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<i> A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here.

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What: “Hitters on Hitting: Finding the Sweet Spot” DVD and video

Producer: MLB Productions (distributed by Q Video)

Price: $19.95 (DVD), $14.95 (video)

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It may seem to be a bit much to devote a show to a single phase of one sport. But there is little dead time in either the video or DVD, released earlier this summer. The video runs 48 minutes, the DVD 98 minutes. The DVD has 50 minutes of footage from the 2000 Home Run Derby at Boston.

The project was the first by a new partnership involving QVC and its newly created Q Video label and MLB Productions. They came up with a winner here. Just about every big-name hitter in baseball was interviewed.

Mark McGwire says: “You see it, you hit it.” Wade Boggs: “You can do everything right, you can be hitting on all cylinders, and still fail.” George Brett: “I try and keep it as simple as possible. The less things there are to think about means the less things I can screw up.”

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A Yale physics professor says that the act of hitting, from the thought processes that begin in the back of the brain to those that make the legs move, “takes one to the edge of human facilities.”

A particularly poignant moment is when Ted Williams was brought out on a golf cart to home plate before the start of the 2000 All-Star game at Fenway Park.

The first thing Williams did was call out for McGwire. “He said, ‘When you foul a ball back, do you smell burnt wood?’ ” McGwire says. “I said, ‘Well, yeah I do.’ ”

Williams, interviewed at length, says: “Rogers Hornsby gave me the best advice ever. He said, ‘Get a good ball to hit.’ ”

Barry Bonds: “Hitting is not a science, it’s not an art. It’s a gift.”

Others interviewed include Hank Aaron, Tony Gwynn, Derek Jeter, and Cal Ripken Jr.And there is historical footage of hitters from Ty Cobb and Mel Ott to Stan Musial and Joe Morgan.

Of Musial’s unorthodox stance, Joe Garagiola says: “He looked like a little old lady peeking around the corner to buy tomatoes. But it’s not the stance, it’s what you do with it. And he knew what to do with it.”

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One thing you can say about this in-depth look at hitting: It’s a hit.

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