Look, it’s not easy to hit a baseball. But after Vivek Ramaswamy posted a video of himself in a batting cage this week, interspersing swings with some of his key campaign talking points, the internet did not spare the Republican candidate for Ohio governor.
In the interest of fairness, I sought some expert opinions, asking a handful of professional hitting coaches to break down the tape.
First, a college head coach who specializes in hitting looked at Ramaswamy’s mechanics. The video, posted to Ramaswamy’s official Instagram account, includes him taking 11 cuts in khaki pants, polo shirt tucked in. In between those shots, he laid out 10 things he would do for Ohio if he were elected governor.
“Front foot hitter with horizontal path,” the college coach said in a text. “Most hitting coaches would coach that out of him but it works for him and could make it serviceable.”
Trending
“He has a shot??” I asked. I am still not sure what I meant by shot, in this case, but it just felt like the right follow-up question.
“Not a shot in hell,” the coach responded. “Maybe at the batting cage only lol.”
Ramaswamy is running against Democrat Amy Acton. It’s not the first time Ramaswamy, formerly of the Department of Government Efficiency (or DOGE), has used sports in campaign videos. It is common for politicians to tap into sports, especially in an effort to appear more relatable to the average voter. Sometimes that feels natural, like when New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani talks about his Arsenal fandom. And other times it can flop, like back in May when New York Governor Kathy Hochul said she would challenge President Donald Trump to name the starting lineup of the Knicks’ title-winning team in 1993. (That year, the Chicago Bulls beat the Phoenix Suns in the NBA Finals.)
What is less common, though, is politicians actually playing when trying to use sports for political gain. Ramaswamy’s first attempt at this was much more natural. Like the baseball clip, he started the video by saying: “Here’s 10 things I’m gonna do for Ohio.” But instead of a batting cage, he was on a tennis court, where he’s clearly spent a lot of time. That video is pinned to the top of Ramaswamy’s Instagram account. The baseball video is no longer on his main grid, as it was Wednesday, though it still exists if you click over to his reels.
Here, then, is further evidence that a great tennis swing doesn’t translate to baseball (or vice versa). Ramaswamy’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.
“Oh man, where to even start?” a California-based hitting guru said when I asked about Ramaswamy’s cage session. “Very, very, very much a front-foot hitter, so that’s the first thing we’d attack. But I’m not sure it’s salvageable. Looks like a lot of groundballs right back to the pitcher. Needs a much better swing path to get the ball in the air. Stick to ... politics?”
A prominent hitting coach from the Dominican Republic went tongue-in-cheek with his response. “Nice swing, good balance, tremendous finish,” he said in a text. “Executed a perfect contact point, comparable to Manny Ramirez! 600 million on the open market!” Some of Ramaswamy’s political opponents, however, were not feeling as silly about it.
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pennsylvania) wrote on X: “Congrats to Vivek, who today apparently swung a baseball bat for the first time in his life.” And Rep. Chris Deluzio’s (D-Pennsylvania) team cut a video that showed his swing right after Ramaswamy’s, including a highlight of Deluzio hitting a ball to the warning track in a past Congressional Baseball Game.
Deluzio’s X post said: “If we don’t do something about [Vivek Ramaswamy]’s private equity friends jacking up the cost of youth sports, American kids will grow up thinking that’s how you hit a baseball.” Deluzio then used his video to promote the Let Kids Play Act, a bill he introduced, along with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), that would ban private equity companies from investing in youth sports.
Author
