Vivek Ramaswamy deletes mocked batting-cage video; eyewitness says he made contact on just 5 of 25 pitches

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Vivek Ramaswamy’s latest exercise in carefully manufactured campaign Americana lasted less than two days.

The Republican nominee for Ohio governor put on a polo, stepped into a batting cage and used America’s national pastime as the backdrop for a polished video promising voters “10 things” he would do as governor.

Then people saw the swing.

By Wednesday, Ramaswamy was being ridiculed nationally, political strategists were openly questioning how his staff allowed the video to be published, and a man who says he watched the filming firsthand was describing a much less flattering performance than the campaign’s finished product suggested.

By Wednesday evening, Ramaswamy had deleted the video.

Michael Peacock, who said he was inside the batting facility when Ramaswamy filmed the spot, said the campaign selected the slowest pitching-machine setting available and Ramaswamy made contact on just five of 25 pitches.

“The campaign video just replays those same five swings over and over,” Peacock said in an Instagram video recounting what he witnessed.

Ramaswamy’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment from TiffinOhio.net.

TiffinOhio.net asked whether Ramaswamy took approximately 25 pitches, whether he made contact on five, whether his team selected the slowest available setting, whether individual swings were reused in the final video and why the post was deleted.

The campaign answered none of those questions.

A carefully constructed piece of Americana

The choice of baseball was not incidental.

Ramaswamy’s campaign has increasingly presented the wealthy biotech entrepreneur through familiar images of sports, family, football and everyday American life as it works to turn a former presidential candidate and Wall Street-connected businessman into a relatable candidate for Ohio governor.

His official campaign website explicitly describes its vision as “Revive the American Dream in Ohio.”

Baseball provided an almost literal visual shorthand for that message.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame calls baseball the country’s “National Pastime” and describes the sport as an American family tradition whose history is tightly bound to the history of the United States.

So Ramaswamy’s campaign put a bat in his hands.

That decision is particularly striking because Ramaswamy can actually play another racket-and-ball sport.

Mediaite reported Wednesday that Ramaswamy’s social-media pages contain another version of the campaign concept built around tennis — a sport critics acknowledged he plays competently.

James Surowiecki, a contributing writer for The Atlantic, zeroed in on that choice.

“Ramaswamy is a very solid tennis player,” Surowiecki wrote, arguing that the campaign could have made essentially the same advertisement around tennis instead of putting Ramaswamy in a batting cage.

Instead, the campaign chose baseball — and produced a video designed to make each policy promise appear alongside another successful swing.

According to the eyewitness who watched the filming, that succession of apparent successes existed largely in the edit.

Five contacts in 25 pitches, eyewitness says

Peacock’s account transformed the episode from a simple round of internet mockery into a question about how the campaign constructed the image it presented to voters.

He said Ramaswamy’s team entered the batting cage and chose its slowest pitching setting.

Ramaswamy then faced 25 pitches, according to Peacock.

He made contact with five.

The finished campaign video did not show the other 20 attempts.

Instead, Peacock said, the campaign repeatedly reused footage from the handful of swings in which Ramaswamy connected as text and audio moved through his list of policy promises.

Peacock walked viewers through the campaign video and identified swings he said appeared more than once.

The Daily Beast independently noted that footage of one of Ramaswamy’s swings appeared to have been used twice in the short campaign video.

The publication also reported Peacock’s account from inside the batting cage.

“Just garbage fundamentals,” Peacock said.

There is nothing unusual about campaigns editing video. Political advertisements are, by definition, produced presentations of a candidate.

But here, the editing went directly to the image the video was attempting to create: Ramaswamy confidently stepping up, delivering a promise and taking another swing.

The man who watched the filming says viewers were seeing the same few moments of contact again and again.

The image campaign backfires

The attempt at relatability quickly produced the opposite reaction.

The video was posted Tuesday to Ramaswamy’s TikTok and Instagram accounts, according to Mediaite, which documented the original post while it was still online.

Critics immediately focused on Ramaswamy’s mechanics.

Surowiecki compared the swing to that of an “uncoordinated 6-yr-old.”

Conservative sports commentator Jon Root said Ramaswamy appeared to be trying to look “relatable & athletic” and asked: “How in the world did his team approve this?”

The criticism extended beyond partisan opponents.

Veteran Republican strategist Kevin Madden wrote that every campaign needs a staffer with enough standing to tell a candidate, “Sorry. No. you/we cannot do this.”

The Daily Beast reported that the most-liked response on Ramaswamy’s own TikTok distilled the reaction into six words: “Why would u post that swing.”

Others questioned why a campaign trying to make its candidate appear relatable would deliberately showcase him doing something he appeared not to know how to do.

That is what made the episode particularly damaging to the manufactured-Americana project surrounding the video.

Nobody expects Ohio’s governor to hit a curveball.

Ramaswamy’s campaign chose to put him in the batting cage. It chose baseball as the visual language for his political message. It chose which pitches voters would see. And it chose to publish the finished product.

Then an eyewitness described what was left on the cutting-room floor.

Then the video disappeared

Hours after the ridicule spread nationally, the original Instagram video was no longer available on Ramaswamy’s account Wednesday evening.

The deletion does not establish why the campaign removed it, and Ramaswamy’s campaign did not tell TiffinOhio.net why it did so.

But the sequence is clear.

The campaign produced a baseball-themed video designed to package Ramaswamy’s political agenda inside one of the most recognizable pieces of American cultural imagery. The video instead went viral for his swing. An eyewitness said the polished edit concealed 20 misses out of 25 pitches and recycled the five attempts in which Ramaswamy made contact. Campaign professionals questioned how the spot was ever approved.

Then Ramaswamy deleted it.

For a campaign spending enormous energy constructing an image of its candidate as an Ohio everyman, the batting-cage stunt offered an unintended glimpse behind the production: choose the setting, shoot enough attempts, keep the usable ones, build the image — and, when the image collapses, take it down.