Expert: Chip Aki - 11/23/2004

Question
Chip,
I appreciate your help on the following problem.

My hand turns abruptly at the bottom of my down swing. I have confirmed this with several people who are qualified to see what I am doing. My arm swing appears to be solid until it is time to release the ball. As you can imagine this gives me a “spinner's track”.

I have tried several ways to release the ball but I cannot seem to get over this flip.  hunch My span is very short, under 4 inches. Because of an old injury my finger holes are ½ inch forward, away from the palm, and on the middle finger and an 1 ¼ on the ring finger.

I am a big man, a nice way of saying obese, 59 years old and have been averaging in the 190's to low 200's until last year. I dropped to 176. Even when my average was higher I had a tendency to go Brooklyn.

I truly hope you can give me some new ideas on how to approach this problem.

Many thanks,

Bob Price


Answer
A couple of things to look into.  If your armswing gets too far away from your body in the backswing, it will cause you to over rotate at the release.  If your span is too short or the pitches cause you to squeeze the ball, you will rotate as well.

Also, try to just roll the ball off of your hand and do not try to lift or turn the ball.  We have a tendancy to over rotate when we concentrate on trying to get more rotation on the ball.

Good luck,
Chip