FREE BATTING CAGE IN ALAMEDA

[Rob C]

If anyone wants use of a batting cage, the Bladium Health club has a special offer for a free 1-week trial membership thru the end of Feb. One of the amenitites is a batting cage, which is free. Its located at 800W Tower Rd (on the old navy base) 814-4999

I've already spend a couple of hours in it, and plan to do so every day this week (except Sat). (We'll see if it does any good next weekend.)

If anyone wants to go with me, that would be great ...I certainly can use the practice (and some coaching). I should be working at home most of this week, and my time is pretty flexible

[retep]

Wait.... is the cage free with membership, or always free?

How many cages are there? Can multiple people use the facilities?

And how fast is the pitching?

[Rob C]

Its only free with the membership (including the free trial membership)--they give you as many tokens as you want, when you want them (20 balls to a token). There are 2 cages adjacent to each other (enough for 2 batters). Both are configured for softball or hardball (selectiable by the batter) One cage is for slow pitch, the other is fast pitch (I dont know hte speed of it, but its at least as fast as ive seen pitched at our games).

[Baseball=Life]

Hey Rob, thanks for the notice about this.

It sounds great! I'm definitely down to try it out. This is the same place Paul was talking about, I assume.

Anyway, I can do it anytime this week during the day, before 4:00 pm, except today. Let me know if you want to meet up there, or what, and which day & time.


A few other questions.... Do you bring your own bats? And, the cages are free for members and trial members, is this correct? So, once you've established membership (whether through the free trial or by actually paying for a membership), you get unlimited use of the cages?

If so, that sounds great. I have been looking for a gym that I would actually be motivated to go to, and that would certainly draw me in.

Scott

PS: Directions from Oakland: take Webster tunnel from downtown near jack london square, Right on Atlantic, go 1 mile, enter Alameda Point (stay middle lane) / go until you get to the water, Right on Ferrypoint, Ferrypoint curves left, and becomes West Tower, 2nd building on left.

[Tayster]

*grumble* Alameda *grumble* so far *grumble*

[retep]

Can you bring guests? It's be silly for me to join a gym in the east bay. I wonder what their policy is on that.

[tallguy]

Yeah, this is the same place I gave a quick review of before. I personally would be wary of taking the trial membership on your first visit there. Just tell them you are really only interested in the cages, and they will probably do what they did for me - give you unlimited use of the cage one-time in return for taking the guided tour of the rest of their facilities. It's a pretty nice place, I just can't persuade the old Dutch it's worth the membership price (either 60 or 70 a month). If you like the place after that first visit, then take the trial membership, I would say.
Yes, membership (be it trial or paid) gets you unlimited free tokens. The pitching is quite close to live in that inside/outside pitch location is pretty variable from ball to ball, speed remains as close to constant as I could tell.
Rob, Scott, I'm definitely interested in hitting one evening this week. Any time after 6:30 is good for me. If we have two or three people we might have to rent it for a half hour or hour , I don't know for sure how strict they would be about non-members joining a trial or paid member and sharing his tokens. Probably one guest at a time they would allow for free, with more than that I'm guessing they would probably have a problem.

[tallguy]

Oh, and yes, you can bring your own bat, they are fine with that. There is a big sign saying all batters must wear one of their provided helmets, but they didn't ask me to wear one.

[Rob C]

As far as bats go, yes-- you can bring your own bat. However, if its a bat you care about, you may not want to use it. The balls that the machine uses are not regular balls. Dont know if they might damage a bat.

As for guests, members (including those with trial memberships) can bring guests (Ive got a guest pass if someone want to go along and use it). However, its my understanding that like most health clubs, guests still get stuck doing a walk-thru with a sales guy.

And regarding trial memberships, no matter what you do, unless your a member, or you want to pay a day use fee $15, you'll still get stuck with the tour and sales pitch. But since its a free week of unlimited use, I think its worth it. As for me, even though I belong to 24hr, and normally go to another gym (COA), this has worked out good since I just add a few session in the batting cage to my normal workout (makes it more fun).

Unfortunately the $60/$70 month cost is kind of steep if all youre going to do is workout and use the batting cage. On the otherhand, if youre into roller-hockey, soccer, & BB (which Im not) it may be worth it for the league & pickup games.

Next time Im there Ill check and see if they accomodate just renting the batting cages, and what the cost is.

[Baseball=Life]

Hey, I just checked out the Bladium batting cage. It's worth using, for sure. The pitch speed is like 50 on the slow one and 65-70 on the fast one. You can adjust heighth of the pitch. I found the speeds to both be easy to hit, and similar to our games. As for the digital display of a pitcher, it's really a non-issue. Just ignore it and look for the release area where the ball comes out, like you would any normal pitching machine. It was fun, and I got to get in countless swings.

[tallguy]

I found the fast pitch pretty hard to hit, at least after moving over from having been on the medium for a while already. I guess you're just far superior to me, huh Scott?
Probably best to start with the fast, then move to medium, which will then seem more like slow.