Colored Baseballs Improve Hand-Eye Coordination for Batters

Improving a batter's hand-eye coordination is crucial to improving their skills on the baseball field. The ability to watch a baseball make contact with the bat is paramount to being a successful hitter. The following drill uses a baseball with four different colors to improve a batter's hand-eye coordination.

Jim Lefevbre, former Rookie Of The Year for the Los Angeles Dodgers, created and introduced this drill while working as hitting instructor for the Chicago Cubs. It's a valuable drill that forces the batter to watch the ball as it makes contact with the bat. Please note that this drill is not for beginners, its purpose is to improve hand-eye coordination for batters that have a few years of experience.

Baseballs are painted (or use magic markers) four different colors of equal amount. During batting practice, these balls are used. When the batter makes contact with the baseball, he is to tell the coach which color the bat head made contact with. This is a very difficult exercise and only hitters with the best of hand-eye coordination skills can accomplish this. But, it's an excellent drill to practice and with enough repetition most hitters will make great improvements on their hand-eye coordination. Once a batter has reached the point where they can accurately tell their coach the color their bat head made contact with, they will be very difficult for opposing pitchers to strike out.

This drill should not be the primary drill used during batting practice. There is no replacement for hitting regular baseballs during regular batting practice. It would also require many baseballs to be colored in order to do this and consume too much time as the batter lets the coach know the color hit after every pitch. Simply once or twice per week per batter hitting a round of 10 - 15 baseballs should be sufficient.

Another variation to this would be to use the soft toss drill with these baseballs. The soft toss drill is where a coach or fellow player kneels down opposite the batter and tosses baseballs to the batter underhand and the batter hits the baseballs into a nearby fence. In theory, all soft toss drills could use these colored baseballs.

Good old-fashioned batting practice is the best way to improve a batter's hitting skills. Adding simple drills like the colored baseballs is a great way to fine tune batting skills and take a hitter to the next level.