THE RELUCTANT NOVICE: BASEBALL : Missing Links : All it takes to master the art of batting is expert coaching, the proper stroke . . . and a little luck.

You read in Couch Potato Illustrated that hitting a baseball is the hardest single athletic feat in all of sports. You haven’t swung a baseball bat since Mickey Mantle won the Triple Crown, but you’re a dad now and what are you going to tell your son when he says, “Dad, how do you hit a baseball?”

So you go down to BAT-R-UP in Camarillo, pick up an aluminum bat and step into a batting cage. Twenty swings for a dollar. You feed a few quarters into the slot, assume your antiquated Stan Musial batting stance and await the first pitch. Inside the pitching machine you can see a yellow ball drop into the mechanical arm and then . . .

Whoosh! Strike one! Hey! Someone is firing a bazooka at you. Blam blam blam--the pitches slam into the mat behind you with a vicious thud. You miss all of them. It’s like trying to swat a fly with a straw.

For another dollar you miss 20 more times. Each swing rips your body from shoulder to calf.

For two dollars more you can go for the major league record of 70 at-bats without a hit, set by Bob Buhl in 1962. Instead, you call Dave Taylor, a coach at Oxnard College who offers batting instruction for $30 an hour. You tell Taylor it’s an emergency, and he comes right over.

Taylor once hit .250 in the big leagues and has his eye on a college coaching career. He doesn’t laugh when he first sees you and you think that’s a good start.

First thing, he says, is to tap the plate with your bat when you come up.

“Most big league players have some sort of ritual when they come up to bat,” Taylor says. “And there’s a reason. You can walk up and be thinking about your girlfriend, but once you tap that plate, you’re focused.”

You tap the plate a few times. Feels good.

Then Taylor starts building your swing.

“The biggest thing about hitting,” he says, “is to have everything directed towards the pitcher, whether it be your shoulder, your back arm, your back hip. What you want to do is--and this is one of the biggest things I’ve taught--you want to be loose.”

You wiggle your hips, shrug your shoulders. Loose. Yeah.

He lines up the toe of your right foot with the middle of your left foot and warns you to stay on the balls of your feet, not on your heels.

“And the rear foot must not stay planted,” Taylor explains. “It must swivel on the toe so it looks like you’re squashing a bug.”

He next tells you to bring your forward knee back to your rear knee and rock backward before you swing. He calls this the “knock-knee” method. That’s where you’re going to get your best power, he says.

You rock and knock a few times, the way you’ve seen Cecil Fielder do it. Piece of cake.

According to Taylor, hands are a huge part of hitting. “You want to keep your hands back. The biggest thing about big leaguers, why they’re in the big leagues, is because they can keep their hands back.”

Taylor ripples his fingers as he holds his bat. Nice and loose. He calls his finger movement the “piano technique.”

You try it. You ripple your fingers. Jose Canseco couldn’t do it better.

“The reason you want loose hands is because the harder you swing, the slower the bat goes through the zone,” says Taylor. “Loose hands, quicker bat speed. Good hitters have tremendous bat speed.”

You take your stance and Taylor adjusts your elbow. “A lot of parents teach kids to have the rear elbow up. I teach them to have it down because it’s a more relaxed position.” He demonstrates the raised elbow. “This is not a relaxed position. Biggest thing about hitting is being relaxed. One of the biggest things. There’s a lot of big things, but being relaxed, and focused and confident are the three things I teach.”

Taylor teaches the shoulder-to-shoulder technique for head placement. He demonstrates: Your chin rests on your forward shoulder at the beginning of the swing and on your rear shoulder at the end of your swing.

“You’ll see a lot of good batters in the on-deck circle swinging this way,” he says. “It helps you keep your head down.”

Having listened to these preliminary instructions, you’re eager to hit away. You step up to the plate, tap it, ripple your fingers, and the pitching machine starts to hum.

Once again you start swinging and missing. Taylor, a patient man, shouts instruction and encouragement every few pitches.

You can’t put it all together. If you “step on the bug” you can’t knock knees. If you rock back, you can’t keep your hands back. Your bat speed is pathetic. Your mind is so full of method that you can barely move. You’re not loose anymore.

“Try to hit everything right back up the middle,” Taylor shouts. “It helps keep your hands back. If you can keep your hands back as long as you can and have good bat speed, you’re going to be a good hitter.”

Finally you hit one. Then another. Feeble dribbles off your wrists, but at last you’ve made contact.

Taylor is encouraging. He steps into the batter’s box and repositions your feet.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I know it’s not fun now. If you learn it until it becomes habit, then you don’t have to think. Then it becomes fun.”

After about 30 more pitches you’ve hit a few tips and dribblers off the narrow end of the bat. Your hands are blistering. You may have pulled a muscle above your hip. You are sweating profusely. Then out of nowhere--maybe you stopped thinking for a moment--you hit one solidly. It feels good. It feels GREAT.

“Best swing of the day,” shouts Taylor, who’s almost as happy as you are.

You take your aching body home and get into the couch potato position, knees wide, elbow relaxed near a glass of beer, and dip your shoulders toward a potato chip. You have plenty to tell your son now. And lots of time to practice. After all, he’s only 3 months old.

* THE PREMISE: There are plenty of things you have never tried. Fun things, dangerous things, character- building things. The Reluctant Novice tries them for you and reports the results. After all, the Novice gets paid to do them--and has no choice in the matter. If you want to tell the Novice where to go, please call us at 658-5547. If we use your idea, we’ll send you a present. This week’s Reluctant Novice is George Keenen.