Dominican Baseball Drill

Baseball players have a nasty habit of not making solid contact with the baseball. Granted, there are some times when a player is just trying to get a piece of a ball and foul it off to look for a better pitch, but for the most part, when a batter swings, he's trying to put the ball in play. What's causing these foul balls? Is it a lack of concentration? How do you get rid of it?

Well, if you're at a baseball academy in the Dominican, the way you get rid of it is through a drill to improve "concentration". Here are the steps:

1. Put a batter in the batter's cage.
2. 
   
3. Put 7 of his teammates in the cage with him without any sort of protection.
4. 
   
5. Start pitching

So basically, the idea is that if you swing and miss or foul anything off, chances are, you're drilling a teammate, and I'll bet you good cash money that the dude getting drilled will remember who drilled him when they do some other drill. The guy who told me about this drill watched it for a while and said that he didn't see one foul ball. Dudes were putting pretty much everything into play as long as it was anywhere near the strike zone. Sorta explains Miguel Tejada and Vladimir Guerrero, eh?

The only way I could see improving this drill to make it more sadistic would be to put family members and loved ones in the cage. Or very old people.