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Last Updated: Jul 2nd, 2008 - 21:15:22 |
(ARA) – What do you get when you combine a coffee can, cement and PVC pipe? Well, if you’re Jake Mauer II, you get a unique baseball training aid.
Now known as the Quickswing Batting Aid, Jake Mauer’s “contraption” was inspired by the urge to develop a way for his three sons to learn to hit a baseball more consistently. “We live in Minnesota, so for a good part of the year, it’s impossible to play ball outdoors,” he explains. “We had to come up with a tool that could be used indoors.”
The device has gotten more sophisticated since the original prototype. The commercial version is made of industrial-grade steel tubing and injected-molded plastic. It can be positioned to drop the ball within any part of the strike zone, allowing hitters to train by themselves while hitting a moving ball. .
Does the Quickswing make better hitters? Well, Jake’s son Joe was the number one overall player selected by the Minnesota Twins in the 2001 Major League Baseball draft. He was drafted out of St. Paul’s Cretin-Derham High School, where his batting average was .605 and where he only struck out one time in his entire high school career. In 2005, Joe completed his first full major league season with the Twins leading his team in hitting with a .294 batting average. This ranked him second in the entire major leagues among active catchers.
Jake Mauer III, and Billy Mauer were also drafted by the Twins in 2001. Jake is currently playing with the Twins AA team in New Briton, Conn.
“The thing I like best about the Quickswing is that I can use it all year round,” says Joe Mauer. “Even if you’re rained out, you can still get your swings in.”
The Quickswing is used by high schools, colleges, youth associations and thousands of individual players across the country as part of their daily training regimens. Former major-leaguer, and Hall of Fame inductee, Paul Molitor, is also a fan of the device. “The Quickswing is definitely the best product I’ve seen for developing a short, quick, compact swing. It’s great for hitters of all ages and abilities,” he says.
The product includes an instructional video with hitting tips from Joe Mauer and Molitor. Here’s a sample tip on “the stride” from Molitor: “The ‘stride’ is one of the most important elements of the baseball/softball swing. Good hitters use the stride as a timing mechanism to start their swing. The key is to keep the stride as short as possible (no more than 2-3 inches). By doing this, it will allow you to keep your weight back and prevent you from lunging at the ball. By training with the Quickswing, it will force hitters to shorten their stride and swing straight to the ball.”
The secret of the Quickswing is that its simple concept allows a player to take batting practice by himself or herself and still be hitting a moving ball. A player can improve on the fundamentals of sound hitting – bat speed, hand-eye coordination and proper weight distribution – while training indoors or outdoors.
You can use real baseballs and softballs as well as plastic balls in the Quickswing, and it can be easily adjusted to increase or decrease difficulty to simulate various pitching speeds. When not in use, it folds down for easy transport and storage.
Mauer’s Quickswing Batting Aid is available at major sporting goods stores, and online at www.quickswing.com.
Courtesy of ARA Content
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