitcher's perspective and spot flaws and mistakes immediately. He can correct them right away and have a true impact. However, a coach is human and there are only so many throws he can make every day from the pitcher's mound. A mechanical pitching machine can throw an unlimited number of pitches. It can throw a variety of pitches, and if a hitter wants to take 100 swings, a pitching machine can supply the pitches.
Video Review
One of the biggest changes in hitting practice has been the innovation of video review. When the hitting coach wants to have a session with one of his hitters, he can use videotape to help lessons. The coach can pop in a DVD of the player's recent at-bats and show what the hitter is doing correctly and what she is doing incorrectly at the plate. If he is a high school or college coach, he can put in a DVD of a professional hitter and explain what makes that player's swing so strong and what needs to be done to improve the high school player's swing to make it better. It's much easier when players can see it for themselves.
Expert Insight
Ted Williams was considered by many to be the best hitter in the game's history. He studied his craft throughout his career and developed a smooth and steady swing that was the envy of everyone in baseball. Williams knew he was involved in one of the toughest endeavors in all of sports. "Hitting a baseball--I've said it a thousand times--is the single most difficult thing to do in sport," Williams said.
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