Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries posted an awkward photo of him holding a baseball bat yesterday that wasn’t quite clear in how it connected to his initial message of “House Democrats will keep the pressure on Trump’s One Big Ugly Bill” that was changed to “Protecting your healthcare is as American as baseball, motherhood and apple pie.” In the spirit of July 4th to celebrate America’s national pastime, I will tap into my expertise as a lifelong baseball player and Little League coach to see how Jeffries’ form stacks up against what I teach my 11- and 12-year-olds every season.
Bottom Hand
His grip is pretty good! He’s choking up a scooch higher than I would like, but I was a dead-red pull hitter and understand how a Yankees fan from New York would want to emulate Derek Jeter’s famed ability to slap it to the opposite field. Jeffries’ bottom hand is well positioned to unleash some Re2pect.
The bat is mostly in his fingers, not too deep in his palms like so many new baseball players start out with. This gives the House Leader much more control over the bat when it’s in the zone to…um…hit…Medicaid cuts out of the bill? Again, he didn’t give us much to work with here, and a psychoanalysis of his tough guy baseball shtick is likelier to yield good information than gleaning anything from the flexing bicep emoji he punctuated his initial vague declaration with. If the future of America depended on Jeffries’ bottom hand, it would be a better option than the vast majority of the Democratic Party. We’re off to a really good start.
Top Hand
Oh boy. I get that we’re posing here and not fully committing to a stance that’s ready to swing, but man, this is some bleak stuff. I have a lot of work on my plate to get him up to 11- and 12-year-old standards. He’s doing the classic new Little Leaguer move of “I am vibrating with adrenaline because I am terrified to hit live pitching and am choking the bat to death.” As Parker Molloy pointed out, this photo posted by Jeffries very much has the vibe of a Little League Photo Day, but as you can see with these small children in these photos, someone actually taught them how to properly grip a bat with two hands, even when posing for the camera.
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— Parker Molloy (@parkermolloy.com) July 2, 2025 at 7:58 PM
What is this! Who taught this man how to hold a baseball bat!? When I see disasters like this happen with my 11- and 12-year-olds, I ask them and usually it’s some combination of clueless parents or friends of parents who love to make my job infinitely more difficult. Maybe this is another catastrophe we can blame on Chuck Schumer? Not only is Jeffries strangling the bat to death in his palm, but the angle he’s holding it at is counteracting all the good stuff his bottom hand is doing to build a stance around Re2pect. He’s never going to be able to follow through to the opposite field and shoot endless weak line drives through the holes flanking second base. We’re doomed!
This top hand grip is a nightmare, man. He’s going to flare the bat out and down and weakly pop everything up to the right side if he tries to emulate his Yankee hero. If Jeffries tries to pull a pitch down the left-field line, he may shatter all the bones in his wrist. I cannot overstate how much “you are going to hurt yourself doing this” is a central part of teaching children how to play baseball. This is well-worn territory Jeffries is in.
I had a kid a couple seasons ago who had a weird grip similar to Jeffries’, and one of my favorite memories in recent coaching years is watching him get more comfortable with a grip like you see the children in Parker Molloy’s first three photos using. This improvement a child made on the House Democratic Leader’s form helped him hit the ball harder and straighter, and he rocketed up our batting order as the season went along. If Jeffries showed up to play on my team, I’d immediately slot him at the bottom of the order and in the annual group of “oh boy” kids who must be disabused of everything they know about baseball and taught how to swing at an 11-year-old level.
Feet
What are we doing here!?! What is happening!!! Does Jeffries fall on his ass every time he swings a bat? Because that’s what’s going to happen if you have your feet facing outwards like that. Not to mention, leaving your front foot open would be immensely frowned upon by captain clutch and his closed stance. It’s not quite clear what Jeffries’ hitting philosophy is from all the conflicting aspects of his stance, and plopping himself down like this gives the impression that he’s never stood in a batter’s box. He did play baseball at Brooklyn’s Midwood High School, and his brother claimed he was “good good. A gangly right‑handed pitcher, he threw heat. He was also one of the team’s best hitters and fastest runners.” I can definitely see the gangly pitcher in him, but I’m going to have to call bullshit on the “best hitter” allegation given what I see with my own eyes in this photo and the fact that Jeffries is a mere 1 for 6 in the annual Congressional Baseball Game.
Jeffries does have his feet directly under his shoulders, so there is a decent base to work with here, but the man clearly needs to have his entire swing broken down and rebuilt from scratch if he can ever hope to hit the GOP’s deadly pitching that has led them to a 1-9 record in the Congressional Baseball Game the last decade. What I usually do with kids like Jeffries is take them aside to do some one-armed soft toss where we start with only their bottom hand on the bat. Make it as simple as possible so they can get the basic feeling of what their lead hand does before adding the complexity of another hand to it. You never want to overwhelm a Little Leaguer, and if the four players in the photos Parker Molloy shared showed up to the first day of my practice, Jeffries would be the first one I take aside to do some simple soft toss with while our other coaches handle the more advanced stuff that we know we can trust 11-year-olds with.
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