The Asteroid Theory Of Hitting

With Apologies To Ted Williams and his "The Science Of Hitting"

Editor’s Note: There are times when, as a youth sports coach, you have to go to alternate teaching methods to get your point across. I’m not sure that Neil deGrasse Tyson would approve - but it worked.

THE ASTEROID THEORY OF HITTING

When instructing young men at the age of 12 – that last sacred year before teenhood – the coach is  offer presented with unusual educational opportunities attempting to educate these youngsters on the finer points of our National Pastime. Since in the next year, baseball players will move to a regulation-size field – 60.6 mound, 90-foot bases – for many players, this is the last year where, if they’re physically ahead of most of their contemporaries, they can dominate on a smaller 50-foot mound, 70-foot bases.

Whether it’s because of the experiences gathered in their dozen years on this planet or their delight in having a diamond at a size they can excel, it’s difficult to say for certain why, often, these young men not only realize that they already know everything worth knowing, they are willing, even eager to share their grasp of the world – and the game – with their would-be instructors.

Having had some experience in this area, the moment when I devised the radical “Asteroid Theory Of Hitting” came to mind. True, it is not often a baseball coach will have to reach to the outer realms of space to make a point but extreme instances bring extreme actions.

One of the players on my team was a tall, solidly built young man, one whose size and apparent physical strength suggested that were he able to occasionally make contact with a thrown baseball, it might travel considerable distances. However, this youngster was plagued by his intellect as well as his opinion of it. In other words, standard instructional procedure from his coach was ineffective, “cliched” even. But his problem was obvious to everyone else.

When batting, he had such a judicious eye for each and every pitch, never wanting to move the bat even a smidgen at a ball cast outside the strike zone, by the time the ball that WAS in the strike zone arrived at the plate, his carefully weighted decision whether or not to swing usually happened after the ball had landed in the catcher’s glove. Matters like these, in coaching parlance, are generally solved by instructions like “get the head out” or “you’re late” or “you have to swing before the catcher catches it.” In this case, however, the player was resistant to instruction, suggesting that, since he was unsure whether the baseball which was in the process of being delivered would actually be over the plate, he was hesitant to swing.

No matter how many times and techniques were urged upon him, he always had a reply that he clearly had thought long and hard about to justify his reluctance to swing at an instant where, with good fortune, he might actually strike the ball forward, towards the infield and outfield.

Since my patient attempts to correct his fell on helmeted ears that apparently did not let sound get through, I paused the practice, approached the plate and asked him a scientific question.

“Let me ask you something,” I said. His eyes perked up. This was what he lived for. “How many asteroids in the course of a day hit the Earth, do you think?”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “I think I know the answer to this one.”

“No. You’re missing the point here,” I said. “When these asteroids leave from wherever they leave from, do you think they’re TRYING to hit the Earth?”

He looked puzzled. “N……ooo.”

“Do you see where I’m going with this?” I continued. “If where the asteroid is going happens to be where the Earth is, there’s a collision, right?”

He smiled. “Yes. Exactly.”

I thought I had him here. “So, IF YOU SWING OVER THE PLATE when the ball is headed your way, YOU MIGHT WELL HIT SOME OF THEM.”

“Oh,” he said, his forehead wrinkling with thought. “So my bat is like the Earth and the ball is like an asteroid. If I swing where I think the ball MIGHT be, I might hit some.”

While others on the team queried why he always seemed to take the same swing, whether the ball was in the strike zone or in the dirt, he had found a more practical solution. He batted an even .300 for our championship-winning season and, no doubt, thought a lot about asteroids on his way to first base.