Barry Bonds vs. Ted Williams

Here’s a short digression onto baseball, particularly baseball in the 90’s and 2000’s. So, I was watching MLB Network and they keep running specials about different seasons during the steroid era and invariably the names Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds come up. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how steroids affect hitting, and weightlifting as a whole. I watched a video of A-Rod taking a swing and as much as I hate myself for saying it he has a nice swing and demonstrates the idea of using your hips vs. using your hands well. So my question is this: what gives, how does lifting weights affect hitting and can it make you a better hitter? My answer is yes and no. This past summer I hit a career high .380 and hit 2 homeruns, as a result of reading The Science of Hitting and working out a ton. Using a bit of physics I determined that taking steroids can give a good hitter much more power, but being big is not everything and can not necessarily make you a good hitter. When you hit a baseball you swing the bat pretty fast causing the ball to bounce off, in physics this is called momentum (mass times volume or mv). Momentum is transferred from one object to another so the momentum from the bat goes into the ball. Obviously the more momentum the ball ahs the farther it goes so the idea is to build momentum. What steroids do is that it builds up your mass, the more of you there is in the swing the more momentum and the farther the ball can go. Or if you take the high road and do it honestly you can build you velocity and your mass. By running and doing a lot of core work you can increase the velocity in your swing, and by working out normally you increase your mass by a little bit. So the question is this, do steroids make someone a good hitter? The answer is no, they only give a hitter more power. Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire were pretty consistent in their averages; it was the power numbers that changed. So what is a hardworking baseball player to do? Work hard the honest way, run, stretch, and lift weights and focus on the fundamentals – that is how you become a truly great hitter.