‘Screwbats’ and Other Strange (But Effective) Tools for Teaching Baseball

Anyone who has ever played even a few innings of baseball knows some things for certain about the game. For instance, hitting a round ball “squarely” with a cylinder is well-nigh impossible, as is sliding into a base without looking (and feeling) like a dysfunctional whirligig. Staying in the batter’s box when a breaking ball is headed for one’s head feels wholly unnatural. Chasing a shot hit deep into the gap, meanwhile, while running full-tilt toward an outfield fence can be downright nerve-wracking.

Down through the years, of course, coaches have employed countless techniques, tactics and tools to help their players grow, at the very least, comfortable with the game’s infinite variables. But in a sport so endearingly perverse that a hitter who fails in seven out of 10 trips to the plate is considered something of a star, there’s only so much a coach can do.

Enter John Herbold. A coach at California’s storied Long Beach Polytechnic High School, Herbold began using the devices in this gallery—many of them thought up by Dodgers coach and celebrated hitting instructor Kenny Meyers—in 1962. The next year, Poly won the American Legion National Championship and, LIFE magazine wrote in a July 1966 article, “its teams have been winning titles ever since.”