I spent a semester abroad in Victoria University at Wellington, New Zealand studying with a WETA Digital animator and this was an exercise where I wanted to focus on a character juggling multiple props.
I had to build a rig using a series of locators that would parent the ball to the hand and the hand to the parts of the bat before the swing. These parent constraints would turn off in a single frame to give the illusion that the character was able to hold the ball, catch it, and then quickly grab the bat to knock it out of the park!
Super helpful towards figuring out how characters can easily interact with props in the future.