My best friend

Enrique Pagan
Professor Combs
World Citizen
Service Journal For this assignment I opted to dedicate my time to baseball players that needed some help with their hitting mechanics. I have been playing baseball for quite a while , approximately 14 years, where I have been part of collegiate and professional baseball. In regard to what I mentioned, my knowledge in baseball is a very profound one, I have played with great baseball players and thankfully I was able to absorb every single tip or hint about the game from them. In the other hand, most of the time I spent it with Grant Gluesenkamp. Grant is a current student in Mobap, and he also participates in the school baseball activities. Grant is one of my best friends, and he is very determined in making the baseball travel roster one day, but before that becomes real , he has to make some hitting adjustments that we have been working on for over a year and half. Grant’s hitting skills were not good enough for collegiate baseball about a year ago , but his determination and commitment have been making him a more complete hitter. What I basically work on with him consist of a lot of relaxation drills , eye coordination, legs synchronization, and free swing drills. Grant has a lot of raw talent , but at the same time he lacks from muscle relaxation, bat control, eye-hand coordination , and since being a strong solid guy , stiffness slows down his mechanics. The biggest adjustment I made him do was to start using a leg-kick to hit the ball. A leg –kick consist on raising your front leg to generate as much leverage as you can as the balls approaches home plate to basically translate all your body weight into the bat once your leg lands at the contact zone. I believed a leg kick was the best thing because it is making concentrate and one thing only , his leg, which at the same time release all the pressure from all his muscles and make him come through the hitting zone faster and consequently stronger. Baseball without a doubt is a fun game , but it could be really frustrating at a time especially when the skills of hitting are the hardest thing to do compare to any sport. To be a great hitter, there cannot be days off , it has to be practiced continuously day after day , so it can become a natural force. As long as I am alive , my love for the game will keep increasing , and I will be honored to spend hours, days , years making players great baseball players.