Girls Fastpitch Softball

Fair er Foul Ball???

2010-04-30T08:25:00.001-07:00

I have seen and heard about some rather confounding incidents on the field. Most of the worst ones involve balls called fair or foul incorrectly. Apparently some umps operate only within their personal experience, however limited that might be when making these calls. I say that because too many of these calls have been rather, well, wrong.

I am going to kick off this discussion with a pop quiz for you. A batter hits or bunts a ball which strikes the plate and bounced skyward. The balls comes down and stops right on the plate where the catcher then standing wholly in foul ground picks it up and fires to first ahead of the baserunner who is stumbling and staggering around, uncertain of whether she should run or not. What's your call? : Fair or foul?

Let's answer this by stating that homeplate is very much a part of fair territory. So are, as a matter of fact the so called "foul lines." So a ball resting on the plate or the foul lines that is picked up by a defensive player is a fair ball.

Further, the positioning of a player has absolutely no bearing on whether a ball is fair or foul. The catcher being entirely in foul territory, while a physical impossibility when she reaches for the ball on the plate, is completely irrelevant to the discussion. The only item which matters is the location of the ball. In other words, a player can at least theoretically be completely in foul ground when she touches an otherwise fair ball and that ball is fair, plain and simple.

The reason I state this as such is I have seen countless examples of balls being poorly hit or bunted and coming to rest right on the plate. Invariably, those balls are called foul.

Secondly, there was a play the other day in which a high infield pop was hit in front of the 3B right on the line with the wind blowing all over the place. The 3B strolled into foul ground and then began drifting back towards fair territory. She stepped over the line and then the ball drifted back into foul ground. She reached clearly across the line, into foul gropund by about 2 feet, and just barely missed catching the ball. It hit the outside of her mitt. What was the call? You got it. "Fair ball!" That was obviously wrong and the defensive coach argued it but the ump would not back down. He was the only person in the park who thought it was fair.

A friend wrote in to tell me of a play in which a ball struck fair ground and then bounced towards foul territory and was grabbed by a 3B who was well in front of the bag and entirely in foul ground. The call? Fair ball. When this call was argued, the umpire stated with the utmost sincerity that once a ball strikes fair ground, it must touch the ground foul or it remains fair. That is absurd.

Let's say that a grounder is hit down the third base line. If that ball bounces up hard enough and passes the bag on the foul side of third, it becomes foul at the moment it passes the bag in foul ground. It is not foul because it lands on the second hop in foul ground and then remains there. Similarly, if it passes over any point in the bag or to the field side of the bag, it matters not a whit whether it comes down in foul ground thereafter. It is a fair ball.

There is no verbiage in any rulebook with which I am familiar which contains any sort of "establishment clause" with regards to fair and foul balls. There is no requirement that a once fair ball strike anything in foul ground before it can be called foul. The reason that has been conveniently left out of any rulebook is because it would make a travesty of the game. If a bunter bunted a ball which struck fair ground, including the plate, and then bounced back to the catcher who caught it on one hop, it would presumably be fair under such a clause. But it is not. It is foul.

Likewise, a player trying to make a catch on a ball in foul ground has no requirement to establish her body in foul ground in order for the ball to be ruled foul. Say a RF was chasing a line drive which curved ever so slightly into foul territory. She raced to the line and made a play on the ball right as she stepped on the chalk line (which, again, is in fair territory), reached across into foul ground and just barely tipped the ball. Does her presence in fair territory make the ball fair? No, it is foul because it was foul before she touched it. A player cannot do anything to make a foul ball fair.

There are othert bad calls and misapplications of rules I have witnessed lately but I want to stick with these fair foul calls and add just one more somewhat related item to today's discussion. Recently, a game was played on your average field. The field contained a backstop. Where the backstop ended on each side, there were gaps which players used to take the field or step up to bat and then behind the gap were fences which extended a little past the bases. As a general matter, in such a layout, the baseline fences are considered to be in play. That is, when a ball comes to rest next to the fence or bounces against it, the ball remains in play or live. If the ball goes past the fence or crosses beyond the gaps, it is out of play or dead.

This sort of circumstance regarding in and out of play is generally discussed and decided at the pre-game "ground rules" meeting between umpires, coaches, and team captains. In the absence of a specific discussion regarding this, one would expect the generally accepted rule to apply. In other words, unless some modification to the general rule were created by somebody, a ball which strikes the baseline fence or comes to rest next to it should be in play.

The other day I saw an umpire who was either extremely confused or under the weather. A play was made on a girl running home and the ball bounced off the catcher and to her side. The ball rolled over to the second fence where the pitcher, backing up the play, picked it up. The third base coach came in immediately to argue with the ump. He claimed that the ball should be out of play because it went past the pole of the backstop. That is ridiculous but this ump actually bought into the idea. he ruled the ball was dead and all runners should be allowed to advance one base. That ruling sent the game into extra innings. During those extra innings, again the same thing happened and the umpire again ruled the ball dead once the same 3B coach came in and reminded him of this rule! This rather incorrect understanding of in and out of play ground determined the outcome of that game.

By the way, all of the errant fair and foul rulings I have seen or heard about recently had material impact on the outcome of the games in which they were made. Sometimes coaches carry around rabbit-eared rulebooks which are left open to areas of arcane rules in regards to DP/Flex and other such "important" things. Most of the time, coaches are studying the arcane rules because they are confuse and the coach wants to get them down. Sometimes coaches aren't even sure where in a rulebook one would find anything about fair and foul balls. This stuff is easy, right? I would no sooner carry around an ASA rulebook so I could point to sections while arguing fair and foul balls than I would carry around my first grade math book in case I had to add two numbers together. It almost seems silly. But if you are on the losing end of one of these calls, you will really wish you had something in hand to show the umpire why it is that he was wrong.

Practice To Be ... "Imperfect"

2010-04-28T05:10:00.000-07:00

For many years, coaches have written me with a question which goes something along the lines of "I have very little pitching on my team and what little I do have consists of girls who know nothing more than a fastball. What should I try to teach them?" I have written back any number of replies including suggesting they learn change-ups which I still think is appropriate. But what any pitcher who has few pitches ought to focus on in the short run is learning to throw less than perfect pitches. What I mean is, pitches that are not right down the middle.

I strongly believe pitchers should start working change-ups and movement pitches as soon as they have the basic windmill down. There's no reason to wait until the fundamental motion is as near to perfect as it will ever be before trying new pitches. Kids improve their mechanics over many years. Even most 18U and college pitchers can improve their mechanics. That is a never ending process. And at some point, within probably the first year, pitchers need to work on something other than the common fastball. Some do not and these are the ones I believe the coaches are referring to in their questions.

I believe such girls ought to get instruction from competent pitching coaches in regards to their changes, drops, etc. But while they only have a workable fastball, they can still pitch and experience some success, provided that they learn to throw pitches to several locations.

Years ago, I published something along the same lines but I want to revisit the topic because some folks are hesitant to read anything more than a year old. And most likely, these are the very people I am after with this piece.

So where do we begin discussing location? Let's start with the strike zone which runs vertically from the top of the front knee to the solar plexus. It used to extend upwards to the armpits but was moved down a year or so ago. Some umps still call anything below the pits a strike but let's assume the solar plexus is correct to make it easy.

The strike zone, obviously spans laterally across the plate but in thinking of this, what we mean is with the center of the ball right around the edge of the plate on each side. It should be clear to anyone involved in the sport that the zone is somewhat wider than that in practice because many umpires call anything inside the inner lines of the two batter's boxes a strike nut let's assume that the outer corners are marked by the midpoint of the ball crossing on the plate, again, just to make things easier.

If we map out the zone in our minds, and then create a grid with lines marking the outside edges and two horizontal ones plus two vertical ones creating a grid, we are left with 9 equal sized boxes. To make this a little more effective, shove the lines outward, away from the center by about one third. What we are left with is a grid which contains a large box in the center and 8 smaller boxes surrounding it. If you do not follow me, please start over using paper, pencil and a ruler instead of your imagination.

You should notice that 6 of the boxes, on the outer edges, are about the same size and two of them are much larger - the up and down, middle of the plate ones. These should really be made smaller up and down so that the very middle box is even larger but let's not get carried away.

Now place a huge, bold, red X in the middle box. We never want to throw the ball into that large square once we are warmed up. We do not want our catcher's setting targets there although they may start there before the pitcher starts into her motion but that's a subject for another day.

There are 8 grid boxes into which the pitcher should begin practice throwing her game ready pitches. And this is our first layer of work to begin immediately. The fun does not nearly stop there.

Most folks practice their pitching "inside" and "outside" perhaps adding "up" and "down." That's fine but one really ought to think in terms of 8 boxes surrounding the no-go zone, down the middle. That is, locations within the strike zone should all be practiced. These consist of 1) low - a)inside, b) outside and c) down the middle; 2) belt high - a) inside and b) out; and 3) high - f 1) low - a)inside, b)outside and c)down the middle. If it makes things easier for you, you can mark each box appropriately, 1-a, 1-b, 1-c, 2-a, 2-b, 3-a, 3-b, and 3-c. Obviously, inside and out are relative terms because it depends on whether you have a righty or lefty at the plate. Let's not worry about that issue.

The next level of what we should be concerned with is the areas right outside our grid. In order to make it somewhat simple, let's extend our grid lines outward a few inches and think of this as being approximately two to three balls in distance. A standard fastpitch softball is a couple inches across so our actual distance is maybe 6 inches or so. Draw a line around your new, extended grid. You can number these new boxes if you like but I think we might be getting carried away. The bottom line is you have gained 16 new boxes into which the pitcher will throw her practice sessions giving us a total of 24, though precision is not important. If you do not see this in your head, get paper. If you do not see this in your drawing, find some graphing paper.

These new outer zones are probably the single most important aspect of pitching. Most umpires will give one or two sides of your overall grid but not the other 2 or 3. That is, most umpires will tend to call strikes for pitches outside the zone, in or out, up or down, or some combination of these. It really matters who is calling the game. Some umps like the upper pitch but not the lower ones. Some like the outside pitch but not the inside. In games, pitchers have to adjust to the umpires called strike zone because that is the only thing that matters on a called ball or strike.

The outer lateral edges of your new strike zone grid span from the inside line of the righty batter's box to the inner edge of the lefty batter's box. The top and bottom lines span from the batter's chin down to her shins. So that is, in summary, 24 boxes from batter's box to batter's box, chin to shin.

To this, I want to add one final layer of lines. The bottom and top of the final layer are dirt to visor of batting helmet. The outer lines are the batter herself. I am losing patience with the idea of numbered boxes so let's skip the idea for a little while. I just find that sometimes drawings and numbers can be useful to develop a concept. Now, these newest boxes are obviously balls in anybody's book but they are still important locations.

So, again to just summarize where we are, we have 3 layers of boxes which include the rulebook strike zone, the potential umpire's strike zone, and places where pitches would definitely be balls. Let's talk a bit about why we have these locations, what they are good for, and how to work on hitting them.

The various locations are more critical to softball pitching than they are to baseball pitching for a very good reason. Our regulation 12 inch softball is much larger than the standard baseball. If we throw down the middle, no matter how fast, somebody is going to hit the ball well against us.

The first layer is important because, if we want to get outs whether by strike outs, grounders or pop-ups, there are really only two ways to do it. We must make batters swing by throwing strikes and/or we must make them swing at pitches as far away from their particular hitting zones as possible so they miss pitches or miss-hit some. If we just fire the ball and wait to see where it goes, a high percentage of pitches are going to get whacked. If we hit spots, certainly some pitches will be hit hard but most will not.

The second layer of locations is extremely important because, if we are able to hit these spots at will, we can get called strikes on pitches that are not generally hittable. Early in our games, we test the spots to see what the ump will call. If he or she is calling inside, low, outside or high, we mark this down in our brains to use as the game progresses. More importantly, if the ump has expanded the zone, we should use this in order to get batters out not only by the K, but also by making them hit balls very poorly.

The third layer is important too but for more insidious reasons. This is a little more advanced but, in essence, we can alter the batter's perceptions about the strike zone by going well inside and outside it sometimes. For example, say we are facing someone standing at about the middle of the batter's box. If we throw inside, off the plate, right on the batter's box line, we make them forget some about the outer corner. We can get them punched out with strike three on the outside corner and they'll return to their dugout certain that the ump made a bad call. Similarly, if a batter adjusts to our constant banging of the outside corner by moving in, we can make them forget about the inside corner by throwing one or two outside off the plate, out of their reach.

Location is critical to getting hitters out. We dissect the strike zone, build zones just around it and then beyond those in order to have the sort of pitch command necessary to get them out. Once we have reasonably good control, we must learn to develop command so we can defeat almost any batter.

When I speak of "control" I am really talking about a pitcher whose 60-80% throw zone is in and around the strike zone. Such a girl may walk some kids because she is unable to "just throw a strike" but the number of walks issued this way is relatively small. This is distinguishable, in my world, from "command" which refers to the ability to hit specific zones inside and out of the strike zone at a high rate of frequency with deliberate effort.

Lest somebody write in to complain that I have always advocated speed before all else, let me clarify. For many years, I have scolded those who preach, "just get it over, dear, please!" I have stated that one should not try to throw strikes and parents and coaches should not implore their pitchers to throw those strikes. Rather, it would be best if pitchers work to perfect mechanics and throw as hard as they can without any regard to where the ball goes. Basic control will come about as a result of good mechanics, repeated iterations of throwing, and learning one's release point.

A pitcher does not try to throw wildly. She is not trying to incur the wrath of her parents or coaches. But if she is told to "just throw strikes" or "try, please for God's sake, try to throw strikes," what she will do is alter her mechanics until she throws that strike which will shut up her detractors. I have seen this dynamic play out many times and the results are rather ugly. What you get for your learned instruction of "just throw strikes" is a pitcher who shortens her stride to remain in control of her body, one who bends at the waist or elbow as she releases the ball, some other funky adjustment, or all of these things. The result is generally a pitcher who will be done before long because she will lose speed and power, not be able to master additional pitches, or suffer a bad injury. Mechanics are the key to early pitching, not control regardless of what your little league experts tell you.

If I have two pitchers before me who have the same instructor and the same amount of experience, I'll take the harder throwing, wilder one every time, assuming her mechanics are superior to the other, slower, much more controlled girl. The second girl may experience more success early but within a year or two and definitely after that, our wild thing will be the superior pitcher.

When kids begin pitching, they are trying to pull together a very complex motion and then find a release point to throw strikes. They throw the ball all over the place. As things come together, the majority of pitches will land in a range of locations, closer and closer to the strike zone. Eventually, the beginner pitcher will be able to throw everything fairly close to the zone and her practice catcher's mood will dramatically improve. This can take quite a long time for some but let's assume that the specimen pitcher is able to throw the ball inside a reasonably small range and hit the strike zone or right around it about 60-80% of the time. This is the right time to begin working locations.

Probably the first thing a coach or parent will want to do is work inside or outside corners of the plate. This can take quite a long time to master. The important thing to note is that like all of pitching, it requires many repeated iterations. If one is practicing by throwing 100 fastballs after drills, it would be best to stop trying to throw down the middle as soon as you are warmed up. Let's assume a pitcher is warm after 20. The remaining 80 should be to locations in and out.

Trying to throw pitches to locations can be somewhat aggravating for the pitcher. She can also become bored pretty quickly with throwing to a single location. Think of yourself practicing at say darts. You try to hit the middle but fail numerous times. After a while, you have to do something else or you will go mad. So you try to throw to the right or left side, up or down. Then after perhaps 10 throws, you move to another zone on the board, then another. The same concept should be applied to pitching practice. You warmed for 20, now throw 10 inside corner, then 10 outside corner, then 10 in, end so on. Variability is the key to avoiding boredom.

What I like to do when working out a pitcher is have her warm, then work vague areas on the inside and outside, then move to a third layer of practice in which she tries to throw 10 inside on the plate, then 10 inside off the plate, 10 outside on, 10 outside off, and then start to wind things up or down by hitting one of each at a time. You can have her face theoretical batters in a game situation in which each location is a strike and anything else is a ball. By the way, in these scenarios, anything into the red X zone is a homerun!

I believe that practicing merely inside and out is very limited and can result in much boredom. Before long, your inside on and off, etc. practice will get very boring too. &nb sp; Even before your pitcher has mastered her command in and out, on and off, you should add further variability. I would start with the grid boxes in the strike zone. I would also choose the places which will provide the greatest benefit to actual pitching. If you go back to your first layer of grid with the numbers placed into the boxes, these would be the, to a righty batter: up and in or 3-a; down and away or 1-c; anything up on the 3 line; or anything low on the 1 line.

You next layer of practicing ought to involve the full spectrum of possible locations within the two first layers of the grids. The pitcher should work to hit spots within the strike zone, up, middle or down, in, over or out. Then she should move on to throwing pitches right outside the zone up, down, etc. It probably best to work in these diverse locations over several weeks, perhaps months, assuming about 4 practice sessions per week.

There is never a need to be overly concerned with a pitcher's inability to hit spots or hit all the spots soon after beginning to work in this way. Command is, like mechanics, a career long project. But so many pitchers are trained and worked without any regards to locations that I want to at least go over the subject in some details on my meaningless blog. Pitchers need to work locations so they have relatively good command. If nobody ever works this into the practice sessions an d makes sure a good number of practice iterations occur, there is little chance she'll just naturally learn to do this on her own.

So, now let's assume a pitcher and her coach / practice catcher / father / mother learned fundamental mechanics, got to the point where she threw her fastball pretty well, is working on getting other pitches game ready but relies about 70-90% on the fastball, has practiced location and can now throw them pretty well, what is she to do with this ability?

First of all, what we want to do is make sure not to pound one particular location over and over again. In 12U travel ball, many pitchers ply their trade hitting the outside and low corner. They can get away with this because hitters mostly do not make many adjustments at that age. A coach can tell his lineup of 9 to move closer to the plate in order to defeat this strategy and perhaps 4 or 5 of the girls will actually do that. But from 14U on up, hitters do make adjustments whether they are instructed to do so by a coach or not. So the 12U pitcher with decent command can get away with pounding the outside corner byut sooner or later she'll face good hitters and they will hit that. When she ages up to 14U, most hitters will adjust to constantly banging the outside.

What you can do in order to avoid hitters making successful adjustments against you is to work the full zone or work particular parts of it to open up certain other zones. Want to get the hitter out down and away, use your inside and high location. Want to get her out up and in, try up and out. Set the hitters up so they are never sure where you are going to throw the pitch. If you do that, you might just be able to get 21 hitters out with just your down and away stuff or whatever. You just have to work the other locations so they are guessing as to where you might be throwing this next pitch.

On yet another level, you must learn to be imperfect. That is, you must learn and practice to throw pitches that are balls. You should always start games throwing a strike or two though on the edges so you can begin to delineate exactly where the strike zone is for both you and the umpire. But you are really going to want to learn to hit spots outside the zone.

Hitters come to the plate with their own idea of where the strike zone is and is not. They also have their own particular sweet spots where they love to hit the ball. Additionally, they have their own particular weaknesses for pitches outside the zone where, under certain circumstances like 0-2, runners in scoring position or whatever, that they simply cannot help themselves from swinging at bad pitches. Your job as pitcher is to be capable of executing pitches to each of the targets you have in your head, to discern where the strike zone is and is not, to keep hitters off balance by moving it around, and learning where your opponents hot and cold zones are. We'll leave styles of hitting and their fundamental strengths and weaknesses for another day. We don't have time to go over every possible adjustment the hitter might make. Right now we are focused on the pitcher learning to be able to hit the spots in each of our layers within the grid we created in our minds or on paper. if you can throw only a fastball but have reasonably good speed and can hit these targets, you have a lot. You can be an effective pitcher with just these tools. If you are a coach working with limited pitching talent and you train your pitchers only in this aspect of their craft, without touching their mechanics or trying to teach them a pitch when you are not otherwise a competent pitching instructor, chances are pretty good your pitchers, your team, and you will survive the season.

There are a couple important peripheral issues I would like to address regarding this piece. One is the issue of dealing with under-skilled catchers. On many teams other than our highly competitive travel club with catchers who go to instructors or otherwise really know how to be good receivers, we, the pitchers will have to deal with catchers who do not set targets beyond down the middle. Pitchers should drill not only locations when the practice catcher is setting targets. What I like to do with my pitchers is have them hit some targets using the glove as aim point and then try to hit those targets when the glove is situated right down the pipe. It isn't enough to merely be able to hit spots. You';ve got to be able to form a mental picture of the desired pitch location and then hit it regardless of where the catcher is. So please practice that.

The second issue involves pitching in accordance with the count and game situation. If the count is 0-2, I never want you to throw the ball into the zone, particularly not the red X box. I want you to throw what should be called a ball though not a pitch so miserable your grandmother wouldn't swing at it. When the count is in 0-2, you have at least 2 opportunities to throw a really good pitch which barely grazes or just misses the strike zone the ump is calling that day. This is what we call "expanding" the zone. You do not want an 0-2 pitch to be hittable. The batter can hit it but she cannot hit it beyond the infield and it will be an easy out if she does put it into play.

0-1 and 1-2 are other counts in your favor. They just aren't quite as good as 0-2. Still, you have at least one opportunity to make a really good pitch without falling behind the batter and needing to groove one to get a strike. Take the opportunity.

We never want to go 3-1 or 3-2 on the hitter because the options are limited. But going 1-1 on an 0-1 count or 2-2 on a 1-2 count are totally acceptable. We do not want to ever give up a big extra base hit on 0-2 and 1-2 counts. The count provides opportunities to make good pitches and if we do not endeavor to do that, we will get hit.

Likewise, game situation dictates much of what we try to do out there in the circle. Being ahead in the count with a 7 run lead in the last inning might dictate that we throw something down the pipe. Similarly, being way behind, at risk of being run rules, might prevent us from being aggressive with pitch location because we cannot afford to walk a batter. These are elements of pitching which we cannot necessarily control. Situations can limit our choices. But if our team coaches are telling us to throw the ball down the pipe for their own reasons, that doesn't mean we have to listen. Nobody is so perfect that they can throw one into the red X box at will 100% of the time. Coaches shouldn't ever do this to pitchers but they do. Pitchers need to ignore these kinds of instructions and throw to where they think they should throw, even during batting practices!

The final issue is that circumstance we all hate to see where the ump has established an invisible pipe into which, for whatever reason, he or she wants the pitcher to throw. Of course, if you want to get a called strike, you are going to have to roll the ball right into that pipe. But let's not forget this is only for a called strike. That pipe does not prevent a batter from swinging.

Batters come to the plate, as i said, with their own notion of where the strike zone is. Their perceptions are altered by the count and game situation. You want to get ahead and probably need to throw a pitch down the ump's pipe to get a call but not every first pitch to each batter should be there. If you struck this batter out or she hit a double off you, you need to perhaps throw one outside that pipe. if you are ahead in the count, you should try to throw one inside that first layer of boxes but not the red X box where the ump is calling strikes. You are stuck with the ump's invisible pipe but you do not have to throw there. Just remember to move the ball around, work the count while keeping it in your favor, stay away from hot zones for really good hitters, and make lemonade out of lemons.

OK, I thought this would be a short one. I wasn't sure how I could fill up a whole piece with simple location stuff. I guess I was wrong. The important things to take away today are: you should envision the strike zone as the rulebook lays it out, add to it zones or boxes just outside the book zone, and then add on additional boxes beyond those. Pitchers should practice hitting these spots, all of them. They should practice hitting such spots whether the catcher's glove is there or not. Coaches with little pitching talent should focus on this aspect of pitching in order to survive. Pitchers need to consider count and game situation when calling locations but regardless of any of that, no fat pitches on 0-2, please! Pitchers will practice hitting locations in their lessons and practice sessions but they also need to practice this in games, against real hitters. If you find yourself playing against some really bad hitting team or throwing batting practice, that is a great time to work on this. As always, I hope this adds a little something to your game.

Make That Play Anyway

2010-04-26T10:52:00.000-07:00

You slide into second and beat the throw by quite a large margin. The SS or 2B gathers the incoming throw and tags you hard with her glove. You wonder why the heck she did that. It wasn't necessary. You were safe by a mile. Was she just busting your chops? Should you bust back? Hold the phone! Calm down, take a moment, and learn something.

The other day I was watching a high school game between two rivals. One was in the midst of a rally which just might have broken the thing open. A batter had just drilled a ball into the right-center gap, driving in 2 with what appeared to be an easy double. She rounded first, sprinted towards second and slid hard. The outfielder made a pretty good play on the ball, wheeled, and through a strike to second. The 2B was caught a little out of position, too far from the bag. The throw might have nailed the runner had she been there but as it was, she caught the ball just as the runner was beginning her slide. The 2B could have just gathered the ball and tossed it to the P but instead, probably with a little anger in her heart, she dove towards the baserunner. She didn't quite get there. She was a few feet short. But she dove nonetheless.

As eyes in the stands moved from the potential play at second back towards the center of the diamond and relaxed, something odd happened. The field umpire, who some feared might have become a cadaver, moved. The gentleman was, to be quite honest, a little too old, overweight, tired, and lazy to move into a better position to view the play. We figured he knew the play the 2B had attempted had little possibility of success so he remained unmoving because he just might be able to hold this position for yet another pitch. But he flinched. Then there was more substantial movement. We all gasped as it looked as if he might ring her up and ring her up he did. He punched that runner right out despite it not being a particularly close play!

You really never know what an umpire is capable of. Many are quite good and many are not. Some have exceedingly poor vision. Some are veterans of levels of play at which calls are made in approximation of what might have happened. This ain't the major leagues. And even if it were, there are some fairly odd calls made there too.

So the moral of the story is, it is never silly to put that tag on the runner. One should always conclude a play before handing the ball back to the P and getting set up for the next event. A ball player does certain things and never takes things for granted.

For example, a grounder is hit someplace in the infield. The runner sprints for the bag but the throw beats her by a good second. She sees the 1B make the catch well in advance of her arrival. She sees the 1B's foot clearly in contact with the bag. She could let up, break down her run and head back for the dugout. But she shouldn't. Instead, she should continue running as hard as she can, step on the bag and finish. Then she should turn to the ump and see that he or she is punching her out.

I have witnessed plays in which the 1B clearly had the ball for long enough for most umps to ring up an out and, then, in a terrible moment, the thing spurts free from the glove. At this point, it is 50/50 as to whether the ump will rule the catch as good or not. But if the runner stops and the 1B picks up the ball, all bets are off and the runner will be out.

That';s an easy one since most coaches at any level, from rec 8U up to college, will not tolerate this from their players. A more difficult one is when the runner is safe and then the 1B catches the throw. Most often, she turns to the pitcher and tosses the ball to her. Why? What's the rush? Why not wait for the runner to come back to the bag and then hit her with your glove? You may have seen her run through the bag, turn in the supposed right direction and in no way make any movement as if to go to second. On the other hand, you have no idea what the ump might have seen. That girl might have missed the bag or turned as if to go to second and the ump saw it that way. If you tag her before returning the ball to the pitcher, you may get a freebie for your team.

Similarly, on every single play in which a baserunner tags up, you ought to make an appeal as a matter of habit. Are you really that sure that the runner tagged up legally? Do you know whether the umpire perhaps harbors some resentment against your opponent, the coach's wife, maybe somebody in the crowd who he or she wrongly thinks is with that team? Did the ump see something you didn't. Did the ump hallucinate? Did he or she maybe suffer some sort of mental hiccup? We all can fall victim to this every once in a while. Give me one good reason not to appeal every single tag up that occurs in your games. What motivation do you have for not appealing?

