It was about 15 years ago that I first took a swing at a baseball. “Swing” is probably too generous a word to use in this regard; “swat” might be more apt, “hack” even better.
Batting Improvement System
To say I hadn’t been a particularly athletically gifted child would be a colossal understatement. That first time I swung at a baseball, though, I hit it, purely by luck, right in the sweet spot. When you hit a baseball like that it makes a curiously clean “tock” sound. You barely feel the impact in your shoulders and arms, and oh, it flies! The feeling you get when this happens washes over you like a warm glow. Then you spend the rest of your life trying to do it again.
It’s no secret that hitting a baseball is one of the hardest activity in sports, a notion to which my subsequent trials attest. The narrowness and shape of the bat, the movement of the ball, the pre-committal to the swing, the prediction of where the ball is going to be at the moment of collision rather than where the ball is and the timing required to put the bat in the same exact location in space are all factors that stack to determine whether the batter is cheered around the bases or booed back to the dugout.
Harmony is key, and even the best in the world struggle to make a .300 batting average – a statistic that measures the ratio of “number of hits” to “at bats”. What this means is even the best batters struggle to hit the ball just once in three swings. And this is where the Batting Improvement System from Hammacher Schlemmer steps up to the plate.
Easy Up, Easy Down
The batting cage is an often used too to train batting technique, but rather than travel to a remote location and pay to use one, The Batting Improvement System can be easily assembled and erected in your own yard, affixing to the ground with spikes for stability. The steel-framed cage is padded with foam for safety and the netting is made from rot-resistant nylon, and includes a ¼ horsepower height-adjustable Heater pitching machine with a 12-ball auto-feeder that throws a ball every 12 seconds at a speeds from 15 to 46 miles per hour.
This very same system is used by many little league coaches for training their young players; the height adjustment accounts for players as they grow. The cage can easily be disassembled in 30 minutes or so when space is needed for other activities.
The Batting Improvement System uses regulation-size balls and is recommended for ages 5-14 with adult supervision. Dimension: 12’/3.6m tall, 12’/3.6m wide and 24’/7.2m long. Weight: 105lbs/47.7kg. Shipping: Gift wrapping is available. Price: $799.95. Available from hammacher.com. 2-3 weeks for delivery.