Okay, so today I tried out this “dale long baseball” thing. Honestly, I didn’t even know what it was at first. I just saw it trending and, you know, gotta stay curious, right?
First, I googled it. Turns out, it’s some kind of training method, probably about hitting the ball farther, I guessed. Seems popular with the young folks, the baseball TikTok crowd, you know?
The Deep Dive
- I started by watching a bunch of videos. So many different takes on it! Some guys were using weighted bats, others were focusing on, like, hip rotation or something.
- Then, I went to my backyard. I don’t have a fancy setup, just my old bat and a bucket of balls.
- Figured I’d try a few different things I saw. First, I tried to really focus on swinging with the whole body. I had previously just used my arms.
- I chucked a ball up in the air and swung. Whiff! Okay, not a great start. Tried again. Still whiffed! This is harder than it looks.
- I kept at it. Slowly, very slowly, I start to hit the ball.
- After a while, I tried to copy the bat-weighting. I grabbed the heaviest things I have, 2 old dumbells.I didn’t have a weighted bat, so I just held two dumbbells in my non-dominant hand while I swung. Felt weird, but maybe it did something?
- Finally, I focused on my stance. I had never thought about how my posture, my feet and my legs affect my swing.I tried to really push off my back foot, like I saw in one of the videos.
Honestly, I didn’t see a huge difference in my distance. Maybe a little bit? But I also felt like I was swinging harder, so maybe that’s it. I think the biggest takeaway was just paying more attention to my body when I swing. I’d always just kind of flailed at the ball before.
So, will I keep doing “dale long baseball”? Maybe. It was kind of fun to try something new, and I definitely felt like I was getting a good workout. I’ll probably keep messing around with it, see if I can actually get some more distance. Who knows, maybe I’ll be hitting home runs in no time! (Probably not, though.)
