"Baseball is 90% mental, the other half is physical" – Yogi Berra

I almost forgot one of the best things I heard Tony Gwynn say.  He said 2 things and they relate to one another and the above quote.

He said "Man, if I had the equipment they have today, I think I could’ve made a really good run at .400."  The other was "It’s not guessing if you know".

What he was referring to is that today every team is on video for every game.  So if someone was willing to do their homework, you should know what pitch is coming if the pitcher’s in trouble, or what’s coming after 2 strait curveballs.  You should know his release point.  You should know what his best pitch is.  You should know this about every pitcher you will face.  Since they’ve gone to the unbalanced schedule, you’ll now have a huge library of knowlede of their pitchers for the 18 – 19 times you’ll face one another.

Now instead of having to cover the entire strike zone and react to whatever the pitcher throws, if you "know" he’s thowing you an 2-0 fastball low, you can just look there and hit it.  If for whatever reason he doesn’t throw that, you just don’t swing.  "It’s not guessing, if you know".

At the lower levels, just concentrate on picking up the pitcher’s release point and see what he likes to throw the most in practice.  I guarantee you, that’s what he’ll go to if he’s in trouble.

If you’re playing in high school/college or above, start studying videos of the pitcher’s you’ll face, or clue in the advance scouts what you’d like to know.  They’ll be happy to get the information for you as they’ll be excited that they have a player who finally gets it.

I questioned earlier about how much weight do you feel a major league batter has on their back foot when contacting the ball.

A lot of coaches believe (and I used to be one of them that you hit from the back side), but I was always bothered by footage I would watch of the guy with the most home runs all-time in the Major Leagues, Hank Aaron.

I’d swear he actually lifted his back foot in the air, when he hit.  I couldn’t find many pictures of him hitting but here are two.

This second one admitedly is taken after he’s hit the ball, so it could be as he’s starting to run, but then he’d be going the wrong direction.  Plus as I stated earlier, find video of him and it must be half the time or more that his back foot is up in the air at contact.

What does that mean? do other hitters do it?  Should more hitters be doing it?

Post your comments, but seriously think about it in relationship to how you hit now and if you’re not the all-time home run king, is there anything that you can use from his style, or do we just discount it as unique to him, like Ty Cobb’s splitting his hands to hit (that will be another post ?