We all have seen those times when an ump stands or squats motionless staring at the play while we wait for his call. He or she sees the ball is still in the player's glove, then and only then he or she rings up the out. The ump is merely waiting to be sure. They are watching your every move to see if you have the ball or not. Their view is most likely somewhat obscured. Even if the ball is out of your glove and on the ground, get it and then hold it up like you had it the whole time. Even if the base coach starts screaming the ball is on the ground, that doesn't mean the ump can see it. Grab it, quickly, and don't make any obvious moves that will validate the base coach's charges. Just pick it up and look nonchalant in the act.

When you don't drop the ball, before you so much try to get up, hold up your glove and show the ump that you have it. Get in the habit of doing that even when it should be obvious to anyone. You don't know when that idiotic third base coach is going to level his charges that "it's on the ground!" Show the ump you have the ball before that guy can so much as open his mouth. That goes for every play whether force or not. Show the ump you have the ball cleanly, ALWAYS.

Coaches, parents, players, have you ever been standing on base when all of a sudden you observed yourself make that most idiotic of maneuvers, you step off with the wrong foot? You caught yourself just as you did when you once dropped that cup of coffee or hot dog but you couldn't stop your body from moving. You think, "what was I thinking?" But you cannot answer the question. And it really doesn't matter because it happened before you knew it. Actually, in the grand scheme of things, this sort of thing doesn't matter to anyone EXCEPT the girl holding the ball in her mitt. If she has made a habit of always holding onto that ball for two or three seconds longer than she needs to and perhaps applying a tag or two, well maybe, just maybe, once in her lifetime she is going to have an umpire scream OUT or make a punching motion as he calls that runner out. if that is during a meaningless scrimmage, then so be it, although her coach may be impressed with her lack of ability to ever give up. That moment might just make her a starter. But what if that moment happens to be in a tight game during the sectionals, conference championship, travel elimination game or state playoffs?

Have you ever been involved with or close enough to observe a big play at the plate? I'm sopeaking of those plays which are not quite collisions but really just bump and fall incidents. Maybe the ball comes lose. Maybe the runner gets tied up into a knot with the C. I have seen many of these in which the runner never touched the plate or at best, just grazed it. What actually happened? How did the ump see it? Are you 100% certain about anything on these plays? If you are the runner, you should casually walk over and step on the plate with both feet. If you are the catcher, you should retrieve the ball, make sure nothing else pressing is going on and then sprint to that runner and tag her, EVERY time.

There are many strange plays in this game of fastpitch softball. We can't control many of them. But we should endeavor to get the out no matter what the cost might be to us in terms of embarrassment. Tag and tag again. Why not? Dive after that baserunner even if it is not that close. You don't know if the ump will see things in your favor bu8t there is no cost to you or your team of doing something like this. And sometime, a play like this is going to turn freakishly in your favor. So make a habit of these things! Make that play anyway!

You Just Gotta Laugh or Cry!

2010-04-25T11:23:00.000-07:00

We got rained out today! I was freed from field duty and about 9 hours of watching games, so I took the day off from everything. I was innocently just kicking back and watching TV. Big mistake! Innocence is often penalized!!!!!!

My baseball team wasn't on the tube yet so I went over to watch some college softball on ESPNU. There was a game being televised between Radford and Winthrop. During the early innings, the play by play man, Mike Gleason, asked color commentator, Cindy Bristow, former All American pitcher and member of the softball Hall of Fame, "Tell us something about the umpires this year, what they're really looking for when they look at the pitchers."

Bristow replied they are trying to cut down on illegal pitches, "trying to make sure that pitchers either don't leap or crow hop which are the two ways that pitchers can try and get an advantage." The broadcast then "leaped" to a previously filmed segment in which Bristow discussed the ins and outs of crow hopping and leaping with the help of a pitcher demonstrating each infraction. I wasn't precisely certain but I think the demonstrator was actually Bristow, herself.

I suppose it is always better to see something than merely hear it discussed. Words have their limits. Reading rules or listening to someone discuss them often falls short from creating the mental picture we need to fully grasp the concepts. That is true, unless the demonstration fails to accurately depict what is being discussed. Bristow's discussion was accurate but the demonstration confused things completely.

Bristow said a leap happens "when the pitcher leaves the ground at the same time with both feet." She then discussed crow hopping and noted it occurs "where the pitcher's pivot foot replants before her stride foot hits the ground." She then added that the "crow hop is the more common of the two."

The NCAA rulebook regarding a leap, reads as follows:

Rule 1.73 Leap (Pitcher)
"An illegal act in which the pitcher becomes airborne on her initial movement
and push from the pitcher's plate."

Rule 10.4.4
"No leaping is allowed. The pitcher may not become airborne on the
initial drive from the pitcher's plate. The pivot foot must slide/drag on
the ground."

In regards to a crow hop, it says:

1.28 Crow Hop (Pitcher)
"An illegal act in which the pitcher's pivot foot leaves the pitcher's plate and
re-contacts the ground before the release of the pitch."

Rule 10.4.5
"No crow hopping is allowed. The pitcher may not replant, gain a
second starting point and push off her pivot foot. Once having lost
contact with the pitcher's plate, the pivot foot may trail on the ground
but may not bear weight again until the pitch is released."

Bristow's descriptions comport with the NCAA softball rulebook. Unfortunately, the pitcher-demonstrator performed basically the same mistake during each try. There was a very slight difference because she did obtain a new point of impetus, a second starting point, in her crow hop example. But to the casual observer, including IMHO umpires and many coaches as well as pitching instructors, the two infractions were indistinguishable.

The reason I find this issue disturbing is because I have seen any number of pitchers at various levels either get called for crow hopping or be told by an umpire at a friendly that they are crow hopping when they were very clearly leaping! One coach recently instructed a kid who was throwing on a gymnasium floor and very obviously leaping that she was crow hopping.

It seems it is next to impossible to find anyone in this sport who can actually demonstrate a real knowledge of the difference between the two. This is important because, if nobody can actually distinguish between the two, how can they presume to call one or the other? And how is a pitcher supposed to correct her actions if she is being told she is doing one when she is actually doing the other?

It should be simple. In a leap, the pitcher's feet are both in the air after push off and before ball release. She must drag away from the rubber. If she pushes into the air and both her feet are off the ground simultaneously, she has committed the leap and this is illegal.

A crow hop is essentially a leap in which the pivot foot lands again and a push off from the second point occurs. In other words, if a pitcher leaps and her pivot foot replants, bears weight and is pushed off from, she has crow hopped.

These two types of infractions may seem to be so similar that no distinction is necessary but let me explain why I think it is important. When girls first start learning the windmill, a couple simplification techniques are utilized. It is a very complex motion which must be broken down into stages. One technique/drill involves beginning the motion and then stopping with the hand and ball held straight overhead (at 12:00 o'clock). Girls will do this drill 0over and over again to make sure pushing off well while rotating their hips and shoulders and getting their hand into the "perfect circle." The next p-hase of the drill involves pausing at this 12:00 o'clock position and then finishing the delivery. In this way, a singular complex motion is broken into two discreet parts in order to simplify things for the student. This drill is pretty important but it involves a crow hop!

Next, after girls have the basic mechanics down fairly well, the most important thing they need to do is practice. Not very many of us have a perfectly well manicured pitcher's circle in which to practice. Often, the local recreational field has a huge hole in front of the chewed up rubber. Many times, there are teams practicing on the field. Sometimes, it is too dark or cold or wet outside to practice. Generally girls working on their pitching practice on concrete, blacktop, gymnasium floors, or any old spot in some field either with or without a rubber or initial point from which to push. They make adjustments so as not to hurt their knees, ruin their sneakers or spikes, or otherwise accommodate the less than ideal practice facilities. They develop habits which follow them into games where coaches and umpires call them for crow hopping when they are leaping and leaping when they are crow hopping! This is less than optimal for our sport.

Most importantly, when we consider the crow hop, it is a fundamental flaw which is involved with timing and pulling together a complex motion. The way to correct it is really to work basic mechanics anew and then bring them together with proper timing. The leap can best be cured by: 1) making the pitcher aware of what it is she is doing vs. what she should be doing and then 2) emphasizing her drag away through some means. What I have done is placed a cloth on the ground next to where the girl pushes off the rubber and had her work on dragging that cloth with her on push off. Generally that is enough at least until she truies to pitch from the rubber with the two foot deep hole in front of it. In that case, I suppose, when the ump calls leaping, coaches should insist the pitch9ing area be repaired! But I digress.

What makes matters worse with this issue is that nobody seems to be able to demonstrate correct and legal pitching mechanics. The third demonstration on ESPNU's little segment was a pitch presumably thrown legally. The demonstrator went into her windup, stepped off the rubber and forwards a few inches, then pitched while dragging her foot away.

That's very much illegal! That is precisely what Jennie Finch was called for several times during the Olympics. You cannot lift your pivot foot off the rubber. You cannot step in front of the rubber and then pitch. You must keep contact with the rubber, push off and then drag away. The demonstrator, hall of fame pitcher or not, showed us exactly what not to do, however inadvertently!

I don't know whether to laugh or cry!!

43 Thoughts

2010-04-22T07:43:00.000-07:00

I think I have already told you that my state has made the leap (bad joke) to the new 43 foot pitching distance this year, one year ahead of the mandated change. Hopefully, yours has too. It has changed the game in at least 43 ways. I like it. I have too many thoughts about this to write about in one article so I'll stick with the most important reasons I think the change is really good for the game. It now takes 9 players to make a good high school softball team.

There is a girl out there (actually, I can think of many) who is playing varsity ball for the 4th straight year. She's an outfielder. From the day she made varsity, her team has had an outstanding ace pitcher. That pitcher mows down hitters in her sleep. I don't know about her average number of K's, but let's say it is almost 10-12 a game. (Our state's career strikeout record was around 1,300 at the end of the 40 foot period. In a career filled with 20-30 game seasons, that means the average number for the record holder was something like 10-15 per game.) That means, on our girl's team, less than half the outs were recorded in the field.

The particular girl we are talking about played every inning at one of the outfield positions. During a 30 game year, she made a play on exactly one ball. If we were to extrapolate that one year, she made 4 plays in 120 games, about 820 innings, or about 2,500 outs. FOUR PLAYS! She made up 11 percent of her team's defense and participated in point-one percent of the outs!

This kid is a marvelous athlete. She trains year round. She does strength work, flexibility stuff, and speed and agility. She loves to track down fly balls and has someone hitting them to her whenever she can find a partner. In practices, she might see 4 balls hit to her inside of one minute, often for 20 minutes at a time. Before each and every game, she'll generally warm up with more than four balls being hit to her. She works hard to be the best outfielder she can be. And for what? One stinkin' ball hit to her in the thirteenth game of the year? 4 lousy balls hit to her during her entire career?

That was then, this is now. I've been to see many games pitched from 43 feet. The number of strikeouts has been cut by more than half. There are still strikeouts. Sometimes there are a lot of them. Some pitchers remain dominant to a large degree. : But even dominant pitchers are not experiencing the number of strikeouts they have in the past. They get hit, sometimes fairly hard. Pressure has been put on the defenses and, for the most part, they are enjoying that!

A kid who works hard for four years can expect to see maybe one ball, maybe more, every game. If an outfielder cannot field a fly, a line drive, etc., she should maybe look for work elsewhere. Good fielders are shining. Poor ones are making errors.

I would say that in a fictional specimen game which might have ended 1-0 in 10 innings last year, that same game probably ends 4-2 or something like that today. The TEAM that is better often wins. The TEAM which has less defensive ability, is maybe not coached as well, or which does not have that mental toughness to make the plays when the pressure is on, often loses. The team which last year might have won all its games because they possessed the best pitcher, catcher, and shortstop while trying to merely hide lesser players at other positions, this year is suffering unexpected losses. That's not to say they lose a lot but they do need their whole team to play well in order to pull out games aga9inst good competition.

Of course, the other side of that is the all star pitcher who does not have anyone behind her is struggling. But on the other hand, the very good, well coached team that has merely an above average pitcher can compete. It boils down to what it should boil down to. High school softball teams need some talent, to be well prepared, and to play hard in order to win. It is much more enjoyable to watch but not because scores are higher. It is more enjoyable to watch because there is so much more action. I'll take a 1-0 game in which there are no strikeouts over one 8-7 in which most outs come from the K.

I am one of those purists who still loves an old fashioned pitchers duel in either baseball or softball. But the value of that experience is very much diminished when every game I go to watch is a duel. I don't mind when I happen to be watching two of the best pitchers in the area, state or country plow down hitters. But when some run of the mill pitcher throwing 50-55 with little movement and no change of speed is doing it just like the girl throwing UFOs at 60-65, something is wrong.

It was bad when varsity softball players were sometimes required to react to pitches faster than MLB batters and always much faster than the boys on varsity baseball. The girls may still have to have quicker reactions than the boys but right now, I'd have to say that they are hitting the pitches, even fast ones into play. This is good for developing the hitters but it is far better for developing the fielders. And, truth be told, it really helps the pitchers to develop too!

When a pitcher can throw a plain vanilla fastball past 7 out of 9 hitters, she does not have to work, either physically or mentally. When she must hit her spots, move the ball around, change speeds, and out-think the opposition, well, then she is pitching. When a pitcher has to pitch, she gets better.

It seemed odd to me, before I gave it much thought, that there were so many strikeouts in fastpitch softball. I guess I convinced myself that this had to do with the ability of pitchers. But when I saw kids who were apparently nothing special throw pitches of the same speed to approximately the same spots, over and over again, I started wondering what was wrong with softball hitting. Actually, a bunch of baseball hitting instructors have said the same over the years. Now it seems a little more clear to me that the hitters are not nearly as bad as I once thought. It also is clear to me that many pitchers are not nearly as good as I once thought they were.

As I alluded to earlier, the evaluation of the move to 43 feet cannot really be done based on the scores of games. They are up but that is not the issue. It must be looked at with an eye towards how many defensive players are actually involved in the game. I'[d have to say that more girls than ever before are having their performances contribute to final results. In short, the quality of our sport, its ability to entertain, is about the number of balls hit into play. The best way to evaluate that is based upon the number of strikeouts. That has been drastically reduced. And the corresponding quality of our game has been drastically increased. At least, that's my opinion.

Bunt & Run or Run & Bunt

2010-04-22T05:54:00.000-07:00

I've been away from the blog for a while. I know it has been too long but I am in observation mode. There are a ton of games around now as age group travel ball gets into full gear and the school ball season rolls along towards championship season. In all levels of play, I am aware that "baserunning" often decides games. But "baserunning" is an overly broad topic. It really encompasses almost everything on the offensive side of the game including and especially the short game. While the high school games I have observed are beginning to demonstrate a decreased value to the short game due to the increased pitching distance, it is still an important tool. While it used to determine the outcome of most competitive games, it still can determine such. In age group play at 14U and lower ages, the short game is still absolutely key. And within this aspect of the game, I have often seen what I think is a critical fundamental mistake.

When a team finds itself in a sacrifice situation, usually it looks something like this: The game is close, say 0-0, 1-0, 2-0, 2-1. One run will put one team up, tie the game or maybe expand the lead to 3 so as to force the opponent into different choices when it is on offense. A batter walks or gets a hit with one or no outs. The next batter comes up and is signaled to bunt. Sometimes she gets it down, sometimes she does not.

We have discussed the subject of bunting at length. Every single player ought to be able to put down a bunt when needed. It doesn't matter if you are hitting .500 with mostly extra-base hits or loads of home runs. At some point, your team is going to face a tight situation and need you to get one down. But we've been over and over that and it is not the fundamental issue of the day.

Many girls will be told to sacrifice and come out with a drag bunt. Generally, when male coaches see that, they go nuts. Often they are right to complain at the batter that "you were supposed to sacrifice, not bunt for a hit." I, too, see that as a fundamental mistake but I have to admit that not everyone would agree. Jessica Mendoza, for one, notes that she always felt more comfortable dragging. She was not good at bunting in the conventional sacrifice manner. She was a very good drag bunter and very often had successful sacrifices on drag bunts. So I suppose there is some room for disagreement on this fundamental issue. And, again, this is not the fundamental of the day.

The fundamental of the day involves the actions of the baserunner who is being moved. Most often, I see a girl, say at first, get off the bag like she would on any other play, freeze, and then watch to see what happens on the bunt. If the ball is popped into the air, she may even take a step back towards the bag before waiting to see what actually happens to the ball. If the bunt is done "angle down," obviously going to hit the dirt, she may turn tail and run all out. She watches the fielder covering the bag to see if there is an incoming throw and slides if she thinks there is. The real fun occurs when the ball is struck fairly solid and, for a tenth of a second, the baserunner is not sure whether it will go up or down. She holds for that one tenth and then acts in accordance with what the ball does.

This sort of baserunning play is really what should be called "bunt and run" because it involves no particular unusual act on the part of the baserunner until the bunt takes place, until ball and bat collide. 99 times out of 100 pure sacrifices, this is what happens, at least in the games I have watched. They are "bunt and run" plays, bunt first, run second.

If a squeeze is the play of the moment, it seems like about 50/50 between the bunt and run, and the run and bunt. A squeeze with bunt and run is a "safety squeeze." A squeeze with run and bunt is a "suicide squeeze." A third kind of play happens when a team does what I'll call a "double safety squeeze" which involves the runner getting off third, waiting for the bunt, and then waiting for the fielder to attempt to throw out the bunter at first. This is really not a squeeze at all and is a somewhat unaggresive play. It often works in 12U travel ball, sometimes backfires in 14U, works only against poorly prepared 16U or 18U teams, and shouldn't happen much beyond that, although, quite often, a weak throwing, poorly drilled first or second baseman is incapable of making the play to home as it should be executed.

What troubles me at the moment is the tendency of most teams to use run and bunt only on suicide squeezes. The team that aggressively squeezes whenever the opportunity presents, many times does not play so aggressively on sacrifice situations when the run first, bunt second approach is highly advisable and successful every time your bunters have been well prepared. This seems insane to me. You've just got to run before the bunt against some teams despite the risks.

It occurs to me that nobody wants to be doubled up at any time. But this is almost unavoidable. I can't count the number of times when some baserunner got off the bag, then took off on a very hard hit, stopped as everybody in the place yelled because the SS made a diving catch and now has an opportunity for the DP, and then looked as if she would like to die as the throw was made, doubling her off. Then her parents (maybe a few others!) started screaming at her from the sidelines.

This dynamic occurs very often in my world, whether it is my team getting doubled up, my team making the DP, or some game I am watching for the heck of it. I just don't understand why people get so upset when some kid makes a great play which allows her to double the runner. It just happens and it is nobody's fault, not the base coach, not the runner, nobody. But every time it happens, it produces an even greater aversion to being doubled off for that k9id, her coach, for everyone. The coaches, all of the kids in the dugout of the team at bat, and everybody else in the place watching or participating in the game thinks, "I'm glad that wasn't me." The kid who gets doubled up vows that this will never happen again, assuming I live through the day.

This avoidance of being doubled off at all costs seems to make sense, doesn't it? It is a rally killer. It seems like it can make you lose. We're at 0-0 in the 4th and finally get a runner on base. Somebody finally hits a good shot but it gets caught. The runner at first is doubled off. Those are our last baserunners in that game and we go on to lose 1 zip. That play lost us the game, right? No it didn't. Lots of other plays and at bats lost us the game. That was just an unfortunate accident.

Worse still is when a sacrifice is called and the baserunner misjudges the ball off the bat. She gets off, waits for contact, sees it and runs. The only problem is the balled was popped right at the 3B! Double play, get off the bases, you!

I get weirded out when I see people getting upset on plays like this. Oh, my first reaction is something like "how did you get doubled off? Weren't you paying attention?" But then my better nature kicks in as I remember all the people I have seen doubled off. I also recognize that if the SS or 3B hadn't made a good play and instead merely knocked the ball down and then got the runner moving from first to second because she got a late jump, I would be just as upset and so would everyone else.

What bearing does this have on bunt and run, run and bunt? Is that not obvious?

Any very good team, one you are hopefully going to see as you make your way through better tournaments, is going to have practiced getting the lead runner on sacrifices. If they have significant talent on defense, they are going to kill some of the lead runners you tried to move and make your team's sacrifice attempt into an out you handed them on a platter. You'll be left thinking, "gee whiz, we haven't had many baserunners and even when we do, we can't move them!" You'll be mentally defeated.

Some teams will attempt to play things in a manner they see as aggressive. The coach at third will signal the baserunner to steal and the batter to sacrifice. The thought is, this is basically the same thing as a run and bunt. But you have still left your baserunner with her natural aversion to being doubled off. She is only going to have .5 of a second to get off the base and then she'll see or hear the contact. That makes her just over 10 feet from the bag as your bunter taps the ball. If she is one of those good kids, she is going to put her head down and steal like you envisioned. But as soon as she hears or sees the ball hit bat, she is going to freeze in near panic. What if the bunt goes into the air and is caught? I am going to get doubled off. I don't want that to happen! And that is exactly what you do not want her to be thinking.

As a coach, you really need to explain the difference between a bunt and run, and a run and bunt. You need to explain that the run and bunt is a deliberate strategy which is being practiced because there are going to be times when we cannot bunt and run, when we cannot count on being able to steal a base, when the likelihood of a passed ball or wild pitch is about as likely as the snack bar serving sushi. Sometimes, we are going to get into a tight game and we will need the runner at first or second to run and not worry about the bunt being a bad one, popped into the air. When this happens and the runner is doubled off, it is the fault of the play call, not of the baserunner.

Does this make sense to you? If not, I'm not explaining it correctly. There are going to be times when, maybe you are playing a top 10 or 50 (on a national basis) team and they are able to almost completely shut down bunt and run because they are that good. They have great pitchers. But so do you. You get only a handful of baserunners in the game but your kids are playing this thing to a stalemate. If you can get a runner to second or third, the next kid just might get that critical base hit and provide you the 1-0 lead you may be able to hold onto. But if you try to bunt and run, all you will end up with is another out and a runner at the same base.

Sometimes, when you are playing very good teams, they do not even look to make sure they can get the lead runner. Instead, they are so confident of their ability that they simply always try to get her. Sometimes such a team has a play which requires the fielders to go after the lead runner on sacrifices. If a coach gets overly confident in his or her team's ability to nail the lead runner, he or she may be in a bad habit of automatically calling that play. It has worked the last 20 times, why not now?

There is a very good possible outcome when you go with run and bunt against such teams. It is entirely possible that your runner will beat the throw because she has that slight edge of not waiting to see ball hit ground. If you are in a sacrifice situation, you run and bunt, the play is made on the lead runner, and she is safe, you may just demoralize your opponent. Like I said, maybe they have gotten the lead out the last 20 times, maybe every time they have tried it this year. Your team beats them at their own game. Now they might just think, "oh no! We have finally met a team which is better than us!!"

Of course, let's not forget that by using run and bunt, we are taking a risk. I hope that your bunters can get one down. If they tend to pop it into the air, well, your risk goes up. But that is neither the fault of the runner nor the fault of the play. That is the fault of your bunting instruction and preparation.

It is important to note that, just like the suicide squeeze, assuming your opponent has a very good catcher on whom you cannot steal, the batter must get the bat on the ball when you run and bunt. She can foul it off. She cannot pop it up to the catcher or another fielder. She must make every attempt to protect the runner.

Your batters should be taught that if your team does a run and bunt, and the hitter absolutely cannot so much as tap the ball, she still needs to make that bunt attempt with the bat and make sure that the bat crosses within the receiving view of the catcher. You are not looking for out and out interference but rather a healthy amount of distraction. If the pitch is eye high and the hitter cannot possibly get it down, remember, the catcher is going to catch that ball in just about the perfect position to throw out our runner. We have to foul it off and, if we cannot, we have to at least have our bat cross the catcher's field of view. This may be enough to cause her to miss the ball, however slightly, or perhaps make a poor throw. But we cannot allow the catcher to merely experience an iteration of throw-out the runner practice.

Batters cannot feel as if they are able to return to the dugout innocent of any charges because "there was no way I could bunt that pitch." If they do not even put their bats in front of the catcher and get a strike on them because they went, they have failed. It wasn't the baserunner's fault that she got thrown out on a failed steal attempt. It was the batter's fault for not protecting the runner.

Well, that's pretty much it. This is an easy fundamental concept. But unfortunately, I seldom see run and bunt utilized. Everybody seems to use it only in suicide situations. When they do use it for sacrifices, they typically do so by invoking a steal and bunt simultaneously without ever cluing in their players. That is not the best of all possible situations because your baserunners still have the natural aversion to being doubled off which may cause the momentary hesitation that gets her thrown out. Instead, explain to your team what the difference between bunt and run, and run and bunt is. Then you'll be able to execute it when necessary. It may win you a critical game. You may also want to explain this to the parents so they don't yell at their kids should they be the ones who get doubled up every once in a while!

Calling Out All Crowhoppers!

2010-04-07T05:33:00.000-07:00

There is a definite change in the air and I'm not talking about the weather. Umpires are actually calling illegal pitches this year. And they're doing it a lot. I'm not sure precisely why - probably an instruction from the NCAA or some such - but high school and youth umps are following suit. The issue and the new found frequent rate of calls brings up a number of questions that may have some folks fairly confused. I'd like to discuss some of these to help clarify things a bit.

I was going to list out issues and questions numerically but there are so many cross-related items that I find I must write this in my usual rambling way. I'm gonna throw a bunch of stuff against the wall and see what sticks.

The first item on the agenda is: why am I writing this now? I am writing about illegal pitches because I have seen and heard more calls and more comments by umpires and coaches in the first few weeks of this year than I have in the several full years prior. I watched my first college game on TV a few weeks back and witnessed multiple illegal pitch calls against both pitchers of two top teams. Obviously the umps are calling it at the collegiate level. This may be an early season emphasis on pitching rules or it may continue throughout the season as the ruling bodies actually get serious about it.

I do believe that the illegal pitch call must start at the top and emanate downwards through youth play. If the college umps are not calling egregious infractions, why the heck should an ump at a 10U game care particularly much? I have seen much ado about illegal pitches at the high school level and so I assume that every umpire is hot on the trail. I expect to see more calls in travel ball this year than ever before. Therefore, we must all be concerned with it until that supposition is proven wrong.

So what is an illegal pitch? Aside from a pitcher going to her mouth while on the rubber, bringing her hands together twice, not bringing her hands together at all, etc., there are really three sorts of illegal pitches, one called a "crow hop" another a "leap." The third kind involves a pitcher stepping outside the pitching lane but I'm not going to get into that today.

The distinction between crow hopping and leaping is really only important in as much as it elaborates upon the overall rules. That is, an illegal pitch, whether crow hop or leap, is still an illegal pitch. But nobody seems to grasp the difference between the two and this leads to something of a misunderstanding.

The basic rules of windmill pitching require the pitcher to maintain contact with the pitcher's plate (rubber) until she releases the ball from her hand. Obviously, very few pitchers are actually in contact with the rubber when they release the pitch. That is because it is not physically possible to push off well and throw using your legs while maintaining contact. Therefore, the rules logically say that if the pitcher drags her push off (pivot) foot along the ground, she is deemed to have maintained contact with the rubber. In short, you don't have to maintain contact with the rubber until you let the ball go. You must be in contact initially and then drag away, not lose touch with the ground, before releasing the ball.

