This is My Promise...

You know the “chop down” swing?  “Knob to the ball” and “Squish the bug”?  Well, I had it all mastered.  I was part Bruce Lee part Terminix Bug Squasher.  By the time I was eleven I was the poster child for the theory.  Peep the form below.

You’re talking to a Little League All-Star chief.  Do you see that arm definition?!  Those 85 pound pitchers, with their fastballs that couldn’t break a window pane and their father-taught, wrist-snap, spin-balls that only appeared to have movement because of a thing called gravity?  I owned that weak stuff.  With my perfect mechanics and a decade of muscle memory to build upon before draft day... I felt like this type of stuff was within reach…

But high school came and went. And while a little speed and some solid defense helped me make it to the collegiate level, my hitting was nothing more than singles at best.  After years of weight lifting programs (I know it's surprising I’d need to work out after seeing the guns I was working with as a kid), physical and mental maturation, and thousands of hacks taken with each swing rooted in a linear principle and a tight downward hand path that optimally finished with me catching the ball a few feet in front of the plate, I’d become no more than a slap hitting pest.

Don't get me wrong, I loved my hitting coach.  I still do. He's an amazing dude who lives, eats, and breathes baseball. I just couldn't help but feel that my mechanics looked different than the top hitters in the world.

At my best, I led team on-base percentages with low liners and the rare extra base hit. At my worst, I was a ground-out waiting to happen. Hard 90, harder bat-rack slam. Hard 90, harder water cooler beat down.

Quick hands on D, a little speed, and my mastered karate chop, managed to get me signed in the Atlantic League: the top indy ball league in the country.  It’s a grab bag of World Series ring bearers, current big leaguers who opted out of contracts for a chance to resign later in the season with new teams, past “can’t miss” studs that just kept… missing, deserving young talent that got stuck with the wrong organization, freaks of nature who can’t figure it out upstairs, baseball geniuses that can’t stay healthy, and Donald Trump.

Injuries, affiliated signings, releases, and a losing streak induced, sphincter-clenching, front office desperation led to me batting leadoff, straight out of college, on a team filled with AAA and big league hitters.  Pitch selection, a chip on my shoulder the size of my massive arms in that first pic, and adrenaline resulted in me hitting right around .400 my first month.  During this unconscious stretch of hitting, I refused to acknowledge the fact that each team was putting together a scouting report for me the way they had for EVERY OTHER HITTER IN THE LEAGUE.  Sure enough, pitching adjustments were made.  I recognized the shift to “hard in and… even harder up and in”.  I knew what they were doing.  I started cheating to the inside pitch and still couldn’t barrel up what I knew was coming.  I backed away from the plate to help things out.  I started earlier, committed earlier and could even hear some catchers set up inside on me.  I was confused, embarrassed, absolutely livid, and worried about my future.  I flat out wasn’t getting the results I wanted.  And by results I mean the shallow liners that I expected to CRUSH just past the middle infielders. (Get a load of this rocket off a former St. Louis Cardinal's big league slider.  Take note of the superior pine tar job and the pick off that I didn’t even know happened)…

During my latest season, I mixed horrible inabilities to make adjustments with decisions that led to season altering elbow issues.  This mixture brewed a nice little cocktail of horrendous baseball stats.  As a player who only gets paychecks because of his on-base percentage, I actually went through a stage of desperation where I said, “screw it, I’m just gonna hack at everything”.  So I did.  Definitely didn’t work.

What’s that first step again, admitting you have a problem?  Well, Houston…

I began watching my teammates that were successful.  They all had different stances, different heights, weights, they liked different types of pitches and locations, but after a full season of observing, listening, breaking down, and filming each and every successful hitter I played with, especially those that had reached the highest level, I learned they all had one thing in common.  What was most noteworthy about “those common things” they were doing was something that legitimately gave me a weird feeling in my stomach.  By the time the practice round of hitting got to our catcher, I realized it was something I never worked on.  I never practiced “those things”.  My decade of muscle memory never focused on “those things”.  Then I felt worse when I realized none of my youth, high school, or even top travel teammates were working on “those things”.  I found myself getting frustrated when I thought about how many different baseball academies I attended, and even worked for, that had the same goofy little cookie-cutter phrases that were emphasized daily and beat into our young and malleable baseball minds.  “Squish the bug!” “Chop down!”  “Get on top!” “Catch the ball out front!”
I zoned back in on the pregame routine of the former Baltimore Orioles catcher who was hitting .320 while leading the Atlantic League in homeruns.  He stood in the cage, mashing baseballs with a point of contact that echoed around the entire facility and made stadium ground-crew members recoil as they walked by.  I finally grew angry as I came to the realization that what he was doing, “those things” he was working on, just like the former Atlanta Brave who stepped out of the cage before him was working on, and “those things” the New York Yankee before him was doing, and “those things” the Houston Astro before him was doing, “those things” they were all doing; no coach in my area was teaching “those things”.  But it couldn’t just be my area could it?  Other kids around the country had to have been fed the same pile of safe-swinging mediocrity.  I made a promise that I’d do everything possible so as many players as I could reach would never have to wish they could retrieve a wasted decade of hard work lost on the wrong mechanics.  I made a promise that I’d show hitters “those things”.

I’m excited to break through this cookie cutter way of teaching that has been brainwashed into most of the baseball youth.  I’m determined to bridge the gap between the common baseball community (little league through college) and the most elite hitters of the world.  I’m ready to open eyes to what I’ve seen first-hand. This is the result of staying true to my promise.

(The following posts at Angled will be dedicated solely on bridging the knowledge gap between the baseball community and the elite hitters.  The subsequent posts will be found in the top right of the page under each month they were written.)

Bridge The Gap

Dan Hennigan
AlwaysAskWhy 86400