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meatball
29 Posts |
 Posted - 11/16/2011 : 14:14:41
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Wondering if any of you have set up a cage in your basement and if so can you offer some advice? I have never set up a cage before so I'll take any suggestions!
I have an area in my basement that is 13'6" wide x 9'8" tall x 50'7" long. It's all unfinished with concrete floor and open wood framed walls.
I was thinking about an 8' or 10' wide net held by cables and pulled pretty tight on top and down the sides. Guess the idea is if the net is pulled tight it will do a better job deflecting the balls from the walls and ceiling. How small width x height can the cage be and still be big enough to swing freely?
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billbclk
164 Posts |
Posted - 11/16/2011 : 16:26:28
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If the net is too tight the balls will come right back at the hitter.
My neighbor (with a HS player) had a standard hitting net in the corner of his basebment with 3/4" partical board behind it and nailed to the joist above. He used a tee and Jugs soft toss machine with the pitching machine balls. |
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SSBuckeye
575 Posts |
Posted - 11/16/2011 : 16:27:09
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| If you use wiffle balls, you don't even need a net. I have a much smaller space, and the only thing I have is a tarp on the wall directly in front so that the balls don't ricochet back. |
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PeachFuzz
76 Posts |
Posted - 11/16/2011 : 17:30:51
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| You can either put the whole thing together yourself by stringing 3 steel cables (right, left, center support) from the joists in your basement. Fairly easy. You can run the cables through steel eyelets and tighten each cable on one end. Then go to Better Baseball in Marietta and give Glen (owner) the deminsions of the netting that you want. Then just attach the netting to the cables with caribiners. You may want to route leaded rope or chain along the bottom of the net to keep batted balls from escaping. Another alternative would be to go to Cagesplus.com. I love their cages. They're inexpensive, durable and you can make it any height you want by cutting the poles to length. I have a 70' cage in my backyard from cagesplus for my HS player. It's plenty durable....best deal for the $$ in my opinion. |
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bigmcbb
46 Posts |
Posted - 11/17/2011 : 09:48:35
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| I've got two stations set up in my basement. The first station is a Swing-Away. This is nice because he can get his "tee" work in and get twice to three times as many cuts in as he would with a tee because you don't have to keep placing a ball on the tee. You can get 100-200 cuts done in no time. The second station is a soft toss area using the large Easton net. Within an hour we can get the tee work in plus 3 full buckets of soft toss completed. That's a lot of repetitions. Now, this does not take the place of taking cuts off of live pitching, but it definately helps and is very inexpensive. It is a great way to really focus on mechanics. |
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wjeggert
29 Posts |
Posted - 11/24/2011 : 19:44:48
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| That size basement... You can get a pop-up soft toss screen, and an area to throw mini wiffleballs. I set up a chicken wire safety screen in one area as those little wiffle balls sting and will give you a black eye. I hung it from the floor/ceiling joists. make sure you cover any lights also. I use ping pong balls too as they work as change ups pretty good... good luck |
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jmac83
46 Posts |
Posted - 12/03/2011 : 17:18:17
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| I'm in the process of trying to set up a basement cage, using an existing triangular frame that he's been using outdoors the last couple of years. But, I'm finding affordable netting hard to pin down; there don't seem to be many brick-and-mortar netting suppliers in metro Atlanta, and the listings on eBay and Craigslist aren't cheap. Anyone have any suggestions or used netting for sale? |
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Hitting Cage in the basement