The infraction known as a "leap" involves the pitcher losing contact with the ground with her pivot foot. The pitcher pushes off, becomes air-born with both feet off the ground and then throws. It is not imperative that both feet be off the ground for a "leaping" infraction. All that must happen is for the foot pushing off the rubber to lose contact with it and the ground. You do not cure leaping by having a pitcher land with the other foot before losing contact with the pivot foot. Generally, "leapers" become completely air-born, if but only briefly.

The "crow hop" is related to the leap but, in this case, the would-be "leaper" lands her pivot foot anew before releasing the ball. She obtains what is called a "new point of impetus" before she completes her windmill. This has the effect of putting her much closer to home than she would otherwise be. That is, a pitcher throwing from 43 feet might leap to a new point of impetus several feet in front of the rubber and, in effect, be pitching from 40 feet or closer rather than the rulebook distance of 43.

Why do pitchers crow hop? Some folks claim that they do this in order to throw harder because throwing with a crow hop is faster than throwing legally. I very much doubt this is true. The fact is a proper pitching motion is more efficient than an improper one. The crow hop is not a faster method. It does shorten the distance and thereby make it seem as if the pitcher is throwing harder but it does not make her faster. I say this because I've heard claims that it actually adds mph on the radar gun. There's just no way that is true. Those who make the claim are just not thinking the thing through.

Still, a crow hop does provide an advantage to the pitch because it brings her closer to the batter and shortens the time, however slightly, that the batter has to decide and swing. It provides an unfair advantage, one contemplated by the rule makers and is specifically prohibited. The leap is also prohibited but I doubt it gives any real advantage to the pitcher.

When an illegal pitch is called, the batter gets a ball and any runners on base are moved forward one base. Some folks confuse this with a balk in baseball because that is close to what results with a baseball balk. But the two are really completely unrelated. A baseball balk has nothing to do with a pitcher getting an unfair advantage over a batter. Rather it is the baserunner(s) over whom an unfair advantage has been obtained. Obviously baserunning rules in the two sports are very different. Since there is no leading before the pitch in fastpitch softball, the baseball balk is completely irrelevant to softball.

There are generally two types of baseball balks, a procedural balk and a punitive balk. The punitive balk happens when there are runners on base. A delayed dead ball is theoretically called and runners advance a base. I say "theoretically" because in practice, everything stops on a balk call. There's no delay about it though that is what the rules call for.

When there are no runners on base, the only sort of balk that can happen is a procedural one. Because the balk rule specifically contemplates baserunners being deceived, there is no penalty unless the umpires believe the pitcher was doing something illegal in order to fool the batter in which case they may award a ball. When a softball illegal pitch is called, the batter is always awarded a ball and any baserunners awarded the next base. There is no distinction between a procedural or punitive illegal pitch.

Baseball pitchers do not crow hop because this provides a disadvantage to them. Every baseball pitcher knows that they need to keep their pivot foot on the rubber as they push off and come forward to the release point. There is nothing to be gained from bringing the pivot foot forward on the mound, obtaining a new point of impetus and then throwing because they lose some of the downward trajectory advantage they have and because they cannot get as strong a push off. This brings up a point relevant to windmill pitching but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Baseball pitchers' pivot feet frequently do not drag away from the rubber, however, because, I suppose, the mechanics of baseball pitching are different - they are overhand. Any overhand throw ends with either a foot dragging or not. It is about 50/50. There doesn't seem to be much particular reason to do either. Neither is markedly more powerful than the other - it is more a question of style or habit. Some pitchers do drag, some do not. It depends on the style of pitching they are performing. Some pitchers have their pivot foot fly away after push off and before release. Some pitchers drag. But it ain't covered in the baseball rulebook and absolutely nobody cares.

Regardless of what is covered in the baseball rulebook and regardless of whether baseball pitchers do or do not crow hop or leap, the fact is these are both illegal in windmill pitching. So, why do girls do it? There are several reasons but, again, I do not believe anyone is trying to learn to do it in order to gain an advantage.

Windmill pitchers, unlike their brothers in baseball, must train by performing actual pitches throughout much of the year. In youth and high school ball, many baseball pitchers take much more of the year off than windmillers do. The windmill is just that much harder. But in most places, one cannot practice pitching outside on an actual pitching surface.

Most pitchers do their "winter work" on a flat surface, without a rubber, or on some type of artificial surface with a rubber but no actual dirt around it. The gymnasium floor is often a place where pitchers work. It is very difficult to drag away from a point of impetus (rubber or not) on gym floor surfaces because they are made for NOT SLIPPING.

If you get yourself one of those mats with a rubber on it, you can drag away more easily than on a gym floor but it is still far more difficult than real dirt. So, regardless of where they perform their winter workouts, many softball pitcher's get out of the habit of dragging away.

Sometimes, they actually develop crow hops while throwing on these indoor surfaces. I'm not sure why this is but perhaps it could have something to do with trying to develop more speed. Again, the crow hop is not a faster method of pitching but when a girl is pitching on a difficult surface to push and drag, she may do things in order to gain leverage so as tyo throw hard and not put too much stress on her shoulder. Since she doesn't lose anything in the gym because she has no rubber, perhaps she can be prone to crow hopping. I really do not know but I have seen many gymnasium pitchers who were legal outside develop crow hops during the winter.

A larger reason why pitchers develop crow hops has to do with the windmill learning process. The motion is, in my humble opinion, one of the most complicated moves in all of athletics. There is so much to learn separately with the upper and lower body, not to mention the core muscles, that it has to be taught in pieces. A girl learns to snap the ball out of her hand, then bring her arm down and snap, and then a full rotation followed by a snap. After the basic arm rotation is taught, then and only then, the twisting of the core is taught. Only after these two pieces are learned fairly well is she taught about pushing off. Thereafter, drills and warm up routines are established which break the motion down into pieces and ultimately bring them together. It is very complicated and many girls struggle along the way.

I have watched several girls who have been trained to pitch for several years have difficulty maintaining a reasonable circle throughout their rotation. I have seen many who do not fully open and thereby reduce the quality and length of their circle from which much of the power is gained. I have seen many other girls who, despite fully opening and maintaining pretty good arm circles, have difficulty with the end of the motion or simply get into the habit of forgetting to snap the ball. It is not easy.

In order to fix broken parts, many coaches go back to the drawing board and build up from the bottom again. Then, after the broken piece is mended, girls sometimes have trouble bringing the thing back together again. Or, and this is really frustrating, the girl fixes the broken piece and then something else is out of alignment. Windmill pitching can very much be "Humpty-Dumpty."

Sometimes girls learn to pitch while making the mistake of crow hopping or leaping and these aren't fixed by their coaches for a couple reasons. First of all, if a coach is working on 50 different little pieces that need tweaking, probably the last thing he or she is concerned with is a tiny leap. Secondly, because the leap is very hard to fix on a poor surface for pitching, why bother? Heck, she'll fix that when she gets back outside and we have so much else to do!

Another reason why pitching coaches do not or have not in the past bothered to fix little leaps and hops is because nobody has been calling them for years. There has been a lot of talk about the subject but nobody has done anything about it for a long time. Now, all of a sudden, the talk has caught the attention of the governing bodies and they are trying to fix what they allowed to break in the first place. So, at the last Olympics, illegal pitches were actually called. Also, last year the NCAA got slightly tougher on pitchers' feet. Then the high school umps applied it a bit more than they had in the past. This year seems to be the water shed. Umps are calling it left and right.

Why was the illegal pitch almost never called before last year and this one? I can't really say for sure but I assume that 1) nobody saw a real advantage gained by pitchers and 2) the rule has one major defect.

In baseball, as I said, the pitcher who commits a balk is trying to get, or in effect getting, an advantage over the baserunner. In softball, that's not the case. In baseball, the rules very sanely say, if you're trying to get an illegal advantage over the baserunner, then not only will we not allow it but we will give the baserunner an advantage by moving him up one base very time you do it.

In softball, where the pitcher is trying to get, or in effect deemed to be getting, an advantage over the batter. We sanely penalize her by awarding a ball. But, we then turnaround and also award baserunners a free advance to the next base. We penalize the pitcher once by awarding a ball to the batter and that should be about right. That should be it.

Umpires are often gifted with a good amount of common game sense, whether they know the rulebook precisely as written or not. Many I have encountered over the years have taken time to explain not only to pitchers but also to coaches precisely what it is they think she is doing wrong. I have even seen umps take the additional step of explaining the problem to parents of pitchers between innings. They seldom make the illegal pitch call, or have historically done it seldom, because it changes the game, slows it down and basically destroys much of the good.

If you walk up to a random field and observe a pitcher at 10U through 18U, chances are probably 50/50 or better that you will see a pitcher make at least one illegal pitch during any inning. Most likely, if you stay for both innings, you will see both pitchers make multiple illegal pitches. Can you imagine going to a softball game, expecting it to be a low scoring, hour and a half affair but when you get there, the first pitch is called illegal, then the second, and so on? That nice pure game will end up taking more than the 4 hours many baseball games take. The score will be something like 50-49. And both pitcher will have thrown no hitters! VERY BORING!

Many umps recognize this and call illegal pitches infrequently unless the game is an important one. The last thing they want to do is make the game a huge bore for all involved.

Another reason umps have often ignored illegal pitches is because when you take some 11, 12, 16 year-old pitcher and tell her to change her motion in the middle of a game, two things can happen. One is she is going to throw so badly that the ball is going to be hit all over the place. It is not because she has lost that wonderful advantage she illegally gained over the prior hitters. It is because she is now out of sync and unable to pitch the way she has thrown the last forty thousand practice pitches. -; She doesn't know what to do.

More importantly, when a pitcher changes her motion in the second inning of some game and then continues to throw another 100 pitches in a failed attempt to correct the mistake she has been making without correction over the past 3 or 5 years, she is going to put far too much stress on her shoulder, her back or some part of her body. She is going to end up injured. And that is a really bad outcome of trying to correct something like this during a game.

Do you think I am overstating reality by claiming that most pitchers throw illegally and can be called multiple times each inning? Take a look at the top names in our game and show me five pitcher who do not throw illegally! Jennie Finch? Sorry, almost every pitch she throws involves a slight step forward off the rubber onto the ground in front of it. Monica Abbott? Cat? Ditto, ditto. Keep going. I guarantee you that almost every pitcher in the top 50 or even 150 in the world, some of the greatest pitchers of all time, has some sort of routine flaw with her feet that should, if the letter of the rules are followed, result in a call at least some of the time.

Now, there are crow hops and there are crow hops. There are leaps and there are leaps. Jennie Finch gains nothing worth noting with her "step" which is technically a crow hop. I'm not sure that any of the top pitchers really do gain from their hops or leaps. It is just hard to be athletic with one very important foot nailed to the ground.

Further, even the game surface is somewhat imperfect. Have you ever taken a good look at the dirt in the circle during a tournament game when 5 games have already been played on this field and the only repair work is by some guy like me who is absolutely clueless and even if he had a clue, doesn't have the proper materials or equipment to fix holes in the surface?

I have watched games on occasion where a pitcher was called for leaping because she lost contact with the ground after push off. But the area in front of the rubber had a one foot drop and it is getting worse each and every pitch! That is certainly not true of international or NCAA level games but in everything from high school on down, there are some pretty bad field conditions. And even with state of the art equipment and materials applied by a real ground crew, during play, there are going to be holes dug.

How about this resolution to the illegal pitch? Let's get a guy with clay at the ready and a tamper to pat down each application. Now let's call him in after each inning to fix the surface? No, that's not fair, he should come in every half inning. And if the area gets beat up during a half inning, the plate ump can call him in to fix it. This will really make the game fun and quick!

As I said, there are girls who hop quite egregiously. And there are girls who leap very badly regardless of field conditions. These problems need to be fixed. A pitcher with a 3 foot crow hop should not be allowed to continue doing it year after year. I'm not really sure about the leap since I don't think it really provides anything positive and really results from bad timing and coordination or lousy field conditions.

A likely rebuttal to my diatribe today is probably going to be something like the rules are the rules and they should be applied evenly, period. To that, I will say that, technically, if you apply the rules perfectly, no player on the defensive team, nor her parents in the stands for that matter, is allowed to distract an offensive or defensive player in any way, shape or manner. That being the case, and the rules are the rules, you must remain quiet in the stands in those tense moments that determine the outcome of the game. Probably it would be best if players only spoke when the ball is in the circle and the pitcher is not on the rubber lest they distract anyone. So no chatter of any kind is allowed. All those catchers taught to block the plate while the throw is still incoming, that is obstruction. Any contact made between an incoming runner and the catcher has to be either interference or obstruction and because these players are really not supposed to come into contact at all, someone should be ejected from the game on almost every close play at the plate I have seen.

The point is rules can be taken to extremes. Obviously there is need for most rules. They ought to be applied and applied evenly. , But rules change or are clarified every year because they are, by nature, imperfect. -; before we go from a speed of -0- to one of 120 mph, we ought to at least consider the bigger picture (I almost wrote pitcher).

Personally, I think some degree of latitude should be given to the finch's of the world. I think there should be room for a "crow hop" on one or two inches which really would be limited to a mere slipping and sliding of the pivot foot from the rubber to a point right in front of it. I also think a degree of rationality should be applied to the leap rule. I saw a pitcher against who illegal pitches were called the other night on my Tivo. The broadcasters noted that she had lost touch with the ground by a few inches on each delivery. I replayed one over and over until I saw it. She did leave the ground though you'd have to have very good eyes to notice it. The funny thing was that she left the ground on those pitches on which illegal was called almost as often as she did when it wasn't called!

We might also want to at least look over at our brethren on the baseball diamond and make note of their balk rule, just as a reference point. if the attempted illegal advantage is over the runners, they should get the benefit of any penalty. If it isn't, they shouldn't. The windmill pitch is a theoretical attempt to gain on the batter, not the runners. The penalty should be a ball. Why should the runners advance????

Finally, I seriously doubt that many folks out there, be they umps, coaches or whatever, have a good understanding of pitching rules. One umpire recently said to a pitcher throwing warm-ups that she was crow hopping. She wasn't. She was leaping. And, by the way, you are allowed to do that during your warm-ups! A coach once recently was heard telling a pitcher that she was crow hopping, she wasn't. She was leaping but that was because the field was in such terrible condition that had she dragged, she would have ripped her toe nails off inside her shoes.

I know rules are often hard to understand and harder to apply fairly. But to the guy coaching first base who screamed balk as my then 9 year old was about to release the ball approximately 100 times during a nothing tournament game several years ago, read my lips. THERE IS NO BALK IN GIRLS FASTPITCH SOFTBALL. Also, to the same fellow, your daughter is an egregious crow hopper! For the rest of you, please consider the words of ten year MLB umpire, Ron Luciano, as he addressed the issue of baseball's balk. he said, "I never called a balk in my life. I didn't understand the rule."

"Winning Is A Habit" and "Leadership"

2010-04-05T06:09:00.000-07:00

We love our slogans. Much wisdom can sometimes be imparted through their use. But other times such catch phrases and proverbs can be misinterpreted and at these times, their use and overuse can be rather confusing or downright dangerous.

I'm as guilty as anyone when it comes to using slogans to make points in reference to just about anything and everything. It is what it is. I am trying to stop but, you know, routine will set you free unless your routine includes bad habits. Bad habits die hard. I'm an old dog and it is difficult for me to learn new tricks. I get upset when I find myself overusing catch phrases, but there's no point crying over spilled milk. Well, enough of that. It's time for me to explain where I want to take this. I've got to fish or cut bait, put up or shut up. So here's what I want to discuss today, warts and all.

I am not a fan of certain very popular phrases. I love Vince Lombardi and everything about his approach to coaching athletics but I'm afraid "perfect practice makes perfect" is somewhat misunderstood, misinterpreted, or misapplied. Another of my least favorite phrases, one often overused in softball, is "winning is a habit." One reason I don't like it is because it is used wrong but another is because the phrase is an oversimplification. The phrase itself is weak and potentially dangerous.

I understand what "perfect practice makes perfect" means. It can used in reference to something as small as a mechanical skill. If you want to perform a mechanical movement in sport, you've got to do in right and then repeat it many times (thousands) until you always do it right and never do it wrong. If you make a mistake, you have to correct it and then repeat, repeat, repeat. if you make a mistake and then make it again, there is a good chance it will become habit and you will prevent yourself from ever doing it right. That is one microscopic meaning of the phrase.

On a larger macro view of the phrase, it is probably easiest to first examine it within the context of Lombardi's sport. He coached football, in case yesterday was your first one on the planet. Football is a complicated sport, far more complicated than many fans and non-fans imagine.

I remember getting into arguments with my mother about sports. She participated in synchronized swimming and preferred ballroom dancing and figure skating to the "barbaric" sport of football. I told her these other things were not really sports at all which, of course, angered her. I explained further that football is every bit as complicated as ballroom dancing or figure skating but it involved 11 players trying to dance while 11 others tried to prevent them from dancing their routines. She scoffed at that but my father always understood.

My father saw how football involved complicated combinations of steps. He understood that on a simple "trap" play, if everyone was not in the right place at the right time, the thing would not only fail but also be a complete travesty. For example, as a right offensive guard, I had to practice my pulling steps on my own and make sure they were in performed perfect timing. If I was too slow, the running back would beat me to the line, run into me, or trip over my feet as I made my block. If the center did not get off the line quickly, I would trip over his feet. If the left offensive guard and tackle performed their blocks poorly, I would run into them. If the right tackle did not seal off the back side, his man would follow me and tackle the running back behind the line of scrimmage. If the other running backs and receivers did not do what they were supposed to do, the deception of the play would fail. And if the QB did not get the ball to the runner at precisely the right moment, well, the whole choreographed play would collapse. Everyone had a job to do and they had to do it absolutely right if the thing was to have a chance to succeed.

When a football team practices the simple trap play without a defense involved, it must be done right many times or it will never be run right with a defense. Next up, it runs this play with a defense, though not a highly motivated one in practice. If it is not run properly like that, it won't be run well when their is a defense looking to stop it in a game. It must be practiced perfectly. Perfect practice makes perfect. I get it.

The trouble with the phrase is many times, things are not practiced perfectly yet they work out in games. That is because athletes do more learning when they make mistakes than when they succeed. Take a look at any competitive situation including fastpitch softball.

If a player gets a hit every time she bats, she never really learns to deal with adversity. She never learns to deal with the pitcher who gets everyone out. When these two come together for the first time, somebody is gonna fail. When the team that always hits faces the pitcher who always wins, they may struggle or the pitcher may. Then somebody is going to have to make adjustments and perhaps the other is going to fail the second time around. Then the somebody who failed in round two is going to have to make adjustments and so on.

This is the primary motivation for trying to play top competition when crafting a season's schedule. We see this in almost every sport. The top teams, at the end of the day, are often those which scheduled heavy competition in order to season the team. The teams which falter down the stretch are almost as often those which may have won every game but were never really tested, never had to overcome adversity and make adjustments to meet the competition. But I'm getting ahead of myself because this feeds into the "winning is a habit" issue I want to adress next and I'm not finished with perfect practice yet.

If a player always seems to make the right play, more often than not it is because she has never really had to make a close call, she's never been pushed to the point of being forced into a bad decision. We learn from mistakes. We learn from losing. If you always make the right decision, if you always win, chances are pretty good that this has less to do with the wonder of you and more to do with having it too easy.

So it is with practice in any sport. If our theoretical football offense always runs the trap perfectly, then it is time for the coach to try to throw a wrench into things. They need to fail in order to get better. If a softball defense always makes the play during practice, practice is not hard enough. Maybe the balls have not been hit hard enough. Perhaps, if baserunners are involved in the practice work, they are not aggressive enough. If everything goes perfectly, not a whole lot has been gained.

I watched a televised college game between two very good teams recently. The game I saw was the third of three, the teams having split the first two. &nb sp; I am pretty sure that both teams have had some "perfect practices" and were well prepared to play the game of softball. But one team dealt with adversity better than the other. Team one went up by a few runs early. But team 2 came back gradually and eventually tied it. Team one seemed to come apart at times, making fielding errors and some poor choices. Team two played solidly all the way through, even when they were down by several runs. They made good and smart plays on defense. When they made something less than a stellar play, they shook it off immediately and tightened up the D on the next play. They won the game despite most likely not being the "better" team in terms of talent or having less perfect practices. It isn't always a matter of doing everything right which turns a team into a winner. Most often it is the bounce back capability, the dealing with adversity, the practice at being less than perfect, which turns teams into winners.

This brings us to the phrase "winning is a habit." I'm really not sure what that is supposed to mean. A habit is something we do without thinking too much about it. I get up, let the dogs out, make the coffee and drink a cup. I know I will do this tomorrow, the next day, and the next. I will get up at about the same time every day regardless of whether it is a weekend or weekday. I know exactly what my steps will be. I know exactly what order of steps I will take preparing the coffee. It is such an ingrained habit that if I do something unusual in this first routine of the day, I might just as well go back to bed because the rest of the day is not going to be any better.

We establish habits and then forget about them because we want to be freed by routine. We want to free our brains to think about the important things about the day. I do a great deal of thinking when I take a shower. I often come up with resolutions to problems, new drills to run in practice, or even the subject matter for a new piece to write. I can do this because I can take my shower with my brain switched to off. If I leave my brain in the bed and jump into the shower, I know I am going to get wet in a particular order, grad the bar of soap, rinse off, go for the shampoo, etc. There have been times when I have been so involved with some thought that I have had to stop and wonder whether I washed my hair or not. Then I realize that, of course, I have even though I wasn't aware of it. It is pretty strange but that is what habits are about. You do them without needing to think at all.

With mechanical skills like fielding a grounder, making a pitch, or even covering a base, we do not need to think very much. We see a pitcher go into her windup and we automatically feel the need to get into a ready position and look to the point of contact with the bat. One of the things I struggle with when watching a game is the overwhelming urge to drop to my knees when I see a pitch going in very low (that's from my catching days). When I stand at the outfield fence, I sometimes find myself taking steps when the batter makes contact with the ball. I can't help myself. These things became habit long ago.

Habit is a strange thing in this game. of you do not get habits built into your brain, you will have trouble. When kids field a grounder badly, it is hard for them to learn to do it right. I had a SS once who always fielded the ball to the outside of her left leg. She never got herself to the position of having it come between her legs to any degree. She also typically one handed it. This made her slower to deliver the ball to first. It was fine when she was young and playing rec ball but when she moved to travel and gradually aged up, she became ineffective. She frequently missed relatively easy plays either because she misjudged the hop due to fielding it to her left leg or she was unable to throw the fast runner out because her delivery to first was slow due to the added steps of recovering her body position, getting the ball into her throwing hand, and then making the throw from a proper position. This caused her to be a less than adequate SS despite having superior general athleticism.

There is another girl I know (really probably several of them) who likes to play 3B. When she (they) field bunts, they attempt to field the ball like the SS above, always off the left leg and one handed. Once the ball is picked clean from the ground, there is the pull up of the glove to the upper body so the ball can be removed by the throwing hand. Then there are two or more steps as she lines herself up to throw. And finally there is the throw. This is very slow, particularly once you get gifted athletes running the bases against you. But the method of the 3B(s) and the SS are habit and it is very hard to break.

Last night I watched a game I had TVoed between two top NCAA D1 teams. There were some illegal pitches called due to leaping. Jessica Mendoza noted that the pitcher probably had pitched with the mechanical flaw of leaping since she was 9 or 10. That is probably true an an apt comment made by a former outfielder - though Mendoza was also once a catcher. Mendoza commented that it is sad when these girls have to focus on basic mechanics when they pitch an important game. If I'm not mistaken she also commented that it is hard to watch girls trying to break themselves of a bad habit or illegal pitch mechanic. That it is!

Mechanical skills need to absolutely be habit. An infielder must not be worried that this time she may field a ball wrong because her mechanics need to be corrected when she is in a tight, important game. A batter does not need to think when she is up at the plate. She must do rather than think about doing.

I sometimes believe that not enough parents and even coaches fully understand this minor concept. The father or mother yelling "don't .." or "do ..." while their kid is at the plate is asking for trouble. If I hitch or drop my hands, the time to work on that is at home, at the tee, at lessons, or at practice, not at the plate. One great batting coach was overheard talking to a girl at an important showcase game. He told her he wanted her to think of only one thing at the plate. That thing was "applesauce." It is an interesting comment but its meaning is "you've done the work to get better already. Game time is not when you need to be thinking about mechanics which have become habit. Game time is the time to let it loose and just do, particularly when you are at the plate."

Proper mechanics must be habit. If a team has proper mechanics with respect to all its skills and those mechanics have become habit, it should win more than it loses. Perfect practice has made "perfect" and winning will probably often result from the habits formed in perfect practice. But that isn't really the meaning of "winning is a habit."

On another level, there is another misunderstanding of "winning is a habit." All the time I see parents working very hard to get their daughters onto the best possible team. You should try to get your daughter on the "best possible team" but I think perhaps I define the "best possible team" a little differently than some of the people I know.

Lots of parents get upset when their kid is on a team which "habitually" loses its first or second game on Sunday. Then maybe they win one or two and get to the championship but lose that game. The parents think, and often express, that they would like to get their daughter onto a team which wins. They want to instill the habit of winning in their kid because they feel this will make her a better ballplayer and/or person in the long run.

I remember a kid who was a pitcher for one of these teams that usually won. She was a pitcher. The team usually won two games on Sunday and at least played for the championship. This kid was the third pitcher for her team. She was a Saturday only pitcher! She never threw in elimination rounds. The team traveled to some championship tournament where they played several games over 5 days. She pitched two innings that week. The team did not finish high up, despite being in the habit of winning. But more importantly, despite the kid learning the "habit of winning," she never quite got the feeling of participating in those wins since she rode the pine most of the time.

Another kid was a gifted fielder and showed a fair amount of promise as a pitcher. Her father was extremely impatient with any team's losing. He wanted his kid to be on the best possible team and he found one the year after I knew him. His daughter was the 12th kid on the roster. She played but infrequently. He was such a braggart that he always threw how the team was doing at you. He wanted you to know that they played this tourney or that. He needed you to know that nobody really gave them much of a game at the tournaments. But it occurred to me that in these conversations, he never really mentioned his daughter. So I went to watch them. She played two innings, out of position, and struggled at the plate. She still plays for the team and they are still quite good. She starts for them now. There were some good lessons learned as she made her way into the line up. She has benefited from some very good coaching. But she has not learned "the habit of winning" because there is no such thing.

If you need to get your kid on a winning team, enjoy yourself. It may be really good for her. But it will not be good for her because the team wins and because she learns the experience (or habit) of winning. The team to get your kid on is the one with the best possible coaching regardless of team record. The team to get your kid on is the one that plays a very hard schedule, regardless of how well they do with that schedule. The team to get your kid on is the one where the girls work the hardest and support each other the most when they lose rather than being the best of friends when they win.

There was an interesting post on a softball blog I read earlier today. The gist of the article was rec ball is good for travel players due to several reasons including they learn how to be leaders on their presumably weaker rec teams. I disagree with the premises and conclusion of the article for a number of reasons, not the least of which is one does not necessarily learn leadership skills from being one of the best or the best player on a team. This can facilitate learning one sort of leadership but it does not teach the full spectrum.

I used to get confused when coaches in college softball proclaimed that one of the elements they seek in recruits is leadership. What confused me was not the proclamation but rather the term "leadership." I knew what it meant but I suppose I had forgotten the practical realities of leadership on a ball field. There are a lot of different kinds of leaders and I think I somehow forgot that and focused only on one kind.

