The Gorilla Grip

Hi Jeff

The gorrila grip is a term that came to mind years ago, when I was watching kids try to get a REAL STRONG GRIP on a bat.

They would hold the bat out in front of them at about a forty five degree angle UP, and then sort of hunch their shoulders and hold the bat rather close to them with their elbows pointed out to their sides.

The most extreme example was a kid that gripped the bat while holding it almost vertical and his fists were about five to six inches from his chest.

See, that grip SEEMED solid and strong, both there in front of him, as well as in his "bat ready" position. His dad was a hardhead and would not let me adjust his grip, and he was the only kid I ever had on my team who went 0 for everything for a whole season.
He got so frustrated that he quit baseball as a ten year old...forever.

When I first completed my manuscript for "Beans About Baseball" in 1992, (The first edition), I sent it to several college and MLB coaches and managers of my acquaintance for a critique. Their responses were quite surprising, and often had the words: "darn it, Bean, you kinda' embarrass me." What they were telling me was that in a quite wide array of technical points......"I KNEW that, darn it! (intuitively at any rate), but I haven't been checking the basics closely enough...Thanks for reminding me." As years went by, I began hearing my goofy ways of describing stuff filtering in to the vocabulary of the game, and one morning I heard the term "gorilla grip" used on TV in a MLB game. A manager who had brought up a really exciting prospect with enormous potential was explaining why the "kid" had struggled so much at first. He wanted so badly to do well that he "strengthened his grip to a gorilla grip", and had lost that fluidity that had made him so exciting in the first place.

I was so flattered that he decided to utilize my goofy term to get the idea across. I had a letter in my files from him, telling me thanks for reminding him to remind his hitters, and that the one little adjustment was making such a delightful difference for all his guys. As he put it, they are all "playing with fining up their grip and seeing their batspeed back where it belongs."

I just read Splitter's post, and have to agree. On the other hand, I think I still want to start a kid with "knocker knuckles" lined up. If he relaxes the grip at some point to a quarter inch overlap, that's fine, but when his hitting hits a snag, we go back to "Pointy Knuckles" for a while.

Best regards
Kenneth Bean