Some Varieties Of Baseball Hitting Aids

By Agnes Dickson


Hitting tools can help hone a young batter's inherent talent and make the best of it soonest. Keen vision and quick reflexes certainly don't hurt when it comes to teeing the ball, but a balanced and disciplined swing is essential. The only way to cultivate that fine a swing is through many repetitions, and a great many repetitions is difficult to maintain if the youngster is forever gathering baseballs from the outfield. Baseball hitting aids are a good resource for gaining repetitions.

The simplest of these aids is the common batting tee. Essentially it does the same thing a golf tee does but comes with a stalk to hold the ball higher, usually adjustable and ranging between just below thirty inches to nearly four feet. This places the ball right within most young hitters' sweet spot, letting them repeat a well-balanced swing.

To keep from having to spend all day running after balls struck off the tee, one could add a screen so the ball can be netted and pocketed . A few nets come with targets stitched in their netting to allow the youngster to know when the ball is a sure hit. Tees and screens are both just as good for softball as they are for baseball, and ought to be designed to stay upright and stationary during moderately windy days.

The problem of netting the struck ball is avoided altogether with the use of a swing tee. With these tees, the ball is affixed to a swinging arm that is parallel to the ground. Once the batter strikes the wall it whips around on that stalk but snaps back at the end of the rotation so it can be batted again.

Several types of batting tee work to sharpen a young hitter's swing by making maximum use of repetitions. Sadly, there really is no replacement for a live pitcher, especially for development of both timing and eye for the strike zone. The pitching machine is invaluable at helping develop these facets of good hitting.

Many people naturally think of a pitching machine as a rather expensive proposition, the sort of device only baseball teams and batting ranges can afford. It might come as a surprise to find that there are plenty of home pitching machines out there, especially for the younger players who need them most. Some of them cost little more than a bat or a glove, and in fact are some of the least expensive aids one can find.

There are protective nets, looking like elongated rooms made out of mosquito netting, built to contain the batted balls when they are pitched, either by a pitching machine or by a cooperative practice pitcher. On the higher end of the price scale come the packages of equipment, often represented by famous major league players. With these packages also comes a good deal more differentiation between baseball and softball.

A lot of the kind of equipment that was once the domain of league ball teams is available now to the common suburban household. Its scale is smaller but it is still built tough enough to handle a pounding. This is a toolkit that makes young batters better all over the world.




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