Within thew universe of good, effective leaders, there are very quiet ones and there are loud ones. There are those who lead by barking orders and those who lead by example. There are those who have a vision or agenda and those who react well to adversity though they have no overall plan. There are those who lead best when their group or team is doing the right things and they give their co-workers or teammates the latitude of empowerment - they let people be to do what they know how to do. There are also those who deal best when the situation is a complete mess and everything is likely to fall apart unless someone takes charge and plots a course for each individual and then makes sure the steps of the project are followed through upon. There are leaders who need to be hands on. And there are leaders who delegate everything, trust their cohorts, and take more of a top-sided approach. Every successful team has a leader but each leader of a successful team is not cut from the same cloth.

In fastpitch softball and its kindred sports, leadership is not that which falls upon the best player(s). The guy or gal who leads the league in RBI, homeruns, ERA etc. is not always the most important leader on a team. At times, it can be the substitute player or the one riding the pine who does their job gracefully, who works her tail off despite never having a realistic shot of being a starter, who encourages others, by voice or example, to work hard at their craft and improve their game.

It is not just the best and worst who can be leaders. It is also everyone in between. A player could be the fifth best offensive player, the ninth or second best defensive one, or anything at all. The leader is the kid who comes into the mound when the pitcher is struggling and makes her better. The leader is the one who despite having all the skill in the world busts her tail in practice in an effort to get better. The leader is the kid who has no shot at making the starting rotation and who never complains but dives for balls when one need not dive. The leader is the one who remains calm in an ITB game after somebody makes an error which puts girls on first and third with no outs. The leader is the who runs all out after tapping the ball back to the pitcher on one hop with her team winning 8-0 in the top of the fifth because she never wants anyone to not run it out.

We really need nine leaders on any softball field if our teams are to be successful. That is why the college coaches look for leadership skills. But we also need a full spectrum of leaders on our teams. We need some who do it with their mouths, some who practice like demons, some who do not get upset after whiffing, some who stay strong after making an error, some who encourage others to stay strong after they make an error. As I say, there are all types of leaders.

I think we make a mistake by not recognizing the various kinds of leaders. I once had a girl on a team I coached whose parents undoubtedly encouraged her to be a leader, a specific kind of leader. She was not a particularly good player. She made some horrendous fundamental mistakes. She didn't practice hard. She was not coachable. Her temperament was not well suited either to the game itself nor to the make up of her team. What she ended up doing was becoming very bossy. She told the girls what they should do. She became quite a bully. And her play was never one of the bright spots on the team.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that this kid's parents felt strongly that she had become a leader. They did not see her flaws. They did not understand the idea that she had become a bully and was not working hard enough at her own skills to be in any position to tell others what to do. She was not well respected by her teammates. She came to be rather strongly disliked by them. What became habit for this kid was a lot of negative stuff. After the season was over, her parents sought to get her on the best possible team, a winning one. They continue to reap what they sow!

It is my opinion that winning in softball is the result of girls trying with all their might to practice as perfectly as they can and then doing the other important things involved in winning. It is up to the coaches to try to build into their games all the best mechanics possible and then to make those fundamentals as habitual as they can become. Then the coach needs to make sure that the team is learning to play together, that they are a true team - you know without the letter "I" in it. They need to play hard competition and do so gracefully even when losing games, while picking each other up, encouraging each other to shake off bad plays, living the example to each other of working hard regardless of what one's skill level is, and just generally doing all the things we think of associated with winning teams.

A team is a conglomeration of people who fit together well, work hard to accomplish a common goal, are led well by all involved, and continue to make progress until that goal is achieved. It is not a group that always wins and thereby becomes "in the habit" of winning. It is not a group which has one person who tells everyone what to do. It is not a group in which the best player is designated royalty and must be named captain, thereafter leading the group to victory.

In a game in which mistakes are common and the most important learning comes from making mistakes and then correcting them, "perfect practice" is just too vague of a term. Winning is far too complicated to be defined as a "habit." There are all kinds of leaders in softball and we need at least nine of them - probably better to have 12, assuming our roster is 12. If you doubt all this, consider that in a championship, frequently, both teams are 100% winners, at least in that tournament. Somebody in the "habit of winning" is going to lose. Perfect practice or no, everybody makes a less than perfect maneuver when faced with a very aggressive opponent or a tough situation. Better to practice the imperfect than face it for the first time in ITB of the last game. The loudest, most abrasive, bossiest is frequently not the favorite kind of leader.

Well, I've opened up a can of worms with this. I'm ready to take my medicine from those of you who think winning is a habit, etc. l; #We do need catch phrases and slogans. But before you use them, figure out what they really mean. Then please apply them properly. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Fierce Urgency Of Now

2010-03-30T06:06:00.000-07:00

President Obama spoke with pundit cum "journalist," Matt Lauer, and referred to discussions Obama had with Afghanistan's leader, Hamid Karzai, regarding the Karzai administration's taking steps to solve political corruption in the country. He told Lauer, "What we've been trying to emphasize is the fierce urgency of now." The phrase is one Obama frequently uses. It is one he picked up from Martin Luther King and so would seem to be effective and true. Yet, while the "fierce urgency of now" may be appropriate in certain circumstances, it is really the expression of a common human weakness. Another way to aptly and simply encompass the full meaning of the phrase is "panic." A tendency to panic is not one of the redeeming traits of human beings.

Panic may be appropriate when one is dealing with an immediate disaster like the flooding of one's basement, a leaky roof, or a fire which threatens to spread rapidly. The "fierce urgency of now" is perhaps appropriate in righting a recurrent wrong like slavery or racism. It addresses another common human weakness, a tendency to be controlled by inertia, to procrastinate. Left to their own devices, those who practiced slavery would never change their economic structure to remove it because it is too easy to live with the status quo. Racism is also easy to continue while addressing either injustice requires hard work though society is ultimately better by changing things. But panic can be your worst enemy in most endeavors. And it will definitely work against you in fastpitch softball.

The "urgency of now" is most often to blame when soldiers retreat in a disorderly fashion from the battlefield. The "urgency of now" is what causes workers to complete a project filled with glitches which take more time to fix than the original work took. The "urgency of now" is what makes people take short cuts that wind up taking longer than the long way. The "urgency of now" is what causes softball coaches to lose control of their tempers and teams or make bad early decisions with respect to player and team development.

Think of the "urgency of now" in a work setting. You've got a project which will take 3 months to complete. It doesn't so much matter whether that project is the moving of a massive pile of dirt from one spot to another 100 yards away, or constructing a spreadsheet to calculate the net present value of costs to be incurred over the next ten years related to some legislative change. Most often, it is better to take a step back and consider the steps required to complete the task properly, efficiently, and completely. That is what business leaders do. If a gaggle of workers were left to finish a task without leadership, what most often would happen is they would begin the task immediately without any regard to efficiency, without any regard to how the task might be completed well and within the time allotted.

You may disagree with me, if you must, on this most critical point but I've seen it too many times to be persuaded otherwise. As a low level manager, I've had perhaps hundreds of people work for me throughout my life. Generally, on the first day of someone's employment, they are given few tasks. The real go-getters complete their tasks very rapidly in order to prove their bona fides with the new boss. That's all well and good but it says nothing about whether the person will be successful a month or two from now. If a month from now, this same employee has a sense of the "urgency of now" about all their work, what is produced will often be sloppy, delivered without regard to priority, and generally of a very poor quality. Many important tasks just won't get done because the worker feels he or she just has to much to do. I have cleaned up too many messes made by a co-worker who had a well developed sense of "the urgency of now" to be a big fan of it.

If a group of folks has that sense of panic and they need to move the massive pile of dirt, what you get is a bunch of guys picking up a shovel full and walking the 100 yards to make the new pile. You end up moving the pile though it may take a bit longer than expected. nd you have this trail of dirt leading from one location to the other which nobody cleaned up because it will take too long and they have "the urgency of now" driving their actions. Now they claim the project is completed but the new pile of dirt is short by 10% and nobody really wants to clean up the mess.

If, instead, everyone stood back and a leader examined the size of the project, available resources, etc., usually what will happen is a much better method of attack would be developed - maybe the requisition of a dump truck and front loader - and the three month project would be accomplished in half the time. This is essentially the nature of human endeavor throughout history.

The Red Chinese have generally used an "urgency of now" approach that has cost millions of people their lives as they strove to complete great projects by using simple human labor rather than the best technology and equipment available. We see that approach taken in many Communist countries. In free, entrepreneurial societies, more thought is used and much more is accomplished more quickly. I am sorry to go on for so long about politics but I do want to belabor the point. The urgency of now is valid in only very limited circumstances. And in our sport, it is seldom advisable.

I am not one for MLB's spring training games. I try not to pay attention to baseball until late April / early May. I was reminded today of why that is advisable as I listened to interviews with pitchers on sports talk radio. One pitcher had given up many home runs in his last couple of outings. He felt he had been well prepared for the coming season. There was no sense of panic in him. He was not even slightly concerned about the home runs.

The reason the pitcher was unconcerned was because he had taken a certain approach in these appearances. In one, during the first inning, he threw one pitch, one of his better ones, over and over again. Then after that, for several innings, he threw nothing but a pitch he is working on. He may throw that pitch some during real games but for now it is purely a work in progress. When he begins throwing it, he will not throw it in the circumstances he did during pre-season games.

Another little approach he took during spring games was to speed up his normal pitching pace. When he got the ball back from the catcher, it was his goal to get it back into the catcher's mitt as quickly as possible. I'm not sure why he did this. Perhaps it was a conditioning thing. &n bsp; Perhaps his coach wants him to see first hand that speeding up the pace keeps fielders on their toes. The reason the pitcher did this is not relevant. The fact is he did this and took several other approaches which will likely be abandoned during the real season.

That is the way in which major league baseball clubs go through their paces to get ready for the long season. The clubs do not expect their pitchers to come out and throw 7 plus innings their first outing while hitting the radar gun exactly where they left off at the end of last season. They have them build up arm strength gradually, they carefully monitor pitch counts, they have them experiment with pitches, and they otherwise take steps to be effective during a very long season. It is a marathon not a sprint.

Just within the short high school softball season, we see the same kinds of approaches. Teams set up scrimmages and play games in which the senior catcher who has held the position for several years and is unquestionably the number 1 doesn't catch an inning or maybe catches just two while DPing or maybe trying a few innings at first or third. Three girls who will be starters for the team take stints at SS or 2B. Three or more pitchers might be used over the course of two games. Some newcomer to the squad plays CF because the coach likes her speed and wants to observe her instincts at a position maybe she has never played during "real game" situations. Batting orders are played with to see how kids react. A coach might have a slugger bunt with two runners aboard just to see if she can get one down. Generally it is a time of great experimentation.

Pitchers can be imposed upon to throw just this, that or those two pitches during an outing at this time of the year. Sometimes a coach might instruct a pitcher to throw n0othing but fastballs low in the zone, hoping that this will induce a lot of grounders so the coach can observe his or her fielders. A coach might call a seemingly totally inappropriate pitch in a situation just to see if maybe it might be effective in a key situation. Perhaps a coach might want his or her pitcher to always throw a ball or two on the first pitch(es) just to see how she does pitching from behind. The possibilities are endless.

Different approaches to certain plays can be tried. For example, in a 0-0 "game," a coach might want a throw to go through to second on a first and third steal attempt to see if the SS can tag the runner and make the throw to home in time. Catchers might be told to attempt to throw out a runner at third on every pitch or every other one when during the season, that might not be the way the team works. There is a litany of possible pre-season experiments a team might feel are necessary based on what the coach feels is needed to best prepare the team for battle.

As you sit watching your kid play varsity or whatever level of high school softball, you may not always agree with what you see going on. You might think to yourself, "my is is a far better outfielder than infielder, yet this coach seems to be trying her out at the middle infield when her skills there are going to doom her to failure." Maybe you like a different approach to some aspect of the game. Maybe you wish you had made your kid ready for this or that and now you are afraid she is going to fail at what the coach wants her to do. Well, it's not your call. You don't know what the coach really has in mind. Perhaps your kid is the best option this coach has at X position and it's not going to kill her to do this for a while. It is truly early right now. It is too early to judge everything. Get some patience!

Once upon a time, a father was observing his daughter's team play a game. Everyone seemed to have these powerful bats. His daughter's bat seemed dead. He decided to get a new bat for his kid no matter what it cost. He wan ted the best one he could quickly find but being ignorant of the subject, he wasn't sure where to start. The other team hit the ball hard and used some particular kind of bat. So he made his way over to their side and nonchalantly checked out the brand. What it was doesn't actually matter to the story but let's say they all had Louisville Slugger Catalysts. He went home, got on the computer, found some sporting goods store's web site and made the purchase.

In a few days, the bat came via rapid delivery. He took it out and went over the new 31 inch, drop 10 bat carefully. It was nice and new. He gave it to his daughter to bring to batting practice the next day. When he came home from work the next day, he immediately asked his daughter how the batting practice was and how she liked her new bat. "I like it fine," she said sheepishly, "but coach says I need something heavier and maybe another inch longer. Sara has a Rocketech 32 and I mostly used that. I want one of those."

The father, crushed by his abject failure, checked his bank and credit card accounts and realized that he might be able to swing another $200+ purchase in two weeks but he'd have to go for the slower ground shipping. He told his daughter, "I'll look into it but it's gonna take a couple weeks." She agreed and used sara's bat until hers finally came. Now every time the father opens up the sports equipment closet, he sees $200+ he could have found another use for.

This is the way of all human endeavor. We are always in such a rush. We almost never have patience for our daughter's softball careers to take shape. We spend money foolishly to get stuff that may never be used. We get to near-panic if the coach is using our daughter in ways we didn't anticipate or in which we think he or she might seal her doom. Most of the time, the Universe provides and things work out. But sometimes we open our mouths as we feel the urgency of now and create a much worse situation that could have been avoided had we taken a little time and stepped back.

Today, at the end of March, take a moment and step back. Relax for a moment or three. It is not time to panic, to feed your sense of "the urgency of now." See if you can see the good in things. Don't encourage your daughter to quit the high school team because your daughter is being told to throw all fastballs when she is a drop ball pitcher. Don't worry that your SS is playing CF or your CF is playing SS. This is a marathon not a sprint. Take a longer term view of things, and maybe keep your mouth closed for a few more days or weeks.

Broader Perspectives

2010-03-29T06:28:00.000-07:00

As children head to that date with destiny, college, most of us get sick when we hear or read reports of just how much a college education costs these days. Is it up to a million bucks yet? Don't tell me when it reaches that height. I don't want to know about it. I'll be in the bathroom all day vomiting. I heard a story about a girl, a softball player, who is headed off to school at the end of the summer. The reason I am discussing it today is because she was not able to take the "usual" way many softball parents think their kids will attempt. She had a broader perspective on the college issue and it looks as if it is going to work very nicely for her.

I'm not going to go chapter and verse about how this girl did what she did because that is not relevant for my discussion today. To set the stage, let me say that the girl is a fine athlete but not the greatest softball player I have seen. Don't take me the wrong way. She is quite good. But she is not at a level that would get her substantial money at a top 100 softball school.

This girl is also quite bright but she is not going to get a 100% academic deal at a top 100 academic institution. Again, don't take me the wrong way. We're not talking about a strong B average here but we're also not talking straight A+s in a full slate of honors courses. She is a good, mature, responsible student.

This girl had neither the desire nor the financing to go play 5 to 8 softball showcases across the country. She played ball on a decent A level team rather than gold. She played some smaller showcases, here and there. And at a point in time, late as it turns out, she did do a little traveling with a showcase/Gold team. But she had already made significant contacts with the college of her choice and was already more than well on their radar. Had she not played Gold ball, she would still have had the same deal but I'm getting ahead of myself.

This girl's approach was to decide what she wanted to do: the type and size of school, play or not play, etc. She then contacted the school and eventually found a way whereby the coach could watch her play. I've made it sound simple because I can't go into all the details and from 20,000 feet, this is basically what she did. She chose a D-3 school, not a softball powerhouse. And this is the direction I want to open up for your consideration.

Wikipedia tells me that there are: just under 350 D-1, about 280 D-2, and almost 450 D-3 schools, making D-3 the largest division. D-1s include the sports powerhouses with which any fan should be familiar as well as those "mid-majors" the basketball pundits talk about during their March fever, and many institutions which are not powerhouses and do not often get into the televised circuit with their athletic teams. D-2s are usually (but not always) smaller than D-1s and include public and private schools. By me, many D-3s are public institutions but in places not very far away there are a bunch of smaller private schools.

I'm going to guess that you already know that, in terms of college athletic scholarship, D-1s are permitted the highest number of scholarships, D-2s have them but fewer are permitted, and D-3s do not offer any athletic money. But, not all D-1s offer the full number. Many conferences limit these further than the NCAA. It isn't just the Ivies with their prohibition of purely athletic money. Many D-1 schools themselves do not fund their athletic programs quite as much. So a D-1 school might be permitted to 12 full equivalents by the NCAA, limited to 10.5 in their conference, yet only provide 6 because of the way things work at the particular school. I am not giving actual data for a school but giving you some general principles.

Further, while D-2s have athletic scholarships, many times, their cost, particularly if they are public schools, can be far less. If a kid can qualify for both academic and financial aid, it may cost very little to attend the school regardless of any athletic money.

The same is true of D-3s, except they have zero athletic money. Sometimes the amount of academic aid at a D-3 can far exceed that offered at either a comparable D-1 or 2 school. The bottom line in all this is you want to balance the final cost of a school with your ability to meet that obligation along with the academic benefit of going there. It isn't about one school giving $20,000 athletic, $3,000 academic and $3,000 needs based aid vs. another giving $5,000, $2,000, and $2,000. If the big spender costs $20,000 more than the smaller school, you are still ahead of the game going to the latter, assuming the educations are comparable.

I watched some of the D-3 WCWS last year because it was held within driving distance of my home. It is impossible to compare the level of play within the 3 divisions without making a bunch of caveats, qualifying everything I say, and listing too many schools at differing levels within each division. Let just say that, at the WCWS level - the top 8 schools at each division, D-2 and D-3 is not all that similar to D-1. However, at lower quality levels of D-1, many of those teams do not remotely compare to the WCWS teams either. Someone once suggested to me that the best D-3 schools can fairly easily beat the worst D-1 schools. I don't know that this is true so I won't even bother. I'll give you something better than that sort of comparison. Who really cares?

Oh, if you want to be on TV, I suppose you might prefer a D-1 school, perhaps in the PAC-10, SEC, Big Ten, etc. I know many of those schools have their games broadcast on ESPN, Fox Sports Network, a conference cable channel or some such. Heck, it would be nice for one's friends to be able to watch a kid play some games via the cable or satellite hook-up. But what's the likelihood of that ever actually happening? And what real difference is it going to make to anyone's life?

The fact is, getting a quality college education at an institution well suited for the student trumps any other consideration. It is not as if playing top 25 D-1, assuming one is able to get there and make the starting team, is going to open other doors later in life. There are no million dollar signing bonuses and salaries for professional softball players, unless you add up every player currently on a roster! I do n0ot begrudge a girl for dreaming about one day playing softball as a first career after college. But she will not be able to make a living at just that. She will certainly enjoy playing if she is actually that good but it isn't a means by which to make her way in the world.

Heck, there are a million other ways to make a life in softball which do not require an on-TV experience. A kid go become a teacher and eventually find a coaching slot for a high school or middle school team. She could hang around her college, obtain her masters, and help out with softball team coaching as a volunteer assistant in order to build a coaching resume. She could try to get a job with an equipment manufacturer. There are many ways to skin the cat but not very many careers are otherwise available to even the kid who gets a clutch base hit in the D-1 WCWS aired live on ESPN. The college education is the more important consideration than the quality of softball team one would like to play for.

Let me be clear that many D-1 schools, even the softball powerhouses do, in fact, provide marvelous educational experiences. But athletes can be precluded from pursuing certain majors due to the rigorous training, practice and game schedules. D-1s often play in conferences which require significant travel. They also play the largest amount of games. I do not have first hand information about the rigors of training schedules at each school in each division, but I am sure some D-2s and 3s have extreme training throughout the year. There is no question that some D-1s are not like the others - do little real travel and do not put the girls through a training vise. And some of the "lower" divisions do travel quite a bit. But, in general, in the grand scheme of things, one is more likely to find a school with a less rigorous training and travel schedule while providing a superior educational experience in the "lower" divisions.

I know of one D-1 school which in years past, did not have much off-season training and what little there was, was not policed strictly. Many of the players did whatever they felt like, including skipping training almost completely, without any measure of punishment. Players were not in any way deprived of that good ole college life. The team was pretty bad. And, most importantly, the academic side of things was not much better.

By contrast, I have heard here and there about kids who went off to what amounted to better schools academically speaking, worked regularly and pretty darn hard at both athletics and academics, but had great times and loved the non-D1 institutions they attended.

It is also of particular importance to note that one girl's father told me that she had been interested in a very good academic D-1 school, and they interested in her, but she could not pursue the major she wanted due to the game schedule. At a D-3, she was able to both pursue that major and play softball. The coaches noted to her before she came that several girls on the team were also in that major and she could talk to them about how they balanced athletics with their academics, if she liked. She did and was happily convinced to go to the D-3 school. I should add that both the D-1 and D-3 schools she was considering were top of the line in her chosen major. Both had wonderful reputations and great facilities for the major. But, for whatever reason, the D-3's athletic facilities were actually better than the D-1s! Her decision was a no brainer.

The girl I mentioned first in this piece, the one headed to school next year, chose her D-3 school for reasons to which I am not privy. But I can tell you that the school has an excellent academic rep. She will major in her chosen field. She'll play softball which she is not yet willing to give up! The school is quite small which perfectly suited to her personality. I envy her, not merely because she is young, beautiful, and headed to her very first year of college soon but because she is getting just about a perfect start in life!

You know, this is a D-3 school and it probably occurs to you that D-3s do not have athletic scholarships, like I said above. I told you she did not have the financial resources to play top level ball. How is she gonna afford the tuition? The fact of the matter is the girl's recruitment included some help in obtaining money. She will get about half her costs covered. If I'm not mistaken, that is before she gets any local scholarship money or loans and things of that sort. So, her family can swing it.

A mistake that many people make is assuming that the absence of athletic money means certain schools will cost more than those that give fulls and partials. That is by no means true. Even the Ivies spend significant amounts of money to recruit athletes. It just isn't in the form of athletic scholarship money. Some D-1s and many 2s and 3s (probably more 3s) give out all kinds of aid that is not directly tied into sports recruiting but which is more available to recruits. I know of an Ivy League athlete who pays less than the cost of a junior college. Some D-3 athletes pay nothing because they have a nice marriage of athletic and academic ability.

Additionally, I should tell you that even many D-1s do not recruit purely on the basis of one's athletic prowess. Some D-1s are less interested in batting average and ERA than they are in GPA, ACT, and SAT. Some D-1s may be an outstanding softball recruit's absolute first choice but her academics do not meet the measure of what that school is looking for. All schools are very interested in grades because they demonstrate seriousness and maturity. But some schools, including D-1s, are more interested in their softball roster's grades in their school than they are about the team's winning percentage.

I suspect that parents as well as children know most of the very successful athletic schools. I'd be willing to bet that certain schools are more well known to students because their peers talk about them. Parents may, at least initially, fall victim to the televised game syndrome in which they first think of the very well known schools. All potential college students and their parents need to do more research into the vast number of schools, their academic reputations, and all that they have to offer. The fact that you have never heard of a school means almost nothing. I'd bet that I can rattle off some schools which are either generally great academically or outstanding for certain majors which you have never heard the names of before. You need to look at the entire list of colleges within the geographic area you desire. You need to consider what they do and do not offer. You need to understand where you might be standing on the date of your graduation, as well as the time between then and now.

If you go to a D-2 or 3, you will not ever play in the D-1 WCWS. Just a few of these players will ever make it onto ESPN. Most will never see more than hand-held digital or web cams at their games. Some won't even see those. But at the end of days, college days, none of that is going to matter. If a girl wants to play ball in college, then she should work hard to play ball. If a girl wants to get a college education, she should work hard academically. If she really wants both, she should work hard at both and broaden her perspectives to not merely pursue and consider only the schools whose names are most familiar.

Outfield By The Numbers

2010-03-26T06:30:00.000-07:00

Math can be a beautiful thing when it is applied properly and/or not overly relied upon. That is true in determining offensive and defensive strategies. That is true when approaching pitch call decisions. And that is true when it comes to positioning outfielders.

I recently witnessed something of a misapplication of math to outfield positioning. I won't criticize the person who committed the sin because I have done it myself many, many times. I only bring it up because I want to spur your thinking and because, through thinking things out thoroughly, I believe we can improve play.

The misapplication of math I saw recently had corner outfielders determining their positions by dividing the distance from the foul lines to the placement of the CF in half and then standing there. This is wrong, most obviously, because when a ball is hit to the gap, both the CF and corner OF are running towards the ball. By contrast, when a ball is hit to the line, only the corner OF is in pursuit. In other words, two OFs should be able to cover more ground than one. So the LF, for example, can divide the distance in half but she should position herself closer to the line than the midpoint. That is the easiest part of the overall analysis and there are certainly more considerations.

Another reason this is wrong is because it does not take into account the speed and ability of each OF involved. Generally your CF should be one of the fastest kids on your team. She should also have some of the best ball instincts. When a ball is hit anywhere on the field, your CF, hopefully, is one of the people who can first judge where it is headed because she has that innate ability to quickly vector the orb coming off the stick. So, she not only gets the best jump on a ball hit to the OF, she is also the fastest one in pursuit. And this should alter the relative positioning of your OFs.

The second consideration has to do with the batter. If a batter is right handed, she will generally hit the ball more sharply (at a higher rate of speed) to left than she will to right. She will do the opposite if she is left handed. There is no question that sometimes a righty will hit a ball sharply to right and a lefty will hit the ball sharply to left. But, by the numbers, this is a less frequent occurrence. So, if you are playing the percentages, in general, all other things being equal, the LF should be shaded more closely to the line than the RF with a righty batter and vice versa with a lefty. It is important to note, however, that all other things are seldom equal!

Our next consideration has to do with the style of batter. There are probably more pure rotational hitters in softball than there are any other style. This reality serves to further magnify the second consideration - the pull side shades the line more. With notable individual exceptions, pure rotational hitters tend to hit the ball the opposite way much less frequently and with much less force than other hitters. There are not many pure linear softball hitters on the planet, excluding some styles of slapping, but we'll get to slappers in a moment.

Probably what is next most often seen, after pure rotational, is the so-called hybrid swing. These hitters can hit to all fields but also tend to pull the ball more than go the opposite way. They do tend to hit more frequent sharp balls down the opposite field line but the percentages say they will tend to pull, again, all other things being equal.

Slappers, especially good slappers, are a much more complicated issue. For beginners, most teams alter the positioning of their infielders on slappers which requires adjustments to the positioning of the outfielders as well. For example, many teams will pull the infield in totally or in part. We can't go over all the possible positionings I have seen for slappers here because I want to move on to other things but, let's assume that at least two infielders are pulled in and the other two are at either normal depth or adjusted to cover for the pulled in ones. Most commonly, the entire OF is pulled in several body lengths, generally positioned about halfway between their normal position and the infield dirt. Sometimes I have seen OFs pulled right up to the dirt. This is inadvisable unless you know the skill level and tendencies of the slap hitter at the plate.

