The Long, Slow Death of the Wacky Batting Stance

Tonny Abbatine, the Founder of Frozen Ropes, was interviewed and quoted in this article by Leo Sepkowitz for GQ Sports.

“We’re building robots,” says Tony Abbatine, who founded the New York-based hitting academy Frozen Ropes. “We’ve taken style away, taken rhythm away—every 9-year-old looks the same.” What’s worse, says Abbatine, is that the new model doesn’t necessarily work. “We have a generation of guys with perfect swings, but they can’t hit,” he says. Hitting for a high average requires an embrace of (admittedly tacky) intangibles like comfort, feel, and fluidity. The modern approach demands just the opposite: “Don’t move, don’t coil, don’t do the thing your body’s been doing for years,” Abbatine says, exasperated. “And you wonder why the strikeout rate is so high.”

Read the full article here: https://www.gq.com/story/long-slow-death-of-the-wacky-batting-stance