Afraid this is only relevant to folks in the SF Bay Area; however, I think it may be worth mentioning.
All of us have spent countless hours hitting off of Iron Mikes or similar pitching machines, right? Great for training swing mechanics, but pretty much useless for correlating mechanics with swing timing...
My son and I were blown away when we recently found Terry Whitfield's low-key facility in Burlingame, called FuturePro. They have three cages with life-sized LED pitchers (2 RHPs and 1 LHP) who go through a full pitching motion and then a real-looking ball is shot from a hidden machine--it appears to come right out of the pitcher's hand. These machines have 3 different speed settings, topping out in the low 80's, and because the balls look like real baseballs you can see the spin. Unfortunately those machines don't seem to serve up curves, only FBs, but still--timing your swing mechanics to the pitcher's motion and the realistic ball are mind-blowing advances for batting cage practice.
What truly amazed me is that Terry's rates are if anything a little cheaper than many batting cages--you can rent by the 1/2 hour, 1 hour, or $3 per 20 balls.
The facility is located over at 1704 Rollins Road in Burlingame and Terry and his partner, Ed Ricks, are very generous with their advice to guys that use their cages. They give lessons too, but these guys are baseball people far more than businessmen...a great place to hang out, talk baseball, practice baseball, etc.
Original Post