The problem with slap hitters is many are quite good at their craft. They are not only able to slap a grounder where they want to, of course depending on the pitch location, but many are able to get the ball up and over the infield, sometimes much further than that, at will. I have seen a fairly large number of slappers who are quite capable of hitting a ball well into the outfield gaps and bouncing it all the way to the fence on just a couple hops. This opens up one of the most important issues with respect to outfield positioning. Are we so concerned about the slapper getting on base that we are willing to leave much of the field uncovered and which might allow her to get a triple or possibly round all the bases and score on an inside the park homerun?

I understand that many coaches would like to cover the lines and prevent the speedy slapper from drilling one into the corners and thereby accomplishing perhaps the same thing. But that says almost nothing about where the CF is positioned. What exactly is the point of moving the CF in? If the slapper goes up the middle, she uis probably going to get on anyway. There is a very low likelihood that the CF will be able to throw the slapper out at first with anything she can field. It is extremely unlikely that the slapper will be able to leg out a double on anything hit up the middle since the bag will be right in front of the CF. Of course, if she hits the ball over the head of the CF or in the gap, a double becomes a high percentage bet. What I am saying is that if you pull in your outfielders to protect against the slap, at least keep the CF back to cover more ground on the balls hit into the air, especially those in the gaps.

Like I said, you must either know the ability of the slapper in order to set up the defense or you must set up as if she is the best one on the planet until you obtain better information. I suppose that there are a large number of relatively unskilled slappers. These kids can merely hit the ball to ground in front of the plate. I prefer to call this kind of "slapper" by the name "tapper" since I have high respect for the skilled slapper and not particularly much regard for the tapper. If there is a genuine tapper at the plate, you must just as well pull everyone onto the infield dirt and set your team up for an easy ground ball that must be fielded quickly. Genuine slappers are much harder to defend. And if you're not sure, you should assume the worst. To me, that means keeping your CF back at almost normal depth.

Probably the most important consideration in setting up outfielders is going to be something you'd rather not consider or divulge to your opponent, pitch location. What I mean is, if you know that this next pitch is going to be outside, just beyond the corner, you would probably swing your fielders around expecting either a grounder top the pull side way or any kind of hit to the opposite field. Your pull side OF could move in and perhaps cut off bloopers hit beyond the reach of the middle infielder. Your CF could move several body lengths toward the pull side.

I said if you knew where the pitch would be, you could. But you wouldn't, would you? Can you imagine planning to pitch a highly skilled hitter one pitch inside, the next outside, the next inside, and so on. She gets up to the plate and the CF swings 20 feet towards left. The pitch is thrown inside and then the CF moves 40 feet towards right. This continues for just how long before she knows the expected location of the pitch before the pitcher begins her windup? if you positioning fielders on every pitch like that, you are giving way too much information to the hitter.

Of course, I also said if you knew where the pitch would be. That assumes not only knowing where it is going to be called but also where the pitcher will throw it! There are certainly many pitchers who can be relied upon to at least generally hit their locations. I say "generally hit their locations" because there has to be some leeway. Some, few pitchers, can hit their precise location. But many pitchers cannot. They hit their locations within a margin of error of about 6 inches to 1 foot or so. That makes an inside pitch into an outside one. So beyond doing a little math, knowing the style of hitter, understanding her skill level, particularly if she is a slapper, observing her tendencies - assuming you see her often or have scouted her thoroughly - you must also know your own pitcher, including the kind of day she is having today.

OFs can benefit from knowing where the pitch is going to be thrown but, as I said, you don't want to give away pitch location to the hitter and, for most pitchers, you have to make allowance for pitches that miss their marks. Still, if you have a very good pitcher who hits her spots, the OFs can be moved slightly. I would stick to just a couple feet, perhaps one full stride, possibly two. This movement should come fairly late and not occur on absolutely every pitch. It is still best to keep the hitter guessing about where the next pitch is going to be thrown.

This brings me to the manner in which OFs can be told pitch location. I would guess that I still do not see many teams utilizing the most simple strategy for informing their OF of the pitch selection. I went over this a few years back and I can't develop the topic completely but some teams will have one or both of their middle infielders look into the catcher for the sign. They then show the OF behind them that signal by means of a hand in their back. I like this but I need to limit my assessment of its utility a bit. An OF can benefit from knowing what kind of pitch is to be thrown, IF the pitcher can be relied upon to throw it well AND knowing the pitch selection provides information to the OF about its location.

If an OF knows that the pitch is going to be a rise, she might expect a fly ball if the batter makes contact. But she knows nothing about where it might be hit. So she gains little real information. If an OF knows that the pitch is going to be a rise inside, now she has something she can use to be ready should the batter hit the pitch. Actually, knowing the location is probably more important to the OF than knowing the pitch selection. Yet most teams that signal the OF about the pitch call do not signal the location. I really don't understand why that is. Perhaps the best explanation is they do not believe their pitcher hits her mark more often than not and since expecting an outside pitch when an inside one is thrown can backfire, they choose not to sign locations.

You might be left wondering what this is all about if it is a bad idea to move your OF as much as you would want to because you are afraid of giving too much information to the batter. Your repositioning of the OF should be subtle rather than obvious and this doesn't provide all that much benefit. I think you are quite wrong about that. Think of it this way, how many balls are hit just beyond the reach of an OF? If you were able to position her just two feet closer to the landing spot of the ball, she would have caught it. That is what we are after here. There is almost nothing you can do to position an OF to catch a hard liner right in the center of the gap. It is not the absolutely clean and clear hits we are trying to stop. It is the ones which just barely bleed by which we want to turn into outs since those are often the ones which change the outcome of games.

To summarize where we are, before you position OFs based on pure mathematics and distance, you need to add into the equation the fact that in the gaps, there are two OFs chasing the ball but down the lines, there is only one. You also need to factor in the ball skill and speed of each OF. Next the nature of the hitter should be factored in. If you also know her tendencies, you have even more information. Slappers need special attention in this regard. The next item up for consideration is the pitch. The pitch selection may be important but the location is more so. Your pitcher's tendencies to hit or miss location is as important as the called location. Better safe than sorry. Outfield positioning should be subtle not obvious to the hitter. Even with little significant repositioning, benefits can be realized. Now let's move on to some concluding points.

We spend a lot of time, particularly with young girls, teaching them the infielder's ready position. Outfielder's ready position gets scant attention. There are two primary reasons for this. The first is at the early stages, not many balls are hit to the outfield. The second reason is nobody wants to give up and admit that their athletic skills are better suited to the outfield because, in the early years, nothing gets hit out there.

I understand this but I don't accept it. In travel ball, at better 12U games, many balls are hit to the outfield. As a former one time outfielder, the positions in the grass are as honorable as any others. Further, in high school and college the items which most differentiate these levels from age group play, the element that makes the largest difference in the college game, is the play of outfielders. College games can be somewhat difficult to watch because just about every well hit ball that doesn't go over the fence gets caught. The OFs are just that good, particularly on better college teams.

The infield ready position is low to the ground with glove on front of the player, etc. An outfield ready position need not be so low to the ground and the glove need not be up in front of the face because balls are not going to reach the OF as quickly. Still, an OF needs to stand in an athletic position, ready for action. She should be more erect than an infielder but not totally so. Knees should be bent in order to get a good push-off when running after a ball. And whereas infielders generally move towards the plate on the pitch, an OF does not need to be coming forward. More importantly she should begin moving her feet on the pitch. That is because a completely stationery human being is more slow to move in the right direction that another that is already in some sort of motion. A couple short quick stutter steps is enough to put the legs, feet and torso into motion enough to get a better jump on the ball.

Additionally, whereas infielders are square to the face with both eyes equidistant to the point of ball-bat impact, an OF has completely different spacial orientation. The vectoring of a ball from the OF is a much more complicated job. It is much more difficult to pick up direction, trajectory and speed from the OF than it is from the infield. OFs need whatever edges they can generate on their own to vector balls hit towards them.

Because of the realities of seeing the ball off the bat from the OF, many OFs stand sideways to the plate. The reason this provides benefit is because you have two eyes for a reason - that reason is because they provide two points from which to vector moving objects and the further away you are from the flying object, the more you need both eyes to vector it. Standing sideways provides better recognition of all three elements of direction, trajectory and speed. This is probably more true when the OF, like most human beings, has one eye that is stronger than the other.

I think a fundamental mistake some folks make is believing that an OF is standing sideways because she has one primary direction in which to run and the other way is a secondary concern. That being the case, I suppose it would always be advisable for a LF, for example, to face toward the foul line since this is probably her danger zone. Conversely, the RF would face her foul line. I don't know where this is supposed to leave the CF but I suppose she could face RF with a righty at the plate and LF with a lefty. But that is not the point of standing sideways, better visual perception is!

So when a coach talks to his LF who is standing with her shoulders square to center, most often he or she will tell them to face the line instead. That would be right if the coach knew which eye was the stronger of the girl's two but that's generally not the case. The girl knows subtly which eye is stronger. She should know instinctively which way to stand. I always stood facing center when I played left, right when I played CF and the foul line when I played RF. I had absolutely no trouble moving to my right despite facing the "wrong" way. I positioned myself so as to see the ball better. So, coaches, please don't "correct" the way your outfielders set up naturally. make them aware of why they might want to stand sideways and then let them figure out the best way.

My final point for the day has nothing to do with outfield positioning. Rather it has to do with something I believe will yield higher outfield performance. If I watch a major league baseball game, between innings, very often I see OFs walking or slowly jogging with short steps to their positions before throwing a ball for a few tosses. In softball, I generally see one of two types of taking of the field. Either the OFs walk out to their positions while futzing with their hair and/or equipment, or they sprint full out to their spots and then futz with their hair and/or equipment. All of these types of taking the field get under my skin. What, in my humble opinion should happen is, the OFs get their gear and hair in good order before taking the field and then run out easily with very long strides or perform dynamic stretching exercises all the way out to their final destinations.

If you give this some thought, anyone can agree that walking out is bad. Jogging with short steps does nothing for you when you have to sprint into the gaps. An OF needs to both warm and loosen up their legs. Jogging with short steps might warm you up but it does not stretch anything. Sprinting is probably almost as bad as jogging since, although it does make you warm and temporarily a little loose, it tends to tighten up the muscles after a minute or so, by about the time your pitcher is done warming up. Jogging out slowly with long strides should have the opposite effect on tightness and it should warm you up plenty. Performing dynamic stretches would definitely be best but most girls are unwilling to do anything to call attention to their strange behavior as they make their way onto the field!

Related to this aspect is what happens during long innings. The typical half inning is anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes long. I won't belabor the point but 2 minutes is probably a short, one or no baserunner inning. 5 minutes is probably an inning in which the opponent loads the bases or scores a run or two. Seldom does a half inning extend to 10 minutes. Longer innings (5 to at most 10 minutes) usually result from a baserunners and/or runs scoring plus a defensive conference in the circle.

When this happens, usually the entire infield comes to the pitching circle to discuss things with the coach. Also, on most teams, the outfielders saunter together to discuss God only knows what. If they are discussing defensive strategy, that's all well and good. But if they are merely socializing, I would much prefer to see them jogging around with long strides or performing dynamic stretches of some kind. If you've taken my advice and done this at the beginning of the inning but the inning has stretched to 5 minutes or more, your legs have gone cold and tight again. You need to warm them up and stretch them out. Do something smart. Do something that will yield a half step to you as you chase down that line drive in the gap. That way you may catch it and win the game!

Well, that's it for today. I hope I have given you some tips or at least some things to think about. I hope you gained something which will make your or your team's play just a hair better.

43 Changes

2010-03-25T07:55:00.000-07:00

The 43 feet vs. 40 feet pitching distance seems to change just about everything!

I don't know which states have switched their high school pitching distance to 43 feet and which will wait until next year but our state has switched for this year. I have been to perhaps a half dozen or so scrimmages thus far and I have to say it makes quite a bit of difference. Lots more balls are hit into play and this changes everything!

It finally occurred to me that I had harbored a misconception when comparing Gold/showcase ball to high school ball. I always assumed that the hitters were far more skilled at the showcase level. They probably are more skilled but not nearly as much as I previously thought. The hitters are better but they are made to seem much better by the further pitching distance.

I have always enjoyed viewing showcases because the quality of play seems so high. The fielding at this level far exceeds what one sees in high school because more players are more gifted and much more experienced and well trained. Whereas in high school games, the average team might have one to five very experienced and gifted kids, the average showcase team at the events I have viewed is filled with that level of player.

A high school team is generally put together with whatever level of ability is available from the, somewhat limited in size, student body. A showcase team might have kids from several states or at least some of the best players within its home state. In any given year, a high school might or might not have a stud pitcher, catcher and shortstop who will play at the next level, and, only in limited circumstances, a lineup of quality hitters from 1 through 9. Very often, there are girls on a high school team who have played little more than a few rec games each year. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that as folks are free to choose what their own priorities are. And many schools have as few as 100 girls from which to fill slots on the softball, tennis, lacrosse, etc. teams, not to mention other time consuming pursuits.

The result is many high school teams have been able to do well despite perhaps having as many as 4 or 5 fairly weak players in their field and batting lineup. One super stud pitcher with perhaps a couple other studs at key positions could propel a team to a relatively high finish within their conference, county and maybe even the state playoffs. That is probably no longer true except in very limited circumstances.

As I said, top showcase teams generally have more depth in the field and seldom "hide" weak fielders. But to be honest, the level of hitting is not quite as gifted as I once thought. That has become evident because now that our high schools pitch from 43 feet, there are a lot more balls hit into play which makes the batters seem more skilled. What has become more apparent is the disparity between the two types of play when it comes to defense.

Generally girls who play showcase ball care deeply about their games. They not only play between 50 and 100 games each year, but also they spend more time working on their skills. They attend clinics, see private coaches, and work hard on their own to be strong defensively as well as with the bat. There are often a lot of girls lined up to make successful showcase teams. The coaches have to pick their roster by deciding between several very skilled girls. They don't generally have to grab some kid to fill a slot even though her defensive skills are weak. There are not many times that a good showcase team will be unable to put together an infield or outfield filled with kids who are at or close to being all conference high school players, at the very least.

Long ago, somebody told me, "the typical high school team is put together with 3 or 4 travel ball players while the typical travel team has 12 travel players." That's obvious enough but the point is, high schools often have a fairly large number of kids who did not have the time to play travel softball. Perhaps they chose to play travel soccer or some other sport. Perhaps they are academic demons who would prefer spending their free time reading scientific journals. But when they thought about what they wanted to do in high school, they decided to go out for softball. And because the total number of kids in their class who went out for softball numbered just 10 or 12, they not only made the team but became a starter.

I can't speak for every high school, and in truth, I'm not really speaking for ours. But I understand from talking to several coaches that many schools do not have freshman teams because, in any given year, they are unlikely to have 9 kids in one class. Some schools I know of struggle to field a JV team. It is quite enough for them to gather 9 live bodies with which to populate the varsity roster. I recall one year in which a particular team had 10 on varsity and 9 on JV. I don't know what they would have done if somebody was injured or quit the team.

The top softball schools in our area have more than enough travel ball players to fill a team, including subs. But that frequently spans more than one class. And some of the younger players, while very skilled, lack the level of experience one might see in a high level showcase or Gold team.

Before I get a bunch of e-mails, please understand that I do know there are some run of the mill "showcase" teams which are very weak. I also can appreciate that there are nominal travel teams and some very weak genuine travel teams. I suppose I'm not really referring to them. I can appreciate that some kids who play some level of travel may not be as good as some other kids who are outstanding athletes but just do not have the time for travel softball. But the general rule is that a girl who plays almost 100 games per year, plays spring, summer and fall, does 2 practices a weak in the "off" season, and receives generally better coaching from the age of 10, 11 or 12, is going to be a better player than one who merely plays a dozen or so rec games for 3 months of the year.

In any event, I'm beginning to blather and dance around the points I want to make. The change to 43 feet has resulted in several important changes to the high school game which I was able to ascertain by watching just a few scrimmages - our regular season begins next week.

The first item on my list is pitchers who once were able to get through games without being touched very much are getting hit much harder. We've been over the speed vs. movement vs. location argument before on this blog. I stick to what I said several years ago. Of speed, location and movement, which is the most important? Yes!

All three elements of pitching are very important. And I'll add to the three biggies with change of speed, deception, and breaking down hitters. A pitcher who has speed but no movement and a mediocre change is going to find trouble unless that speed is somewhere around 65+. There are not many, perhaps any, girls hitting 65 and up on radar guns during their high school years. Actually, there aren't many in college doing that. But a girl who is hitting high speeds may still be able to overpower hitters. Still, more kids will hit balls into play against her than ever before.

If she changes speeds very well, our power pitcher will probably have much greater success. It is easier to overpower even a good hitter with a 62 mph fastball if you just made her swing and miss or stand with a blank stare at a 42 mph change. Throw that same hitter 6 pitches at 65+ during three at bats and I like her chances to catch up with one and drill it a long ways.

If our pitcher can throw a mediocre speed, sharp moving drop, she may not strike out as many batters but she is going to generate a lot of weak grounders. There is certainly room for speed pitchers, especially against weak hitters but movement has been raised up a notch in importance at the high school level with the move to 43. As I said, I hold to my ideal pitcher with speed, movement, location, etc. but at the high school level, I think the girls who got by on speed alone will find it much more difficult to do so this year.

Along with more balls being hit into play comes, obviously, lots fewer K's. Some pitchers are going to have a difficult time soothing their bruised egos when they graduate from games routinely 14 strike-outs to those with just 4. Also, innings which started out with an error and ended with the runner stranded and the score stuck at 0-0 will be fewer. Gone are the days when our once overpowering pitcher will be able to work her team out of trouble by blowing a few past the next three hitters. A much more likely scenario is maybe one K and two grounders or outs made someway else. Runs are going to score against many teams and pitchers unaccustomed to the experience.

So what happens to those balls hit into play? Well, they either drop as hits or are fielded by defensive players and played into, hopefully, outs. Because pitchers will continue to use the full extent of the strike zone and areas around it, those balls are going to be sprayed all over the place. All 7 defensive positions, excluding the Ps and Cs, are going to have to field their positions much more than in the past. In the course of many games I have watched, there have been a high percentage of those in which one particular fielder or several of them have not made a single play, excluding backups or base running ones, during a full game or several games consecutively. I do not believe that will be the case with the new pitching distance.

The other day, I watched a weak team play a scrimmage against a pretty average one and over just two rather difficult innings, I saw balls hit to every fielder. The innings contained several strike-outs as weaker hitters eventually made their ways through the order. But there were more balls hit into play than I have ever seen at any one game in just those two innings. And the weak fielders became very evident.

I recall a similar game a couple years ago in which the score ended at 2-0. despite the teams each containing weak fielders, few balls were hit into play and very few were hit well. One kid was responsible for both runs as she had a 2 for 3 day at the plate. The runners who scored on each of those hits were the only other base runners the team had. The opponent had perhaps 3 or 4 who were stranded after successive strike-outs. Of the total of maybe 8 baserunners for the whole game, for both teams, there were perhaps 3 hits, 2 walks and 3 errors. the game was played in well under two hours. based on what I saw in this scrimmage, that same game probably would have been 12-10 with 20-25 hits, 10 errors, etc. Of course games between two good teams with two good pitchers, etc. will still be won by one run. But I suspect rather than being 9 inning, 1-0 quick flings, they will be 9 inning, 3-2 exciting affairs. Games between good teams will be longer, involve more baserunners and runs, and see saw back and forth more than in the past. Games between bad teams will be high scoring and involve a lot of misplays.

At another scrimmage I watched a team comprised of two teams with mostly travel ball players, I had to remind an acquaintance of mine who was the father of one pitcher that the distance had increased. He had watched his daughter play top level showcase ball for a couple years but was unaccustomed to seeing her get hit in high school games. He was besides himself. When I mentioned the distance change, his face lit up and he calmed down. He had forgotten about that little item.

Despite all the balls being hit into play, his daughter's team did well. They were mostly very skilled fielders and played most balls into outs. They scored some runs and easily defeated their scrimmage partner. I think they'll do quite well this year because their defense is very sound. Solid defense is going to win a lot of games this year. Defenders are going to get lots more experience actually fielding balls!

In years past I have watched a team that had good fielders but which also sported a very dominant strike-out pitcher. She threw lots of no hitters. Many of the games she pitched involved very few balls hit into play. She was so dominant that the fielders could have sat down at a table in center field and had tea for most of the innings. Occasionally, they would have to get up when she walked someone. But the rest of the time was pretty leisurely. And this was problematic for the team when they got into championship play.

During the later part of the season, when better teams play against better teams, the team which makes the biggest mistakes usually loses. This team with the dominant pitcher never really got its defense into sync. The players were talented but having played very few games in which the defense was tested at all, their combined defensive skill was not what it might have been. They faltered at a bad time and were eliminated despite probably having the best team in the competition. This year, with many more balls being hit into play, I imagine they will gel to a much higher degree.

When fielders stand in their positions for a long time without balls being hit to them and with the expectation that there is a low likelihood that they will see any action, they atrophy. They get back on their heals, think about their next at bat, and otherwise drop out of the game for half an inning. On the other hand, when a fielder expects that, on any given pitch, she is likely to have to make a play, she is going to play defense. She will be ready. She will be on her toes. She will be sharp. So good defensive players are likely to really enjoy the change in the pitching distance.

On the other hand, poor fielders are going to tense up and make errors with more balls being hit into play. When an unskilled fielder has a high expectation of a ball being hit to her which she doubts she will be able to field cleanly, she gets so tense that, in general, she will make worse errors than she would if she were relaxed and confident. The best cure for this is going to be good coaching and loads of repetition. Coaches who want to be successful with less talented players than they would like are going to have to make the difference by working hard with their weakest players. Fundamental skill teachers will see their teams compete better than coaches who just round up their kids and work plays.

Certainly plays will continue to be important but in prior years, with fewer overall balls being hit into play, coaches could round up their best players, populate the higher profiled positions with them and work plays that didn't involve those with lesser skills. In general, that means infield because with very few balls hit into play, the focus was much more on dealing with baserunners, short game considerations, and that sort of thing. Fewer balls were hit to the outfield and teams could hide kids in the corners.

Every member of the defensive team is going to have an important role to play in determining who wins and who loses games. Skills of the weakest players are going to be tested. , i Kids who cannot field well are going to make bad plays. Outfield cut-offs, for example, are going to be much more critical. It is one thing when a 1-0 game is determined by a runner from third scoring on a short fly. It is quite an another when, in a 5-3 game, there is a fly ball with runners on second and third and the outfielder throws late and offline to home, allowing the runner from second to move up and score on the next fly ball. Girls are going to not only need to know the cut-off plays but, perhaps more importantly, be able to throw very well so as to hold runners from advancing.

I think of the various scrimmages I have watched, the majority of additional baserunners over prior years has been due to balls being played badly and the additional runs came from mental mistakes made by players with apparently less experience. Soft liners that would be caught at a higher level find the ground. Over throws start the merry-go-round to spinning. And throws to wrong bases have provided the opportunity for more runners than ever before to move up. The game most certainly has changed.

In games between good, sound defensive teams, in the past a runner might get aboard somehow, move up on a bunt and then languish as the next two hitters struck out. Now, it is more likely that such runners move around the bases on balls hit into play, if not necessarily for base hits. If a team gets a runner on third with less than two outs, the likelihood that a run will get pushed across will be much higher than in years gone by. The value of a grounder hit up the middle is going to go up. That means the defenses which are able to play such balls and nail the runner at the plate are going to have an advantage.

Aside from this, defenses are going to have to short-circuit potentially big innings. They may have to get hitters out at first instead of always playing to stop the run. That takes some discipline, planning and coaching. Too often, in the past, I have seen fielders always seeking and failing to get the lead runner. That is not such a huge deal when the next couple of hitters go down swinging. But when runners are moved via productive outs, bigger innings will follow such mental mistakes.

In short, the reduction in the number of strike-outs is going to change more than the face of the game. Pitchers are going to have to become more crafty and rely less on overpowering hitters. They will have to change speeds, move the ball and hit spots. Defenses are going to have to be better in order to win games. Fundamental skills will be far more important. Coaches are going to have to train their weakest players better than ever before. Scores will go up, games will get longer, and weak teams are going to have a heck of a time. Better tams will still play exciting games against better teams but more of the thrill is likely to be out there in the field.

I have always considered myself a baseball and softball purest - I like 1-0 pitchers duels. But having seen some of these games with more balls hit into play, I have to say that I agree with the powers who decided to put this in motion. The game is vastly improved by having more balls hit into play and involving defensive teams more. It is no less exciting to watch two very good teams play to a 3-2 final score than it was to sweat it out through a 1-0 one.

The only issue I have with this change is I happen to have one kid in middle school. Their conference always follows the high school rules. They are pitching at 43 feet! In the past their games have been relatively high scoring, rather long and involved fairly large numbers of errors. I am somewhat afraid of what this year will bring.

The Collector

2010-03-24T06:19:00.000-07:00

A visitor to the site wrote in with a story about her daughter's travel ball team. She wrote:

My daughter plus some friends formed a core of a new 14U team. The coach who arranged this team had a superstar head coach who would run things. We met him with his aging up team.

In order to form this team we needed many players to fill out the roster. We pulled it together and started winning. The original premise in forming this young team was to keep them together for 2 years and develop them into a force to be reckoned with!

The team's success is now attracting new players and it seems like when a new better thing comes along (especially a pitcher) a current player that has handled a position more than adequately is being benched. This leaves the player who thought they had a position locked up blindsided after welcoming the new teammate.

Question: Is this a common practice in travel ball? Is it ethical?

My immediate response to this question was, "no, this is not common in travel ball but it does happen. When you experience something like this, run like heck to get away from the coach and then make sure everyone with whom you come into contact learns your lesson." I think further analysis is justified because, while, as I said, this is not common, it is more common than it should be and the fallout can be so devastating that we should all educate ourselves and know the signs so we can avoid becoming a victim.

I have often heard folks in softball claim there is no longer any loyalty in travel softball. That means players are not loyal to teammates, teams or coaches and coaches and teams are not loyal to players. If this is true, on one hand, it could be the result of our society's "free agent" thinking and win at all costs ethos. On the other hand, the existence of coaches who "collect talent" combined with the supposed lack of loyalty within the game may just be manifestations of each other, an ever widening circle.

I say folks "claim" there is no longer any loyalty; "if this is true"; etc. because I am not entirely convinced that there is more disloyalty than there is real loyalty. I thin k I need to get down to common denominators before analyzing further.

The best definition of loyalty I can pull together quickly is - a strong sense of allegiance to a person or a cause combined with a willingness to sacrifice for them or it including a level of commitment of time and effort in order to accomplish some common goal. I suppose the most important words/concepts within the concept of loyalty are allegiance, sacrifice, commitment, common.

In this crowded world of billions of people, often working at odds with each other, it can be difficult to know the correct course of action to take in order to live one's life to the fullest. When one finds himself living in a crowded place, there is often a great deal of competition for too few resources. There are 6 loaves of bread and 20 families to feed. Our religious upbringing suggests that we can all share the bread and thereby feed everyone but the fact is 6 loaves will probably only feed, at most 10 families. We arrive early to get on line. We refuse to accept late comers' attempts to cut the line. We show little compassion to anyone seeking food. We look out for ourselves because nobody else is likely to.

