Recently, I’ve been getting pretty heavily into the AZ DiamondBacks (Shh, it’s the only -real- sports team we have here) and the other day they pulled Craig Counsell off of the injured list.
His first at bat, I immediately announced that Craig Counsell most certainly doesn’t belong off of the injured list, look how that poor sod has to hold his bat!! My boyfriend assured me that he hit like that before he was injured and my roomate and I were FLOORED!
How this man got through Little League without a serious ass-whooping is beyond me.
It absolutely looks like the bat is trying to fly away somewhere behind him and he’s BARELY keeping it from doing do.
I’ve never seen this before. Does ANYONE else do this? I know his dad was an outfielder for the Twins back in his day. Did he bat like this too?
Ever seen the famous picture of Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio on the cover of Life magazine?
A lot of batters trying for more power put so much into the front swing they lose almost all contact with it when it comes around. And indeed they do sometimes lose the bat. Some batting coaches will tell you to work your shoulders for power, some say the hips. Some work both. Shoulder men tend to have a more dramatic and pitched swing than hip men. If you look at it from an angle it will look like a “U”. You can really get a lot under the ball doing this but there is less bad covering the plate on your swing and you really need to have good timing and hand-eye skills.
Me, I hold the wiffle ball bat by the thick end and try to take one on the hip so I can get to first.
Once he’s swinging, it looks relatively normal. The stance while he waits for the swing suggests the bus he took to the stadium was alot shorter than his fellow teammates.
That stance is the hallmark of a down stroke swing. My sister bats a little like that and he coach calls it “chopping”. You get the same ability to come up under the ball but you can ground it really easily too. And of course if it works for him, why alter it?
Clearly you don’t remember Jose Cruz, Sr. He stood with his arms extended straight above his head.
Then there is Sadaharu Oh. In the picture linked, he looks to be in mid-stride. But no, that’s actually how he started. It was known as the “flamingo stance.”
Yea, Craig Counsell! One of, I think, two Notre Dame alums in the bigs (the other is Jamie Moyer).
Also, Kata sucks*.
*No, he actually doesn’t suck, he’s tearing it up. But I spent many a night Covaleski Stadium in South Bend taunting him when he played for the South Bend Silverhawks. It’s a very long story.
True, I wouldn’t want to alter my stance if it worked for me. But seriously… you’d think that his dad or his little league coach would’ve broken him of it, ya know?
I wish I could find footage of John Counsell batting, that would just make my day.
I don’t care for the AZD, but I do care about Counsell. He scored the winning run for the Florida Marlins on game 7 of the 1997 World Series, in fact, IIRC he started the rally that lead to his own scoring. Good player.