In a more rural setting in which there may be just as little resources, we find ourselves a little more compassionate and willing to sacrifice because, given the rural circumstances, we intuitively understand that one day it will undoubtedly be ourselves seeking help. We form allegiances with our neighbors out of necessity. We form allegiances because we are better off with them. Such is the principle under which many societies have formed and remained strong. We help each other because we have a common goal, to survive, and we know that we will need each other in order to accomplish that goal. In urban settings, we don't even know the others who are on the line with us and we know that 1) we will probably never see them again and 2) they will never be able to help us achieve our goal of survival and most likely would be unwilling to help, if they could. We form allegiances with few, if any, others.

Somewhere between my hypothetical urban and rural settings lies the world of travel fastpitch softball. At first we may not see the society we enter as small or one in which we need our rural neighbors. It seems more like a city. But before long, we recognize the need for allegiances. Our kid's team is falling apart because half the kids are aging out and we need to find a new one. We see that guy we have been talking to for the past year and he knows a team that needs our kid and her friend. We need one kid to join our team because that ace pitcher has given up softball for travel soccer. That guy knows a good pitcher who is looking for a team.

Within the small confines of a particular team, allegiances build up because the coaches need to teach the girls and their effort would be largely thankless were it not for the affection which forms bonds that lead to allegiances. Parents understand that one kid who lives not so very far from them needs a ride to practices because they have just one parent and that parent must work late on practice days. Coaches, parents, and kids all work together to make the team possible. They form bonds and those bonds make the whole thing possible.

The term sacrifice is a strange animal. Sacrifice means giving up something and that has come to be somewhat foreign to the language of our country and society. The only way for our president to sell his healthcare plan (no you cannot have my opinion on that), was to claim that nobody would have to sacrifice in any way, shape or form. When our school systems have to cut out some expenditure to balance the books, we stand, biting fingers, hoping that whatever is cut will not affect our kids' experience. We feel strongly that the school budget should be cut but we are not so much willing to give anything up. In a very real sense, we are like employee unions who understand there is a potentially devastating shortfall but are still unwilling to give up anything to keep the ship floating.

That's society and athletics are another matter. &nbvsp; Often, at least initially, the "sacrifice" required in sports is seen as a positive. Kids like practice almost as much as the games. And because they want to do well in games, they are willing to practice harder to accomplish their personal goals. Practice is sacrifice but it doesn't always seem like it. I don't know what your experience is like but my kids would be just fine missing all sorts of family get-togethers in order to find more time to practice softball.

Of course, when it doesn't hurt, that's not really sacrifice! Sacrifice happens when a kid has to give up a day at the beach in order to practice or play a scrimmage. If you are serious about softball, you cannot go out to the movies late on Friday night if you happen to have a first tournament game on Saturday at 8:00 am. You ought not have "sleepovers" on Saturday nights when the elimination round is Sunday beginning at 9:00. I have happily "sacrificed" a lot for my kids softball but I suppose that is not really sacrifice if I do it happily. It is the days when I miss the big game on TV, have to skip a BBQ with people I like to spend time with, or otherwise cannot do something I would rather do in order to play a second rate tournament or conduct a needed practice, which involve a measure of sacrifice. Catching my pitcher daughters when my wrist, shoulder or neck are killing me is sacrifice. My daughters doing a pitching session in February instead of going sledding with their friends is sacrifice.

Sacrifice is a complicated issue. For the most part everybody in softball is willing to give up something but that giving up must be repaid with something else that is arguably more important than that given up. The trick is to give up something you know you have (like a day at the beach) for something that may or may not pan out, like winning this tournament or beating that team. Sacrifice isn't really sacrifice unless and until you are uncertain about the rewards.

Commitment is an easier subject to touch upon quickly once you get past the term "sacrifice." Commitment is really a solemn pact one makes either with oneself or others to endure sacrifice in order to achieve something which is highly uncertain. Commitment comes in all shapes and sizes. There is the commitment one makes when signing up for a team to stay with that team for one year. That is the typical commitment made in travel softball because it is really a one year cycle. The implication of the visitor who posed the question was that their team involved a two year cycle and I understand how folks can interpret things that way. But because most organizations conduct tryouts at the same time each year and because most teams form under a one year commitment, that is the standard. It is somewhat unusual in travel softball circles for anyone to make a more than one year commitment because things change over time. Likewise, a "commitment" for less than one year is not seen as any kind of commitment at all.

When one commits to a team, generally one is committing to more than merely remaining a member of the roster for one year. Generally, one is agreeing to make all or most of the practices, to put out effort at those practices in order to help become better as an individual player and also to help the entire team get better, to work privately on one's own to improve skills in order to live up to a certain level of play, and to do whatever one sees one needs to do in order to help the team.

Very often pitchers see their level of commitment as a bit higher than other players. And it is because pitchers need to work on their pitching when others are doing almost nothing for their individual games. Pitchers practice more than other players, particularly in the off season. My own pitching daughters will come home from strenuous practices with their teams, but practices in which they did not pitch, and note that they need to spend time right afterwords cleaning up a pitch or two. While others are licking their wounds, taking showers or laying down for a nap, the pitchers are often still working.

It is certainly true that many non-pitchers do lots more work than mere team practices. Obviously, some girls take hitting instruction. Some attend defensive clinics. Some engage in training regimens that far exceed the normal practice work. And this displays a higher level of commitment, one that, if not rewarded immediately, will undoubtedly pay dividends not only to the individual but also her team(s), for years to come.

Commitment includes not merely making practices or working on one's craft or athleticism but also being healthy, awake, alert, etc. for all or most of the team's tournaments. That often means giving up things one would rather not give up, i.e. sacrifice, in order for the team to get someplace together. And this brings us to the term "common."

The commonality one shares in being a member of a team is really what all athletics is about. Why do we practice? &n bsp; To get better! Why do we want to get better? To win or play much more competitively! Ah, the common goal, that is what this team stuff is really all about.

So loyalty consists of, among perhaps other things, allegiance to the team including coaches, sacrifice in the name of that allegiance, commitment to make such sacrifices in order to live up to the allegiance, and a commonality of purpose. Loyalty must be a two way street because when one swears an allegiance, sacrifices for the group's good, and lives up to the commitment, one expects the entire team to do likewise.

On more than one occasion, I have watched games in which one kid has risen above the others or made much more substantial improvement because she worked and sacrificed to achieve more than her teammates. Sometimes, this can be reciprocated by the other team members who, witnessing the higher level of commitment, feel obligated to step up their own efforts. When everyone on a team catches this commitment virus, what we have is that magical thing called team chemistry. If we have that magical team chemistry, eventually it is going to pay off with accomplishment of common goals.

Also, on more than a few occasions, I have witnessed circumstances on which a few players on a team have not lived up to their commitment. They miss practices somewhat regularly, make excuses for various shortcomings. They have those late night sleepovers before an early Saturday game or even before the elimination games. A ball is hit to a kid who is just two tenths of a second late to react and this results in an error which costs a game, sending everyone home.

A key player failed to express that she would not be at some key tournament because she has a very important engagement to attend a family party or go on some vacation. The team gets smoked, losing all its games, because they were not able to replace that player in the lineup. Everyone is mad about it and just a little less willing to sacrifice something because they know this other person was able to pull it off. I can't count the number of times I have been in the coaches area or along the sidelines when some kid was not going to be there for an entire tournament. First, someone counts the number of player and wonders aloud, "who is missing?" Then someone else identifies the missing kid. They wonder where she is until a fourth person says, "0h, she is at her grandparents for a BBQ." Someone interjects, "Oh that's too bad but what's worse is we could have been at one too! Maybe next time we will go to the BBQ instead of the tournament."

This loyalty thing doesn't merely go from player to player within a team. It extends to the relationship between the coaches and all players and between all involved parties including parents. often when a kid misses practice, it is because the parent had something they would rather be doing. -; Maybe the kid missed a practice or tournament because the father's boss is having a picnic and he wants to go schmooze with his cronies. Maybe best friend Bob always has something big for March Madness and dad is not willing to take the kids to their "stupid practice" because he really, really likes hoops. Parents have to be responsible for making the commitment to hauling their kids to practices and doing so on time.

One of the more comical scenarios I have ob served is the one in which some kid repeatedly makes it to practice but is always late. Coaches get upset with this. You get your butt their at least 15 minutes before the scheduled time. You give it another 5 minutes so you have at least 10 kids. You get them all stretching and throwing but now you're 10 minutes behind schedule. You start the first drill and are almost done when all of a sudden, here comes another car and it is carrying Sally.

Sally is always this late to practice. And when she falls out of the car, she's usually only half dressed. She usually forgot something and has to borrow it from someone else. Sally is very popular with the other girls. They'd like to say hello to her. This is extremely disruptive to your practice which is now perhaps 20 minutes behind schedule. Sally's parent stays in their car or pulls away abruptly to run some other kid to some other practice. The coach is mad and he'll probably take it out on Sally. he may even be one of those emotionally well balanced individuals who will rationally explain to Sally that she simply must get to practice on time, or else ....

The truth is, Sally is just 11 or 12 or 13. She can't drive yet. And while you might expect her to at least be ready when her mom or dad drives her to practice rather than falling out of the car missing one shoe, etc., the fact is she wasn't home before coming. Her mother or father was out at the store with her and ran into a friend. She or he was gossiping with a friend when they realized practice had already begun. They pulled enough clothing out of the trunk and instructed Sally to make do. In short, it wasn't Sally's fault that she was late to this practice and it is never Sally's fault that she is always late to practice. What has happened is the parents have failed to understand their commitment.

There is much more to commitment once we bring in the coach-player relationship. Coaches, players, and parents all need to understand the pact they are making by entering into this joint venture. If, as the visitor to the site expressed, there is a certain plan under which a team has been pulled together, that play ought to be lived up to by all parties. This is the critical element to the loyalty between the parties on a travel ball team. And this is what is lacking in the circumstances enumerated above.

If a coach pulls together a certain group with the idea that this girl will be the primary shortstop, this one a catcher, that one a pitcher, etc. It should be understood that this is the way things are. I question the two year plan but fully understand the notion of trying to up the level of play over the long haul to make a team that is assumed to be less than competitive into a "force to be reckoned with." Still, reality is always more complicated than the best laid plans of mice and men.

There are times when a coach suspects that a player is not living up to their assumed level of commitment. For example, one kid seems to be a rapidly developing hitter at tryouts. She is added under the assumption that she will continue her hitting lessons and continue to take 100 swings a day year round. So when she starts out the year with a gigantic O-fer and the coach must move her down in the order to make room for the new "rapidly developing hitter," obviously noses are going to get out of joint and persons are going to believe others are not living up to their commitments. When the final pitcher added to the roster shows up at batting practice, is asked to throw, and can last no longer than 5 minutes, the coach is likely to ask her when the last time she threw was. If she says, "about two months ago," chances are very good the coach will be inwardly angry. If she gets pummeled in that hitting practice, he may suspect that he will not be able to count on this girl to eat innings during the early tournaments at the very least.

There can be times when an entire team is either not living up to the commitment a coach expected of everyone or is actually not seeming to live up to any level of commitment at all. From time to time, an entire team can take an attitude that once they are rostered, they get to relax and enjoy the ride. That is somewhat uncommon but it does happen almost as frquently as that magical chemiostry thing we spoke about before.

Loyalty involves a two way (at least) street. I know of a few folks who have from time to time joined travel teams, sometimes expensive ones, under the assumption that the team would, for example, practice 3 times per week from the end of school onwards. Then they get to the end of the season and recognize that the total number opf outdoor practices for the whole season was something they could count on just one or two hands. Or, alternately, a bunch of parents come together under the assumption that this or that coach who really knows their stuff is running the team. Unfortunately, that coach is not forceful enough and the other coaches refuse to listen to him or her. The idiot who actually knows absolutely nothing is calling all the shots. One parent was hopeful that this gal who played in college as recently as 5 years ago would teach his daughter how to really play third base. Instead, the guy wearing a baseball cap is requiring her to set up behind the bag and cover the base on all steals. He doesn't know squat and is freely teaching it to this parent's kid!

The situations I have described are somewhat normal. Nothing in this world is actually perfect. That is what makes it a perfect world! Teams form. Team fall apart. Some kids improve, some kids stay where they are, and some kids fall off. interest abbs and flows. Sacrifice is sometimes met with sacrifice and other times with lack of sacrifice. Commitments are lived up to and failed to be lived up to. Loyalty can sometimes be fleeting and is almost never absolute. Kids move on. Coaches move on. parents are unwilling to live with certain levels of commitment when they suspect their kid might decide to change priorities in the near-term future. That's just the way it is.

But in shorter terms, I do believe there is no real lack of loyalty. When I pull kids together and discuss a skill and ensuing drill, there is a decided majority who pay attention and give it their best. I have interacted with more players who are willing to do almost anything any coach asks of them than I have encountered kids on the ball field who really do not care. I have found myself driving to pick up the other kid from her practice and seen a kid from my team out working drills exactly as I suggested she should with her father. There is plenty of loyalty out there. If you have a team of 12 and only 10 show up for practices regularly, well, then you've got ten twelfths living up to the commitment.

Still, I understand folks frustration when they encounter that lack of commitment and sacrifice. Sometimes the exception seems like the rule. Sometimes the anecdotal is considered the general. Sometimes when one encounters one very bad thing and then perhaps finds it someplace else, one wonders if this is not the rule for the mini-society of travel softball. But I'm an optimist on this. I do not believe there is a real lack of loyalty in girls fastpitch travel softball. l; yet I have seen the particular circumstances described and I want to address it.

I once upon a time knew a coach who I would refer to as a "collector." He had a team with a full roster. They were pretty good but nothing special. They lacked a stud pitcher. Their SS was adequate but not a true "A" SS. Their hitting was somewhat weak. Obviously, although they were competitive, they did not play a lot of Sunday games.

One day a true stud pitcher, who was rostered on another team at a higher age group approached this coach - her father did, that is. The coach was informed of this kid's eligibility to play at the coach's team's age level and that she was free on several weekends they were playing tournaments. The kid was in vited to guest for 3 tourneys. She came in, knocked down batters easily and took the team to a championship at one or more of these guest tournaments.

The coach liked the taste of playing several games on Sunday. He was hooked. Later and in later years, he brought this girl in to pitch for his team. Then another similarly situated stud pitcher volunteered her services. Then another player came along, and another and eventually another. This went on for yars and I don;t really recall the precise events. But sfuccie it to say that players came and went and so did guests. At one point, I believe the guy had an official roster of 15 or more names.

Needless to say that when the first stud pitcher came in, the team's existing pitchers saw less time in the circle. Some no longer saw any pitching time. When two studs were available, most of the original pitchers either sat the bench or played other positions, at least until other position players started showing up. In the end, I suppose, it was possible for an original member of the team to see zero action or perhaps two to three innings just on Saturdays at each tournament the team played.

Does anyone need to be told this is a bad situation? I guess this coach does. To my knowledge, he is still out there doing this. And you know what? His team, in the overall sense, is not any better than when he started it.

I remember takling my daughter to a multi-team tryout one year in which there was one team we we were interested in. My daughter had already decided to accept an offer from another team but we had not communicated this yet. And if the one team asked her to join, she was probably going to say yes and forget about the other team. The other team at the tryout had a guy there who was known as a "collector." He too had once had 15 or more kids on his roster. During the course of the tryout, not a particularly good one for my kid, the collector came up to me and asked, if the other coach does not want your daughter, do you want to come with us? I looked the guy straight in the eye and thought of everything I wanted to tell him. Then I felt my mouth open up and say just one word, "NO!"

The collector coach was a bit surprised by my response. He seemed as surprised by its brevity and terseness as he was by the message. He stood there somewhat dumbfounded, looking at me. Then it struck him that I was not going to say anything more. He said, "OK" and walked away. I don't think he got it. I don't think he understands that he has a reputation which he can never overcome. I don;t think he understands that folks along the sidelines talk about him and his collection all the time.

The fallout for a kid who is a member of the team run by a collector is likely to suffer serious consequences. if she happens to be the number one at some position and a new kid comes to replace her, the rest of her season is going to be less than what she had hoped for. Worse, the team is going to build up some animosity as more and more better kids are collected rostered and placed into the lineup. The whole experience may damage her but this can be rectified, hopefully, when she gets to join another team without a "collector."

The coach on the other hand is going to become known as a collector. His tryouts are going to eventually be filled up with misfits, malcontents and generally people who are unwilling to make any sort of commitment to others. Heck, the kids and parents who populate the collector's roster know his reputation. They won't feel any particular compulsion to live up to any commitment. They know the guy's reputation as well as anyone else does. This stuff circulates far and wide.

When one first enters the fray, the world of travel ball seems very large. But before long, it is easy to recognize that it is a relatively small, somewhat closed, in some sense close-knit, group. We go to our first tournament and know almost nobody. We go to our second and recognize one of the teams, perhaps a coach or parent. As our experience broadens, it occurs to us that we see the same people over and over again. One day we find ourselves talking to someone we don't know along the sidelines of some game. Then we see them again two weeks later and talk some more. Within a few, brief years, we seem to know everybody and, of course, everybody's business!

Human beings like to talk. We also love scandal. In other words, we love to talk about anything but the best stuff to talk about is scandal. Discussions that are completely positive get a little boring!

"How are you?"

"Great and you?"

"Great! How's your daughter's team?"

"Great! Yours?"

"Great. Everything is going so well I have nothing bad to say."

"You know, that's exactly how I would characterize our experience. This year is going so great, I just don't know where to begin."

"OK, so I'll see you later. My kid's team is starting up now. Gotta run." (you absolute freakin nut)

Travel softball parents often spend their entire weekend at some complex mixing with other travel parents. We swap stories, gossip, and hopefully a little juicy scandal. Over time, reputations are established and ruined. There is competitive jostling over who is having the best experience and developing both as a player and person. There are war stories. There can be a little competition about who has the juiciest scandal or gossip.

"So, how's it going?"

"Pretty good. Pretty good. Say, did you hear about ... this guy actually did ... he said ... right to the players ... and the team up and quit ... he's trying to ... but ..."

"Excuse me one second." To wife who is trying to pull him towards the field where their daughter is playing because the game is about to begin, "You go ahead. I'll be along in a minute. I want to finish this conversation with Ralph first."

So, the moral of the story is, there is a strange animal out there called "the collector." If you encounter him, kick him in the shins and then run away as fast as you can. You probably won't recognize him at first. But if others tell you this is what he does, pay close attention. They very well may be right. Don't stay on a team with a collector as coach. Find someplace where there is actual loyalty. That means a team where words like allegiance, sacrifice, commitment, common goal actually mean something. Don't merely accept that these terms are thrown around. See that they are lived up to. See that you, your kid, the coaches and everybody else around you is willing to live up to them, for one year.

Good luck in your softball endeavors.

Throwing 101 Revisited

2010-03-17T08:18:00.001-07:00

I am going to step into an area which I would prefer to leave alone because someone wrote in with a very good question and I think it deserves a public answer. The writer questioned the throwing mechanics her 8 year old was learning at practice. She had played softball for a long time and wondered why these girls were being taught to throw differently than she was. The answer brings up an important issue which involves not only throwing but also age appropriate mechanics (though that may seem to be almost an oxymoron). At this time of year, it is important to address fundamental issues because a new class of girls is picking up the yellow ball for the first time. So I will tread where I'd prefer not to because the question was a good one and because it is an important subject this time of year.

When I was a kid, we didn't have these issues of throwing mechanics. I learned to throw out of social necessity. There was a stream or brook behind my house which had these "water spiders" jumping all over the place and piles of rocks nearby. Kids congregated at waters edge as the cave men must have done in prehistoric times. There were barely decipherable grunts and shrieks as new recruits made their ways to the principle place of social gathering. A bot had to be able to throw a rock and hit a water spider if he did not want to made fun of, or worse. I learned to throw because I could not stand humiliation. And I got lots of practice.

Prior to our introduction to the organized sport of baseball, we pretty much threw rocks at water spider all day. When that bored us, we sided up and threw rocks at each other. One day, my friend and I gave our little brothers the high ground and began to throw rocks at each other from, I guess, about 100 feet. My friend's brother had a good arm and, apparently pretty good aim for he struck his brother in the forehead with a particularly pointy rock. That was the end of that.

Not long after my friend's stitches were removed and he started to heal, we were introduced to baseball. At first, the only time there was a ball around was during practice. So we threw only then. Over time, a kid or two acquired a baseball for his birthday or someone went hunbting in the foul territory of the woods siding our field. You know, we weren't worried about deer ticks or Lymes disease back then. Actually, we should have been more careful because I understand there may have been rattlers in those woods and there were definitely other kinds of disease carrying insects. Nevertheless, some of our number found enough baseballs to keep us in business during the summer. And in business we were. The only time we weren't throwing a ball around was when we would stop because someone's mother made us eat lunch or when we traded baseball cards or competed to take our friends' cards via "flipping."

As I said, we were never taught to throw except by means of shame and intimidation. Many of us learned to throw incorrectly and a few learned to do it basically right in terms of mechanics. It was not until high school that throwing was ever taught. And by then, most of us had our motions set in stone, I mean rocks.

Today, things are quite different in many places. I suppose that because everyone has this dream that their son Johnny is going to make it to the big leagues, the parents seem to care more about mechanical issues in sports. Whereas, when I was a kid, the only qualification to become a coach was an early arrival home from work, today if you want to coach, you must not only get some sort of certification, but also, you have to sit through sessions wherein somebody is going to talk about mechanics. That is probably a very good development. But it does tend to raise discussions and arguments about the proper way to do things. And, almost no parents are going to accept the way coaches teach their kids without questioning the methods and substance.

When I first became a coach of girls softball, there was a man who did a nice job of teaching us what and how to teach. The first skill he taught was throwing. This makes sense because if you contemplate things and actually watch a group of 8 year olds try to play, the most difficult, necessary skill is throwing. You really cannot play a reasonabl;e game of softball without the girls knowing how to throw. Further, it is my belief that if kids learn to throw and catch, then they can throw a ball back and forth and gain the most important skills needed in this game, those involving hand-eye coordination.

If two kids throw a ball back and forth regularly and for extended sessions, their hand-eye coordination will dramatically and rapidly improve. Once they have this most critical skill, it is much easier to teach them to hit and field balls. I think that if a parent of a young child wants their kid's softball or baseball skills to improve rapidly, time spent merely throwing a ball back and forth is time well spent. But you can't do this unless a kid knows how to throw. And if he or she does not throw properly, the result is likely to be some pretty sore arms and shoulders. So, teaching proper throwing skills is absolutely critical. It should be addressed first in beginner players.

The reason why throwing mechanics may be taught different ways is because there really are two ways to look at throwing which have to do with the age of the girls involved. When I was taught to teach girls to throw, the age group was, I think 7 or 8 year olds. We taught an elongated technique which I'll go over somewhat briefly in a moment. Now that my work is with much older girls, we teach a different technique which is essentially an much abbreviated version of what we taught the younger girls. At these older ages, the primary objective is speed because the game is much faster now. Let's take a look at these two throwing techniques, go over some of the reasons why each is used, and then discuss why some folks would prefer this were not the case.

The elongated motion, without getting too much in body and feet position, begins with a girl standing with two hands on the ball at her belt line. She pulls the hands away simultaneously and raises her hands up into a "scarecrow" or "goalpost" position in which the glove hand is about as high as the throwing hand, above her head. Palms are facing up and away from the body. The ball is facing the sky. The glove hand is pulled downwards and away from the body as the torso turns and the throwing hand is brought forwards, towards the target. The ball is released with the glove coming to the side, again at or near the belt line but slightly past the hip. And the throwing hand follows through down towards the glove hand side knee or thigh.

The shorter version begins with the hands together out below the chin. The hands come apart (as the ball is removed from the glove) and the throwing hand is pulled to the side of the head. Note that the arm sticks out directly from the shoulder and the elbow is bent at a 90 degree angle. The thrower does not pull to her ear. She holds the ball, if you made her freeze in this position, about one foot from her head. The glove hand has moved out and down as she begins to make the throw. It ends at probably about the same place as in the other, elongated method. The throwing side arm forward motion really begins with the elbow coming forward, immediately followed by the part of the arm below the elbow being slingshot forward to the release point. Follow through is, again, to about the same place as in the elongated method.

The primary reason for teaching the elongated method is because it places less stress on the shoulder and elbow than the shorter method. When we are dealing with 8 and 9 year olds, their bodies just are not developed enough to have the kind of strength around the shoulder and elbow that older, post-puberty girls have. In order to maximize the experience for all these entry level girls, we teach this method so they do not develop shoulder or elbow problems which will chase them from the sport and make the whole exercise moot. If you stand and try each technique several times, you should be able to see that the shorter version places greater stress on elbow and shoulder. By contrast, the elongated method requires girls to move their bodies in order to make the throw. They cannot just arm it in the direction they want. They must throw using their quads and core muscles.

The reason we need to shorten up throwing motions as girls age is because softball differs from baseball in one very important respect. It is a faster game. I've been over this a few times but I think it necessary to state it here again. The average time to first base for a major league baseball player is about 4 seconds. Girls playing high school softball are considered slow if they cannot get down the line in under 3. That is a substantial difference in the amount of time a fielder had to throw a kid out. It is somewhat ordinary to see a fielder bobble a baseball and still get the batter-baserunner out with timne to spare. That seldom happens in softball. Players must get rid of the ball more quickly in our game.

As an aside, I should tell you that throwing power has little to do with a fielder's success in softball. I have seen girls with absolute cannons compete with very quick but weak throwers, side by side. Invariably, the quicker girl's ball reaches the target faster than the cannon shot. This is why Howard Kobata teaches the speed techniques and notes vociferously that "I don't care how strong your arm is. If you are not quick, the runner will beat you."

If you really don't believe this and cannot get to a Kobata clinic, you need to perform your own experiment with strong armed girls playing side by side against quick ones. I know what the results of that will be. You will join our church of the quick infielder.

Going back to the younger players and their elongated technique, when kids are that young, runners are not very quick. The bigger concern is merely reaching the target. Girls playing the left side of the infield have a very difficult time reaching first on their throws. They need as much power as possible. They must use their legs and torsos in order to get the ball where it should be going. This should not be the case from 12 or 13 years old and on.

So these are the reasons why the two techniques are taught. The nagging problem and one on which I am sure to receive some correspondence, however, is that of muscle memory. We do not want to ever teach something that needs to be undone. Many would argue that we don't teach a different hitting technique because girls are too weak to swing the bat. We don;t have a special windmill motion for young pitchers because they cannot throw the ball 50 mph yet. It would be wrong to teach youngsters "the wrong way" to throw the ball and then have to reteach throwing when they get older.

I do not disagree with this philosophy. I really do not enjoy teaching something that must be retaught differently. But I do not think this is the case with the two throwing techniques. &nbs-p; One is merely a shortening of the other and I think you can easily move from entry throwing to a more advanced technique. You simply have to explain it to your older kids, teach the shorter version and then drill it while timing their throws. It would probably be far easier to teach shortened throwing mechanics after players have witnessed the two side by side, just as I became convinced of the superiority of quickness over power. Once a girl fully understands that the shorter technique is needed and she has a chance to drill it and make it part of her repertoire, there is very little difficulty.

A much more difficult impediment to overcome is the tendency for girls to have pause points in their throwing as they age. This comes as a result of the drills we use early on in which players must assume positions in each stage of the throwing mechanic. There is a tendency I have observed in some girls to "statue" at various stages of throwing. In particular, girls who have been taught the elongated method in steps, never running through the whole thing quickly in drills, have a tendency to pause after drawing the ball to lift off position - the one at the side of their head. This can be a problem that costs as much as 2 tenths of a second and that's too long. Generally, this can be drilled out of a kid by showing her what she is doing (by videotape if necessary), having her run certain drills intended to get fast release without any pauses, and then her learning that she gets kids out more easily by being fast than she does by being strong.

One of the drills we use for this is something I discussed years ago called 5 ball. I really like this drill because it is easy to adapt to real life fielding situations. You need 3 players and, you guessed it, 5 balls. One player feeds balls to the thrower, one receives throws from the thrower, and the last one is the girl really performing the drill. The feeder tosses balls from about 6 feet away to the thrower, at her belt line. The thrower catches the balls and immediately, with no foot movement at all, throws to the receiver. The thrower then, immediately after release turns back and gets into a ready position. At the precise moment the thrower is back into ready position, the feeder tosses another ball until all 5 have been caught and thrown.

The nice thing about this drill is you can run the entire team through it in one minutes. Each kid on your squad can have multiple turns being the thrower in under ten minutes. If you want to have some real fun, perform a competition in which the first person to throw all five wins. You should be able to get more out of this if you run two groups, side by side, while the other 6 players watch. If you do this for a while, they should be able to judge the need for quickness over power for themselves.

As I said, this drill can be adapted for many real world situations. Tossers can roll balls or mimick grounders by bouncing them. The drill can be run with balls thrown or bounced to the side of the fielder. You can do a lot with it in a short amount of time. But while you are running this drill, it is imperative that coaches observe the throwers and make mechanical corrections. As I said, no steps are allowed. if you are doing balls to the side of the fielder, they can move their feet only before they touch the ball. After that, they must have them nailed to the ground.

There is a tendency for young girls to want to take step before throwing a fielded ball. This stems from that need to generate power at the younger ages. But this is slow, very slow. Players need to learn to not take steps after fielding a ball. Their foot position for throwing must be about set before they get the ball, except on certain specific types of plays. I have no time to get into this or the whole issue of footwork today. That will have to wait for another day but if you crave more about this, try Howard Kobata's tape series on defensive softball. You can get that here: softballskills.com.

At this time of year, there are a ton of softball newbies excited to start learning about this game for the first time. Many of their parents are new to the game, some are not. Some few parents actually played good fastpitch softball and they are wondering about the skills being taught. They know the right way to throw, hit, etc. They also know that it is generally inadvisable to teach a skill differently at different ages. But I think throwing just might be the exception. I think injury concerns outweigh the need to build muscle memory at these tender ages. I also believe it is a relatively small matter to adjust throwing mechanics from the elongated younger method to the shorter one. There are other, more difficult corrections to make as girls age up. I've mentioned two of these. I've also given you a little drill you can work to make players faster. I don't believe the risk of injury is worth the benefits of teaching girls the "right way" to throw.

As an aside, the person who wrote in read all this stuff I have to say before her daughter's next practice. She wrote me back and said, "What you have said makes sense. My husband and I were warming up at my daughters practice last night using the palm back method and I have to admit I could tell that it was less strain on the shoulder."

If you must disagree with me on this, my only request is you write a well thought out argument disagreeing with me. Of late, I have received too much e-mail to respond quickly. If I receive a message disagreeing with me on this point and offering nothing more than that disagreement, I will most likely just throw it out. It is just too busy of a time of year right now.

Get Dirty, Revisited

2010-02-03T05:28:00.001-08:00

I feel foolish today. I never really would have given my topic of the day a second thought if I had not finally understood something I should have noted quite a while ago. Several months ago, I wrote something for all the girls heading to tryouts and those playing in front of college coaches. That piece talked about getting dirty, you know, diving to the ground while going after balls. The advice is sound. You should get dirty on the softball field if you want folks to take notice. But, as in most things of importance, merely suggesting to players that they get dirty is not nearly enough. I'm not sure why I hadn't realized this before. Today it is patently obvious.

Decades ago, I was a pee wee football player finding my way through calisthenics and drills meant to toughen us up and make us ready for game contact. We would run in place for 15 minutes and every few seconds the coach would blow his whistle. When we heard the whistle, we were required to hit the deck, get up as fast as we could, and then start running again. Honestly, this was not one of the harder parts of practice. I considered it a joke, a break. I could have done this all day. I was used to hitting the deck. I liked it. It was easy. I think the coaches thought they were torturing us. They weren't, at least as far as I was concerned. It seemed stupid.

As an adult softball player, one of my less intelligent moments came on a line drive. I was milling about near third base when this guy hit a shot. I had no time to think. I just dove and caught it. As I got up, everyone was laughing at me. I was kind of embarrassed. We were playing on blacktop so I got pretty badly cut up. I ran to the dugout and used my drinking water to clean out the cuts before running back out to my station. This was blacktop in Manhattan. It was filthy and I wanted to make sure I didn't get any infected cuts. All sorts of folks frequented this field and who knew how many times some homeless guy, like the ones who lined the field to watch, might have spit or worse right where I had ripped open skin.

As I said, my cohorts made fun of me for diving for a ball at a meaningless softball gathering. Many of the women (it was coed and half of these had been college players), felt I should not play due to the obvious injuries. They felt I should go get first aid and call it a day. I didn't because I wanted to play and because I was used to ripping myself up like that. So, after this batting practice was over and the coach asked if I could play, of course, I said yes.

I have never given much thought to diving or not. You really can't. If you have time enough to contemplate a dive, then you should probably move into a better position to make a catch and the dive becomes a moot point. Diving is reaction. It is not a decision. It is a conditioned response. My childhood in sports had conditioned me to dive if a dive can make the difference between something getting past me or making the catch. Yes, that's true even during batting practice. Actually to be quite honest, I would dive and ask questions later if I was playing whiffle ball with a kindergarten class, on broken glass. I just can't help it. But apparently, not everyone reacts that way and I suppose that is the subject of the day.

If you grew up watching baseball the way I did, one of the more memorable commonplace plays, involved Brooks Robinson, perhaps the greatest third baseman ever to play the game, diving on balls hit to his right. I used to have a poster in my room of Brooks completely air-born on a ball obviously bounced foul. I was no Baltimore Orioles fan but Brooks' dive was something everyone who appreciates the game can agree was truly remarkable.

Brooks was undoubtedly by far the best third baseman I ever saw. There certainly are many other very good ones. I can name probably a dozen but I want to note one who was also not on a team I cheered for at the time. Craig Nettles almost rivaled Brooks Robinson's movement to his right via his own technique to his left. He would almost always go air-born on balls hit that way which were otherwise out of his reach, even when he had almost no chance of making the play.

Many moons ago, I was coaching a 12U travel team. I had a very young girl on the team who loved to "get dirty." I practiced these girls pretty hard but as I began to wrap up practices, there was always this one kid standing last in line. I would hit her the last groundball of the day while looking to wrap up and put away the equipment. But each time, right after the last grounder, this girl would say, "Coach Dave, can you hit me some balls I can dive for?" Practice after practice, I would accommodate this kid by hitting 10 or more she could dive for. I never gave it very much thought. My biggest fears were 1) she would get hurt or 2) she would dive for some ball she should have played "normally."

Some time after this encounter, I observed one of the best shortstops I have ever seen on a softball diamond. She was just about 13 and playing for one of the top few teams in the country. Normally at games like this, I would spend a lot of time watching pitchers and hitters but this kid caught my attention while she was in the field. I watched her as the pitcher went into her windmill. She got into a great ready position and crept forward as the ball was released. When a batter hit a hard grounder up the middle, past the pitcher, this kid would go to ground to stop the ball, get up quickly and gracefully, and then make a good quick release throw to her first baseman, easily nailing the runner. Nothing got past her.

When I saw this kid in action, I thought what she had was mostly mental. She was a hustler. She dove for everything. That's attitude. You can't teach that!

This past year, while in California, I was watching a fairly closely contested showcase game. The defensive team was up by a couple when this girl hit a long fly to center. The CF ran hard back to the fence and without hesitating dove to try to catch it. The fence did not give very much as she went over it, got the ball into her glove, and struck the ground very hard. The ball was jarred loose and the batter began her HR trot as coaches ran out to check on the girl. She was injured pretty badly. She had a separated shoulder and perhaps some other less serious injuries. An ambulance was called. I understand they gave her morphine for some very severe pain which caused her to go into shock. You can't teach that sort of desire and I suppose perhaps you shouldn't.

I say you can't really teach desire but you can teach players how to go to ground. I guess it never occurred to me that "getting dirty" is as much a fundamental skill as anything else. It can and should be taught.

The other night we had an indoor practice. I always look for something we haven't done or that needs tuning because our girls just don't do it right. I decided that in order to spice up our backhand drilling (see last week's piece), I would get some mats out and have the girls go to ground while performing the backhand play. As I waited for my charges to come over to me, I envisioned throwing balls slightly out of reach, each of them merely diving onto the semi-soft mat to make the play, and then each getting up to make a throw. It would be a simple drill but one which they needed to do.

My one lament with this team has been that nobody is sufficiently constituted to dive after balls. These are not some rec or JV players. Most of these girls are real athletes, playing multiple sports on the varsity level or just shy of it. These girls are almost all fast, pretty good on fundamentals, have played several years of travel softball, and are generally hard as nails. For instance, we had one girl run into another on a foul pop last year and both went down hard. Neither kid would come out of the game. And, as it turned out, one had played with a concussion from the collision. When these girls get together, they do not play dolls. They generally have mock fist fights or otherwise roughhouse like a gaggle of boys. They are girls to be sure but they are not meek nor mild. But none dives, at least not often, after balls!

So there I was with my silly little drill and each kid took their turn trying to dive after the throw I made. I was actually shocked by their dismal performance. None of them knows how to dive. I needed to teach them how to dive!!!!

So the question becomes, what is a normal skill progression to teach girls how to dive after balls. The answer is ... Let's start at the start.

I would say that before one learns to walk, the usual advice is to learn to crawl. That's probably bad advice since crawling has nothing to do with walking. And crawling ruins those cute little expensive outfits we wasted our money on for our infants. Falling forward, however, has much to do with diving. So if I were trying to teach girls to dive after balls, I would start with a simple exercise of falling forwards.

Place a mat in front of a kid. Have her get into ready position, without a glove on, and then allow herself to fall forwards to ground. The object here is not to fall to one's knees which is exactly what they'll do the first time. You want them to fall into a push-up position with hands spread slightly wider than when they would do a push-up and legs straightened. It is sort of a belly-flop. You are going to need to have them perform several reps of this seemingly wasteful exercise until they can do it properly, without landing on their knees first.

Once you have done that a sufficient number of times, place the player on one side of the mat and have them dive sideways into the same position while facing you. If you are going to dive on your backhand side, you need to have your head turned towards your glove hand side. Do this enough until they can accomplish it correctly and then once more to reinforce. Now do it the other way, to the forehand side while, again, facing the theoretical direction from which the ball is coming.

Once these three types of falls have been practiced, have them put on their gloves and do them again. Players need to learn to go to ground with one hand inside a glove. Each will probably struggle with this a bit. You have to land on the pinky side of your glove when doing the forehand side dive and the thumb side of your glove when doing the backhand. Girls need practice at this. If they don't practice it, injuries will occur.

Once your group has accomplished the task well enough that you are confident they will be able to advance, it is time to work an actual ball into the drill. Again while facing you, each girl will, in turn, assume a good ready position and then dive for the ball as you throw it. The easiest way to start this out is with a ball bounced or rolled. Later, you can work in throws or line-drives.

Keep in mind that you must watch the way they dive very closely and correct errors. You want to teach them how to dive properly and then condition in the response with frequent drilling. That means this is not some drill you do once and then never engage in again. It is indoor season and, provided you have a reasonably soft mat, you can do this at every practice or every other one for 5-10 minutes, once you have taught the skill. After initial work, you won't have to have them dive without their gloves or the ball. That stuff was to get them used to the notion of diving and to keep them off their knees. So this can become a routine and quick part of every defensive practice sequence.

The mere diving and stopping or catching a ball is just the first part of the skill. After the ball is in the glove, a player has to get up and make a throw. It really makes no difference how good of a play you make if you get nobody out. And this takes practice. At first, some girls will get to their knees to make a somewhat weak throw. Others will gather themselves slowly, get up and throw as if they have all the time in the world. The difficult things to teach them are to dive, get the ball, get up quickly and then make a quick release throw to target.

We have done the dive and get the ball parts. Now let's finish the play. Some coaches well tell you to keep the ball in your glove and to get used to doing a push-up while holding the ball tightly inside the glove. Some coaches will tell you to take the ball out of the glove while down and push off the ground using your empty mitt and while pushing the ball into the ground with your throwing hand. I don't really have an opinion. I know how I do it but there's no point in explaining that. I suggest that you just merely have them get up and see what works for them to get up quickly and make a throw. And at some point, I suggest putting a stop watch to the drill. This may encourage them to find the fastest way possible.

When you get up off the ground, I believe it is best to have your hands close together and get up while twisting into the proper throwing direction. I don;t seem to be able to put this into words so experiment. The general idea is that a player is going to dive to either her forehand or backhand side and then have to make a play to one of the bases. So, retrieving a ball and then getting up to make a throw can involve several possibilities and all should be practiced, depending on a kid's likely positions. each kind of play and throw to each of the various bases requires some thought. Your SS needs to work throws not only to first and second but also to third - that's not a bad place to remain on the knees - and, of course, to home. You can figure out the rest.

Once you get back outdoors, you should not assume that you have covered this ground sufficiently. In case you didn't notice, the fields you play on have no mats to soften the blow for a diving player. They need to get acclimated to the sometimes harder ground. You should have drills requiring your infielders to dive some on the dirt and for your outfielders to hit the somewhat softer grass. These drills should become as easy and boring as my football drills were. Gradually, over time, your team will become hardened and begin to routinely dive for balls they might otherwise not make a play on.

The funny thing is the girls will probably begin to enjoy these drills. When I ran diving drills the other day, we came to the end of practice and everyone huddled around my station. More than one asked, "coach, can I jump in here and go again?" Just as was the case with my diving youngster a few years back, I ended up being the last coach to wrap up because everyone liked the drill and wanted to go again. Y They actually like diving. It's cool! And they can see themselves making these kinds of plays because, well, they always had the desire. I didn't have to teach them that. They just never really gave it much thought but they did not know how to dive. I felt foolish when I realized that.

One For The Bucket Brigade!

2010-01-29T07:49:00.000-08:00

Tom writes in to ask, "How about doing one for the bucket dads? Everyone talks about the kids!"

You know, Tom, I would do something for the bucket dads and moms but I don't want to wallow in self-pity. So I am going to try to stick to anecdotes you and others have sent me, as well as some interesting stories I have heard or seen. I will, of course, talk about some of my personal experiences because those are the ones I know best.

Tom complains of pain he got while returning the ball to his two daughters when they practice pitched to him. As he notes, "there are no points for throwing it back on the fly." I'll add that there are no points for looking like a pro when you throw the ball back either!

I have not only caught a lot of pitching sessions, I have watched others do almost as many. One of the more comical things I have noted is the father or mother who squats like a real catcher and then tries to whip the ball back to the pitcher, again, like a real catcher. I know the mentality. I did this a few times and gave it up for personal safety reasons and to avoid pain.

Even funnier than the would be major league catcher is a fellow I know who wanted to work his daughter's ability to protect herself from line drives by whipping the ball back at her as hard as he possibly could each and every time. His throws probably maxed out at 50-60 mph. Nobody hits a ball back to the pitcher that softly beyond 10U. It doesn't do any good to whip the ball back at her if that's the best you can do. It just gets your blood up and makes her dislike you. It also will eventually burn out your arm.

Let me provide some advice to all parent catchers and this same advice was mentioned to me by Tom. Flipping the ball back on one hop is not a shameful act. It will save your arm. If your daughter is really, really going to grow up to be a pitcher, you are probably going to have to catch 2 - 4 times per week for 100 pitches and returns at the very least. A good average might be 3 times per week for 150 pitches and even that is a bit understated. That is 450 return throws per week, 44 weeks per year, over the span of perhaps an 8 year career, yields 158,400 throw backs. If you, like Tom and I, have 2 daughters, figure it out. You are going to hurt your arm!

I have a pretty bad right, throwing arm. I broke my elbow playing football when I was 15 and still have shards of bone on the inside of the elbow. I know the shards are there because my doctor warned about this at the time of the injury and, quite a while ago, I hurt it and it locked into place. When I had X-rays done, the doctor noted that he could see the shards and it was the swelling around them that had caused the lock-up. Years later, when my kids first got involved in softball, I threw a little too hard with another father before practice one day. My arm was sore for weeks after that.

Once you get the knack of throwing it back on one hop, it may actually save you time because you won't suffer all those bad throws as you try to emulate Pudge-Rod. Tom suggests that bouncing the ball back will make them better fielders. I'm not sure if it is true or not. But it certainly does not hurt their fielding ... or your arm.

The knees are probably your most abused joints. If you ski, snow or water board, that's more so. If you value your ability to walk around, up the stairs, into an elevator, I suggest trying something besides the standard catcher crouch. I am fully aware that there is a little known Medicare benefit for which you might qualify. I am slightly jealous of all those people on the TV who got their Power Chair and didn't have to pay a penny out of pocket for it. But if you are in your 40s, you will look silly making your way to the restaurant/bar/supermarket in an electrical chair. The alternative is a knee replacement but those replacements need to be replaced after a decade or so. You can count on having to replace your bad knee(s) as many as 5 more times during your life if you need your first one at 40 or so. Save your knees, get something to sit on during pitching practice!

Tom suggests a high bucket. He recommends this because 1) he has sufficient room to toss the ball back underhand and 2) he is able to get out of the way of a wayward pitch very quickly without stressing his knees too much. I prefer a lower bucket. I use one of the shortest buckets around, one I used on my boat before I got rid of the boat in favor of softball lessons. I like the shorter bucket because I can set a lower target and I want my kids to throw a lot of low pitches in order to induce grounders. But I may rethink my approach very soon as I am missing out on the benefits Tom noted.

I do not suggest spending money to get the item I have seen in stores and online. That is a stool which stands on one leg and is sold specifically for bucket dads and moms. I got one for Father's Day. It is not very convenient and I have fallen off it several times. The thing about a bucket is you can use it as a bucket in which to carry gloves and balls. It is sturdy. One cheap little plastic bucket will probably survive your kids' pitching careers and you will be able to will it to them when they become parents.

At this point I have to tell you a story or two story about buckets. I learned about them my first year of travel. The warehouse superstore was selling seeds in a bucket for a very cheap price and we decided to buy one for the team. I had hoped to recoup the bucket after the seeds were gone because it looked like it might make a good seat. But when the seeds were depleted, the team's manager, a father of a pitcher, grabbed the bucket and made it his own faster than I could possibly have grabbed it back. A month or two went by and someone took the top of that bucket and attached a proper seat cushion to it for the coach. He still has my bucket today! I think he is rather proud of it.

Another bucket brigade dad I know often catches his daughter when she pitches. He does so in pitching lessons and practice sessions, at team practices and before games. I noticed that he sits sideways on the bucket in order to protect his potential to produce children in the future. After years of watching this, I commented to my wife about it and was surprised by her reaction. She told me that when she first saw him sit sideways like that, she lost all respect for the man! She said he should sit like a real man!! So if you are at all concerned about the way people perceive you as you sit on your bucket, sit straight and protect yourself through other means.

Yet another bucket dad I know has a daughter who is a good pitcher but not always that successful when pitching against the best kids. We were conducting a tryout for catchers one day and she was pitching to them. I asked her if she had a dropball because I wanted to see the catchers block. She said she did and proceeded to throw several very good ones. I was genuinely impressed, not with the catchers but with this girl's dropball. So I asked the father about why he never had her throw the drop in games. He looked at me with a puzzled expression and said,

"Well, she really doesn't have a drop. I mean we don't work on it at all. I can't stand catching the thing. So she never works on it. I didn't think it was very good because I haven't seen her throw one in many months."

I informed him that she does indeed have a good drop. I also told him that she practices it when she throws with her younger sister, a catcher. I strongly suggested that he begin calling the pitch as one of her main ones in games. Do you know, that pitch has become her mainstay and she is a much more effective pitcher now than she was before she started throwing the drop a lot.

Yet, I understand why a father would not want his daughter to spend a lot of practice time working on the drop, at least not while he was catching it. The drop is the bane of many bucket dads' existence. I remember talking to one father who had a daughter with a good drop. He was catching her in the yard one summer evening when one pitch pointed out a tree root he had not completely removed from their throwing area. He was struck in the knee by a drop that bounded off the tree root. For months afterwards, he walked around with a softball sized bump on one leg. This guy used to wear shorts in weather above 25 degrees. But during July and August of that summer, he wore long pants due to his embarrassment.

Speaking of embarrassment, another father of a talented drop ball pitcher I know took one off his shins. He had to go in for X-rays after a few weeks of hobbling. The pain was excruciating. But this guy had some trouble with the doctor because he refused to tell the man flat out that the injury was caused by catching his daughter's pitching! The doctor wanted to know how it happened. He said "never mind." The doctor persisted relentlessly. I think the doctor finally accepted some explanation about a foul ball at a high school baseball game.

The moral of that story is shin guards are advisable. I actually don't wear them because I can't stand them. I caught until I was 18 but I never really loved wearing guards. And as an adult, I really can't handle the feeling, especially when I wear shorts. That's not a very good excuse and I have chipped bones on my shins too, though nothing that hindered my ability to walk. I guess I am pig headed and one day my daughter's dropball will convince me to wear the shin guards I have.

Tom has some advice if you also refuse to wear baseball/softball shin guards. He uses soccer style leg guards. I may have to look into this because it makes a lot of sense. But I may have trouble finding anything that fits properly. If you don't have football shaped calves, you might want to look into soccer shin guards to protect you while catching.

I have one final dropball story for you. I was at the field one day and noticed a bunch of guys from our organization standing around a pick-up truck chatting. As I walked towards them, they were laughing and making all kinds of odd faces. As I got close, one yelled out to me, "hey Dave, have you ever taken one in the ... you know?" I replied, "yes, many times, it ain't pretty, it's always the darn dropball." As I uttered the beginning of the word "dro" they all broke out into hysterical laughter. They were all pitchers' dads. They knew exactly what I meant. They all had the same experience.

I understand what Tom is saying about the higher bucket. If you are catching a dropballer, it is best to get the heck out of the way once that ball hits the ground. It has a lot of spin on it. You really do not know where it is going to go. The faster you can get out of the way, the better.

Still, I cling to my low bucket. And one of my kids is a dropballer. I have worked a way to protect myself and that is: I stay closer to the plate and when the ball hits the ground, usually it is right around the plate. I go forward rather than trying to block it like a catcher. I attempt to short hop it right near where it hits the ground so it doesn't have the opportunity to jump. It doesn't matter to me if I catch it or merely knock it away. Just so long as it doesn't jump me. So far, that technique has worked.

The worst I have ever been struck is actually on a change-up. My kid's change is pretty good. It moves and dives. When it hits the ground, it is difficult to know which direction it will bounce in. She once threw one that hit the plate, bounced up, and caught me in the chin. I saw stars. I got a nice little knot on my face that stayed there for several months. I think perhaps the bone was chipped but I never sought medical treatment because I was a little too embarrassed. I didn't need to hear another human being suggest I wear a mask. So I won't go into proseltyzing you about wearing a mask. I'll just say that there is a good reason to put one on, and leave it at that.

So to recap, a bucket is better than squatting. I prefer a low one but Tom likes a high one and he can offer some sound logic for choosing that size. Protective equipment is probably a good idea though I admit to wearing none. You must be hyper vigilant to protect yourself. And those of us too proud to admit it hurts when we get hit should probably rethink our manhood.

Speaking of manhood, I don't want to shortchange the many women who catch their daughters' sessions. I know several who, for one reason or another, do the job. They may be better athletes than their husbands are. They may just be the only one available when their daughters take their lessons. I think I know of more fathers than mothers but there are penty of each and all have their own war stories.

As a matter of fact, I know that one of the guys who laughed at my comment above no longer catches his daughter's lessons. Instead, he has his wife do that. The reason is he has become very good friends with the pitching coach. When the coach sees him, he likes to talk endlessly. The guy not only feels as if his daughter is shortchanged due to the coach's excessive conversation, but also he is concerned because he too often gets distracted from the job at hand. His daughter has hit 60 on the gun. But she is a little wild, especially when throwing movement pitches. l; He often finds himself nearly getting hit because he is too engaged in conversation. So now his wife catches the daughter at lessons. And she's the one sporting the injuries most of the time.

I really urge you in the strongest terms possible to not allow yourself to be distracted when catching. Even a 50 mph pitch can do some damage when it hits you in the head. Talking with others is possibly the most insidious form of being distracted. I just heard on the radio that the result of laws prohibiting cell phone usage behind the wheel actually have accomplished one of their objectives - to lower the rate of usage while driving. Unfortunately, the laws did not accomplish the main objective. Accident rates did not go down. While hands-free devices are used to a much higher degree than before, it turns out that they do not prevent accidents. It is the talking that yields the distraction, not the use of hands. If you try to hold a deep conversation while catching your daughter, you're gonna pay a price.

I have on many occasions found that I am not quite as wide awake as I should be when catching. Sometimes my concentration drifts. Sometimes my relatively weak eyesight takes me out of focus. That is not good.

I strongly suggest that before you get behind the plate, you make certain you are wide awake. I now very often drink a full cup of coffee before catching. I sometimes take a shower beforehand. I will try almost anything to ensure that I am as awake as possible. It is no fun to recognize that you almost got hit by that pitch.

Speaking of those times when you feel like you almost just got hit, it is difficult for those whose daughters don't yet throw hard or those who have never been part of the bucket brigade to understand our plight. The best way I can describe this is via analogy.

Do you know that feeling which immediately follows a near miss auto accident? Your adrenaline pumps at full throttle. You feel sweat start to well up in all the usual places despite having been relatively cold before the incident. Your heart pounds. You feel throbbing at your temples. That's an almost car accident. Almost being hit by a pitch is not as bad. I would say that on every pitch my daughter throws, I feel about 5 percent of the car feeling. And when I almost get hit, I suspect I reach to about 10 or 15 percent of that extreme. During the winter, we catch down in my basement which is very large. The basement is also rather cool, perhaps 45 - 50 degrees. But after we are done, I am always sweating. And when I almost get hit, I sweat profusely.

Women have more sense than men. They are more willing to don the full gear. Men are often either too lazy or too stupid unless or until their daughters become demonic hard throwers. I know of a Division one pitcher whose father always puts on the equipment. He does this because his daughter has been clocked around 67 and for one other reason. When the kid throws to him, which she still does on occasion, he abuses her psychologically. When he does this, she usually throws harder. And she, I believe, aims to hurt him. He throws the ball back at her hard a lot - he doesn't follow my one bounce advice and when he does throw it hard at her, I believe he aims to hurt her. Their sessions are rather violent. He dons the gear as a matter of survival. She should consider pitching with catcher's gear on too. Then again, she throws harder than he does.

One other item about gear, as a person who has suffered several concussions, not as a result of catching, I urge you to use the old style of catchers mask which is generally more protective of your brains. I know the newer, hockey style masks are more in vogue and look better. But the helmet part is intended to deal with foul balls. I personally do not think you need to use a helmet. And the hockey style mask provides less cushion when the mask is struck. That is my opinion formed after doing some research. You can do your own thinking and research.

The plight of the bucket dad or mom is not a well respected one. Those of you who regularly catch your daughters know of what I speak. We in the bucket brigade suffer all manner of injuries and humiliation. A little common sense can go a long way towards reducing the number of our injuries. And learning from others is at the heart of the human condition. So take Tom's advice and mine. Don't let your pride get in the way of protecting yourself. Also, when your daughter can throw a projectile hard enough to kill you, it is best not to anger her too much.

Individual Motivation

2010-01-28T06:24:00.000-08:00

I want to venture into a very difficult labyrinth today. I should probably just step back and not get into this but something is pulling me and I don't feel like fighting it. The issue has to do with how athletes become motivated individuals and how parents and others interact with them in order to enhance this "coming of age," if you will allow me to call it that. This is not a particularly straightforward issue to discuss. But I feel the need to try.

Some time ago, I told you that I once was told by someone far more experienced than I that a father must find the right time to step back from his softball playing daughter in order to allow her to mature in the game. She needs to be coached by someone not related to her. She needs to find her way in the real world where not everyone thinks she's wonderful, where some folks might be less tolerant of some of her bad habits. She needs to prove herself anew to someone else in the sport who has interacted with many other girls prior to meeting her. You (I) need to stand back and become a mere fan again.

Since I heard those words, I have discussed the issue and related ones many times with friends, others in softball, and even a few visitors to this site who wrote me e-mails on the topic. I agree wholeheartedly that a parent of a softball player needs to give her the room to stretch her wings, as it were, or she may never learn to fly.

I say she "may never learn to fly" because many girls have indeed gone very far within this sport while being coached by fathers or mothers. Tincher was taught to pitch by her father. Other name players had heavy parent involvement before they became name players.

Most kids need their parents to step away in order to take the steps of personal development on their own but it is not necessarily a panacea for raising a softball player. Both ways work, depending on the individuals involved. Still I agree in principle with those who argue for giving my kids space because I am not trying to raise softball players. I am trying to raise people, two individual people. I believe I need to step away from them in order for them to grow up. It's just not that easy to do!

Within the issue of stepping away from a softball playing daughter is the related one of her self-motivation. Youth is wasted on the young. If I had my life to live over again ... I would know how much effort would be involved in developing any skill to a desired degree. And, of course, I would put in the effort needed for the things I wish I were doing today!

When I was very young, I decided I wanted to be a baseball player. I was too young to have my dreams dashed so, when I told my parents, they waited several years before explaining to me why this was a bad idea. When I told my father that I wanted to play football in the NFL, he quickly pointed out that I would need to be at least 6-3 and that was unlikely. He also pointed out the short duration of a lineman's career and other problems with my idea. When I told my parents I wanted to be a mathematician, they pointed out that the only career for that kind of direction was teaching and since teaching didn't pay, I might find another career choice. They were wrong on that and other scores but I am not going to try to beat my parents into the ground today. What I want to point out is it is not a great idea merely to explain logically to a person why they can't or shouldn't do something. Instead, it is probably a better idea to inform them slowly about what is needed to become this or that and then let them find their own way.

With respect to school, my parents always wanted me to get good grades. Perhaps they wanted me to get great grades but they accepted my somewhat above average ones without giving me too much trouble. My siblings struggled in school to some degree so when I had better grades than they did, I was able to get away with less than I was capable of. But my motivation was external, not internal. I got the grades I got in order to appease them, not because I enjoyed learning or wanted to achieve at some level in order to accomplish things or make my life better. It was not until I returned to college as a 23 year old that I found self-motivation and at that point, I became an "A" student, near the top of the class, who wanted to achieve the highest grades possible regardless of the level of effort required.

Self-motivation is tricky because each of us are individuals who have our own hopes and dreams, who mature at different ages, and who have our own unique capacities and abilities. One kid is apparently fully mature, within the context we are examining, at the age of 7 or 8. Another is incapable of self-motivation until perhaps 16 or in my case, in terms of academic motivation, as old as 23. It is next to impossible to know for sure when a kid is capable of self-motivation in any pursuit.

When we start out the softball careers of our very young daughters, they really do not know what it takes to improve their skill levels and play to their potential. I recall one of my daughters, 8 at the time, telling me that she would like to throw better. We went out into the yard and threw the ball for 15 minutes before she informed me that she was tired or saw some neighbor kids playing and ran off for that action. A day or so later, I reminded her of her desire to throw better and suggested another session of catch. She told me she had something else to do and, after all, "we did play catch for a very long time yesterday." She was sure she had done enough to improve to the level she desired!

Later, when pitching lessons arose, my wife and I decided to tell the girls that they could continue pitching lessons and we would pay for them provided that they practiced an acceptable amount. We decided that 2 times per week in addition to the one lesson would be the minimum and 4 the maximum. They could continue with their lessons if they practiced twice a week but it would be better if they did more. And, if they did more, we would never consider dropping lessons. If they stuck with just 2, we might one day put an end to lessons.

So my daughters continued to pitch several times a week in order to preserve their lessons. When they wanted to play travel ball, we put certain other restrictions on them. They were required to get their homework done in a timely fashion so as to avoid conflicts with practice. They were also required to step up their pitching to a minimum of 3 times weekly in addition to lessons. If they pitched for one half hour at practice, that would count. We didn't want to burn them out. We just wanted a commitment level in order to justify our spending this much time and money to keep them in travel ball and pitching lessons.

As time wore on, my kids did what they needed to do to maintain things as they were. But sometimes that edge you need to compete was missing. I won't quantify it in this article but there is a level or degree of pitching effort one must do in practice in order to maintain proficiency levels and advance them enough to make all this worth it. Sometimes, with one kid or the other, that level was missing.

Sometimes, one or both of my daughters would complain about me making them pitch. It might not be right at the start or at the mere mentioning of "we'll be pitching at 7 o'clock tonight." It wasn't always a direct complaint. Sometimes we had just finished the warm-up and my kid would say "I'm really tired today" or "I'm still sore from all that pitching we did yesterday." Sometimes it was even more insidious like, "how many pitches are we going to do today?" And still other times, it was a matter of one kid, or both of them, putting out the bare minimum of effort in making each pitch.

Initially, I told them that I never want to be asked how many pitches we are doing. At different points I told them that I am not going to waste my time by catching them while they put forth less than 50% effort. I have actually picked up and walked out on a few occasions because I felt their effort was completely insufficient. I refuse to waste my time if they don't have their body and mind into it.

Soreness is a tougher issue because I don't want them to alter their motions because a bicep or forearm is sore. When they complain about sore muscles, I try to diagnose the problem, come up with a solution or dump practice for that day. I used to think they were using soreness to get out of practice but I have learned that my kids don't do that. When they complain about soreness, I believe them and we can usually do some skills that will not beat them up further.

As time has worn on, I have become weary from listening to my kids try to make practice shorter or get out of them entirely. It doesn't happen very often but when it does, it gets under my skin. That has been made more irritating by my often very sore shoulder, elbow, wrist or hand. A couple years ago, I developed bad tendinitis in my catching wrist which required me to soak my hand in ice water several times each day. It eventually went away but pain in my catching shoulder is a constant companion. Sometimes my elbow hurts and sometimes my hand does. I try not to complain to them about it - I don;t want to teach them how to get out of things - but when they are trying to wiggle out of practice and I'm hurting, I have less patience with the head games.

That was a while ago because gradually they have become self-motivated and that's why I am telling you this. My older daughter became self-motivated quite a bit sooner than the younger one. She loves just about everything that has anything to do with softball. Softball dwells within her very being, perhaps her soul. If she were confined to a wheelchair today, I believe she would either find a softball league for wheelchair bound persons or start one on her own. .

I know I am prone to digressions but I want to explain the wheelchair comment lest I receive some angry e-mails. When I was in my late teens, I worked as a lifeguard at a pool. One day, one of my fellow lifeguards dove into the pool and fractured his neck. He was paralyzed from pretty much the neck down though he could use his arms fairly well. The name of this fellow is Doug Heir.

Doug was an athlete before his accident. After the accident he wanted to end his life. That's pretty normal for a person in that predicament. If you love sport and one day are told that you'll never do any of the things you love, well, that's about as tough as it gets. Gradually, through the efforts of his brother and friends, Doug found the motivation to move forward with his life. Move forward, he did!

Doug became the President Of The National Spinal Cord Injury Association. He also finished law school and has been a practicing attorney. He has run for public office. He is a motivational speaker. He also has been called the most accomplished athlete on Earth because he has won more gold medals than any other human being.

Doug found his self-motivation, with help from his brother, in sport. He competed in field events at Paralympic and other world championships. He has one too many events to name and, in the process, set several world records. His image has appeared on the Wheaties box and many sports media outlets have proclaimed him the world's greatest athlete, among other noteworthy achievements.

So, you see, I do not use the wheelchair example lightly. And when I speak of self-motivation, I have seen it at its all-time low.

So my older daughter is now just about fully self-motivated. This was accomplished primarily by gradually allowing her to control the direction of her practice sessions. At every turn, I have reminded her that the game belongs to her, not us. Our purpose is to facilitate her accomplishment of what she tells us her goals are. She is never practicing or pitching for us. We enjoy watching her pitch but if she were never again to pitch, that would not change anything about the way we love her or treat her. The decision to pitch or not is hers and hers alone. The decision to play softball is hers alone.

As I say, she is just about fully self-motivated. It is a long process which requires work for the full duration. One does not one day turn from being externally motivated to being completely self-sufficient. It is a process not a watershed moment. We must still remain vigilant and work towards instilling the internal motivation.

As I say, this was a gradual growth which took place probably over a 2 year period. It probably, I don't remember, started as a result of a planned practice session at which she was not motivated. She may have complained. She may have inquired about how many pitches we were going to do. She may have thrown at less than her best. I just don't remember. But at that point, I believe I ended the session early. I was tired of the continual lack of effort - in a relative sense. I told her that she could tell me when she wanted to practice again. And I waited for her to do that.

After a few days, she missed working on her pitches and came back to me. In the next session, I let her control almost everything. There is a pattern to her warm-ups which I like to be adhered to to avoid injury. After that, it was "so, what do you want to do next." I really enjoyed asking her "how many pitches are you going to do today?" I think she understood the irony. But she chose her direction and I have to say that it was fine.

Now, what I do in order to sway her in the direction I think she should go is make suggestions. If I think her screw, drop, or drop curve is not quite as sharp as it should be, I ask, "do you want to work on X pitch today?" or "you know, you have thrown better drops, maybe we could work on that pitch more during one of our sessions this week?" or "is there any pitch that you would like to work on?" I try to sway her but I don't want to take over and I don't want her to get mentally lazy and allow me to take over. It's her game. These are her pitching sessions. If she's going to put into them, she must decide what it is she is going to do.

At various times, I think she informed me of when we were going to pitch and then, when the time came, she complained or was less than thrilled when I reminded her. Now when that happens, I react by telling her that I would love to have the hour to myself and it doesn't matter to me if she doesn't practice. She does not do that often anymore. She is responsible for her success or failure. If she wants to skip, it is entirely her decision. And she has to live with the results.

When she does complain, I generally believe she needs the time off. She has become self-motivated enough and we have informed her enough that she now knows that there is a minimal level of effort required to maintain and only through exceeding that will she get better. She wants to get better. She works pretty darn hard at it. Her practice sessions are much better. She seldom, if ever, takes a pitch off during practices.

To tell you the truth, I'm the one lacking motivation these days. She wants to pitch more often and her sessions are longer. I intervene more because I think she is overdoing it than I ever did because I thought she was doing too little.

My younger daughter is more difficult, as a general matter. She has had way too much success at almost everything from too young an age. She is very successful in school without ever having to put out much effort. Her report card is almost always better than her sister's, even when her sister gets almost all A's. When the kids take those state proficiency examinations, if her older sister scores advanced proficient on the math part, as she has many times, the younger one will score higher. She once scored a perfect score on that test. That's the way it is for her.

She was also a successful pitcher with far less practice work than her sister. The only times she would really work were after losses, expecially those in which she got hit fairly hard. It has been very difficult to get her to work at anything, especially pitching, unless she experiences some degree of failure.

She was always the biggest complainer with respect to practice. Even when she did not complain, she was far more prone to those lackluster sessions in which the effort needed to improve was missing. It probably took 3 years to find her self-motivation and I'm not quite sure I know what brought it on. Something, somehow, somewhere must have happened which caused her to recognize that she needed to work in order to succeed. And very recently, she has begun to use this self-motivation in many different ways.

I should tell you that I understand parents who tell me about their daughters, "if I didn't push her, she would do nothing. If I don't make her pitch, she won't and her ability will drop off." I am not telling you to drop everything and do all that it takes to get your daughters self-motivated. What I am telling you is that you should have this as a goal, a long-term goal.

Every kid, every person, is different. Some require more push than others just to achieve up to their 50% level. There is no particular age, no particular experience level, at which a given kid must become self-motivated. But as much as I have encouraged you to do certain things in order to have your kid become a good pitcher, catcher or whatever, I am encouraging you to find those things that will point her in the direction of becoming self-motivated. And everything you do with respect to this must leave the door open for her to become self-motivated when she is ready to do so.

This process, like the game of softball itself, is often rather difficult. Worse, while I can tell you how to fix some hitch in the swing, some shortcoming on the drop ball, or some particular fielding or throwing problem, I cannot tell you how to instill self-motivation in your child. It is a hands-on chore. Problems must be diagnosed in person. Treatment varies with the individual. Prognoses will vary. The time during which you may be able to accomplish the task is going to be different for any two kids.

I had a friend from childhood who became an Olympic medalist (a couple gold and, I think, one or two silver). He was a champion from a young age. His motivation was entirely external. He became a champion to appease his father. He was a world class athlete before he found self-motivation. But he also developed substance abuse problems. It was only after he solved his substance problems and found self-motivation that he became an Olympic champion.

I have often observed parents encouraging their kids to play hard, hustle, get a hit, etc. in softball tournaments. I have sometimes been an overbearing father with respect to my kids' softball play. I understand when parents need to be involved with their kids' softball. I also understand sideline nerves. But there is one thing we must remember and a few corollaries which spin off this single principle. It is their game - we had our opportunity already.

It is their game and we cannot necessarily relate to what it is like to stand 4o or less feet away from some hitter to guard against the bunt. We don't know what it is like to stand in against some 60 mph rise ball throwing freak of nature. We do not know what it is to live amongst their peers while suffering a tough game when everyone else is hitting the ball hard. Sure we had similar experiences but we do not know what they are going through. We have to guess.

When we were their ages, we didn't necessarily trust when our parents, teachers and coaches told us how to live. We learned most of what we know today thanks to mistakes and a few very smart mentors who taught us how to be self-sufficient. We got bored at practices. We turned our heads away on hard grounders. We complained about the duration of practices, etc. We dogged it. Why on Earth would we expect them to be any different.

When a young kid starts hitting, catching or pitching lessons, their coaches tell them what they need to do in order to prepare for the next session. "Don't forget to take 50 swings in the yard, do your blocking homework, pitch 4 times between sessions, etc." We can and should encourage our kids to hear those messages over and over again. We can tell them that if they would like to continue doing these lessons, they must practice on their own. We can make them practice but they will learn how to do it with the least possible amount of intensity to appease us. We can be perfectionists who mentally beat on our kids to make them all that we think they should be. But what is gained and what is lost when we do this?

If you think you may have the next Jennie Finch, there is probably nothing to be learned from me. If, on the other hand, you are simply using softball as an enjoyable way to teach your kid certain things, if you just want her to enjoy athletics, if you are not trying to take her up to the very top levels of the sport, then one of your goals should be to teach her self-motivation which she can use in other aspects of her life. It isn't an easy thing to instill. You will have to find your own way. But, in the long run, it is a highly advantageous thing to have taught your child. It is well worth the significant effort.

Diamond Nation Tournaments Announced

2010-01-28T05:16:00.001-08:00

There is an article on SpySoftball which consists of just a commercial announcement as follows:

"Rising Stars and Triple Crown Sports have announced two new tournaments - a summer event June 23-25, and, a fall event October 8-10, both at a new 10-field complex called Diamond Nation in Flemington, NJ.

The tournaments will be limited to 40 teams, and the sponsors hope to attract the top 16U and 18U teams from across the nation. (Flemington is 44 miles from Newark Airport.)"

That's a fairly simple message but several items should be included in order to convert this announcement into a complete statement of fact. First of all, the complex is definitely beautiful although it could have been laid out differently to make it easier to move from field to field. Personally, I favor quads to make the movement from field to field easier while also providing fans and college coaches the opportunity to see multiple games with just a few steps. Quads have issues such as when balls are fouled from one field onto another but I would take them over the arrangement at DN.

Secondly, Flemington is fairly close to Newark Liberty International Airport as the crow flies but it will most likely take you an hour or more to drive from one to the other in the best of traffic conditions. If you come in or leave at rush hour, you should budget two hours. , so You will be sitting out a lot of traffic lights along the most convenient routes. At times, you may get the opportunity to watch a single traffic light turn from red to green to red to green to red again! It is not the most convenient place to get to in New Jersey. Flemington is kind of out in a part of the state which nobody ever experiences on TV or in the movies. It is a less densely populated part of the state.

Third, the place is not a purely softball complex. It is really set up for baseball and the fields are converted to softball via the placement of fences and playing at one corner of the otherwise baseball setups where 60 foot bases paths are located. But the facts that these fields are used primarily for baseball and are somewhat inconvenient for softball is not necessarily fatal to the utility of the complex.

What may be fatal to the complex are a couple of practices by the owners of the facility, as well as the fact that the fields are 100% turf. Generally, at this complex, anyone aside from the players and coaches must pay an entrance fee. I have been to tournaments and showcases at which such a fee has been charged but usually the fee is either nominal or only applied to very large events such as a national championship tournament. The nominal fees were typically not charged by the organization hosting the tournament but rather the park itself which had significant facilities to maintain with taxpayer dollars. It is not fair to ask local taxpayers to foot the bill for maintaining fields during an event which largely draws people from far away. But DN is different because this is a commercial venture. They invested huge amounts to build this complex and are seeking a return on that investment. The charge for fans (parents) is rather hefty and the system under which, for example, a visitor can leave the complex and then return is not exactly state of the art, or, for that matter, well thought out.

Next, as part of the profi- making angle, teams are allowed to bring in just one cooler and no food. They aim to make all attendees purchase some drink and all food from the snack bars. The food at the snack bars is not necessarily good or what one would choose to eat when playing a multi-game day. But you are forced to either sneak in food - not easy - or buy whatever they have to offer at the snack bars.

Still the things I have listed are not fatal to many who wish only to play the best possible competition no matter what it costs and no matter how inconvenient the location. And while the tournaments do hope to draw a very high level of competition, the fact that the fields are turf ought to give teams cause for hesitation. Turf is great when natural fields are too wet to play. But at any other time, I would prefer to keep my players off it.

The problems that are encountered on turf are many. The most obvious issues involve ground balls. Most balls are hit with considerable spin in fastpitch softball. Turf does not act like dirt when a spinning ball hits it. Grounders are a little too true. If you put a team on turf for a year and then had them play on dirt, say at ASA, NSA, etc. nationals, you are looking for trouble. Your infielders will not be able to adjust back to the unpredictability and much different play of real dirt on a skin field. It isn't quite as bad as always playing on grass infields but it is rather different than playing on a conventional softball field.

Next, outfield play is different on turf vs. natural surface. We've played all sorts of grass including some amazingly well groomed fields in the Carolinas and Florida, some very nice but quite different type surfaces in Caifornia, some dreadfully hard ones in Ohio, some not very well groomed natural grass surfaces in several other places, etc. I have seen some artificial surfaces for softball fields that were very nice on which the outfield hops were quite similar to those on natural surface but such is not the case at DN. Ordinary hump back line drives and pops that fall to ground bounce inordinately high leading to misplays as well as extra base hits for balls that would easily be played back in for singles on other surfaces. Outfielders must play fairly deep because any ball that strikes the surface will run rather fast. Any single hit beyond a certain point is going to make it to the fence. Playing outfield at DN isn't at all like playing on natural surface or very good turf.

Finally, the pitching surfaces are not great. The turf itself is rather slick. Girls sliding into bases do not get any kind of rug burn because of the slickness. Instead, they find that they need to grab hold of the bases in order to avoid over-sliding the bags. This does not help pitchers find that point of resistance with their landing legs which they need to pitch well. Further, the pitching circle areas are a carpet overlay on the normal surface of the field. There is too much give in them. There is a sort of trampoline effect. Every pitcher I have talked to had something bad to say about the pitching area at DN.

I have nothing against Diamond Nation. I don't particularly care about the site's distance from Newark Airport nor that you have to buy food there. I can go a day without eating though I would rather be able to bring in my own water and Gatorade. It can be a little too expensive ov er a 3 or 4 day tournament to pay snack bar prices in order to avoid dehydration or heat exhaustion.

I understand the need to charge a fee to attendees at commercially maintained fields. I am OK with that as a general matter. If there is a nice place to sit to watch games, it's fine with me that I have to pay provided the fee is not exorbitant. The fees are too high at DN. There is not a convenient place to sit and watch. I would like to be able to come and go in accordance with my team's schedule. It is not very convenient to come and go at DN. Actually, it is kind of a hassle though hopefully they will get better at handling this.

I am happy for whatever softball facilities are built which enhance girls' abilities to play even when a summer is very rainy. Most of us east of the Mississippi suffered through last year playing much less frequently than we would have liked. Turf is great when you have nothing else playable. But given the choice between turf and a dry natural surface, I would rather have my girls on the natural one. You really do not get to see kids' and teams' abilities when you play this kind of artificial surface. This is more true at the highest levels. At least that's one man's opinion.

Additional Comment:

My wife just read this post and reminded me that parking was absolutely horrendous at this facility. I suppose I had forgotten that fact but now that I think of it, it was really bad. There was not a huge amount of teams there when we played but we struggled to find a parking spot. I can only imagine that with a large number of teams present the parking would be absolutely impossible. Hopefully they will rectify the parking situation before these tournaments are held since they cannot support the number of cars one would expect.

Easy But Neglected Skill

2010-01-27T12:07:00.000-08:00

Among the several skills coaches often neglect is the ordinary backhand play. Often folks act as if it is a difficult skill requiring more athletic ability than other plays but that's just not the case. Backhanding is as easy as any other skill but the fundamentals must be taught, reinforced through proper simple, repetitive drilling followed by sufficient iterations of live hit balls.

All too often when coaches hit grounders to players, they either hit them directly at them or hit too many to their glove hand side. If a coach has been properly emphasizing to their players to get in front of the ball and make plays between their legs, it is natural for girls to do this in a ground ball line, thereby getting no practice on backhands. I very seldom see coaches hitting backhand plays over and over again whether in practice or as a warm-up before games. l; the one exception is the short hop drill in which coaches hit balls sharply to girls stationed close in. That's a good drill but it only involves a limited piece of potential backhand plays. And usually no instruction on fundamentals has preceded it.

Generally, players learn backhanding of balls at their waists and above via normal everyday games of catch. Watch a bunch of players throwing a ball around for any length of time and sooner or later someone will make a bad throw requiring a backhand catch. After a couple years of warm-up tossing, most girls can handle any throw that requires a backhand catch. Often players learn to catch very well using backhand because it places a player in better position to make ensuing throws. If you want to be in position to make a quick throw, you move your body so as to catch the ball using a backhand because it is easier, most of the time - excluding outfield to infield cutoff throws. So backhand becomes the preferred way to receive a throw most of the time. Yet, on grounders, receiving the ball either to the glove hand side, beyond the leg while on the move or fielding it between the legs are the most reinforced skills. We do not automatically teach the backhand. We do not make sure our infielders and outfielders get enough drilling and practice at this very important skill.

If you can honestly say that your players do get adequate instruction and practice reps with backhand, OK. Today's column is not for you. If you're not sure or know that you have not addressed it, read on.

The first item to address is the teaching of the fundamental skill. Every infielder in a good ready position should be low. When they field balls, they should remain low. That is as true for other skills as it is for backhand. But for whatever reason, one of the most common mistakes in the backhand is a tendency to stand up or slightly erect when making a play on the ball. Ideally, the backhanding player should be very low. Ideally, her eyes should be just slightly above the level she gets the ball at. If a player's head is several feet above the track of the ball, she will probably misjudge it and end up with the ball bouncing off her glove or going under it.

Secondly, in every other instance of fielding a ball, the glove is held in front of the body. If a player places her glove at the same depth as her body relative to the ball, we correct her by saying, "get those out in front of you." It is always better to get a ball closer towards the direction it is coming from whether fielding a grounder, a fly, or thrown ball. The same is true for backhand. The glove must be placed towards the direction of the ball. You should not be attempting to make a backhand play parallel to the depth of your foot or head. I suppose it is often difficult for coaches to see how deep tor shallow the glove is relative to the player but this needs to be corrected just like it is on ordinary grounders hit directly at players.

The next most common error in backhanding occurs at the point at which the ball has struck the glove. Just as with other plays, the glove hand should squeeze the ball. Most often girls try to cradle the ball by cocking their wrists and pulling the hand in out towards the outside of the elbow. This is not only a poor way of catching the ball, it tends to put the player off balance and the glove in a bad position from which to remove the ball. Many beginning players working on backhands will do this to make sure they get the ball. Even experienced girls who have poor backhand skills will do this for the same reason. But when you catch a thrown ball above your waist in a backhand position, you don't do this. Instead, you squeeze the ball in your catching hand while holding your wrist loose and allowing the force of the ball to carry your hand backwards. This is what we call having soft hands.

The reason catching with soft hands is better is because when you cock your wrist towards the outside of your elbow, you are in a position which takes away from your hand strength. The connective tissue in the hands is stretched to a weaker position from which to grip anything and you tend to use weaker muscles in your forearm in a position from which their strength is diminished. Your grip is stronger when your hand is slightly cocked towards the inside of your elbow which is what occurs when you use soft hands. You are also in a better position to deal with the impact of the ball when your wrist is slightly loose and you catch the ball in front of you. Your body acts as a shock absorber.

The last fu tndamental mistake we want to deal with today occurs after the ball has been successfully caught and a throw needs to be made. The girls I have coached tend to stand upright at this point. They want to gather themselves and then make a strong throw. But usually you can make a stronger, quicker throw if you stay low, plant the correct foot while turning your body and removing the ball from the glove simultaneously. If you are a righty, that means you stride with your left leg, get the ball, and as your glove comes back towards your body, you step with the right leg, plant the right foot while turning your body so that your left shoulder faces the target and then make the throw. Staying low and planting your throwing hand foot beyond your glove hand foot is the key to making a strong, quick throw.

I would begin my backhand practice but talking about the points I have just gone over. Then I would demonstrate the correct way to make a backhand play. After that, I would use a few very simple drills in a progression which gradually goes over the skill.

The first item should be merely retrieving the ball using a backhand. All that is needed is for each girl to get in a good ready position and a coach to bounce balls at them. The player and coach can be just ten feet apart with the coach to the glove side of the player. Have her take a single step with the glove side foot, across her body while staying low and fielding the bounced or rolled ball. The coach can roll several reps and then bounce several more or mix it up anyway he or she wants.

After this drills, you want to increase the difficulty slightly. From the same basic position but two additional strides away from the player, the coach again rolls or bounces balls but this time the player must take three strides to retrieve the ball. The player strides with her glove side leg once, then again with the throwing side leg, then finally with her glove hand leg. Stay low! Then she fields the bounced or rolled ball.

If players do not take the right steps, I suggest having them walk through it once or twice, as needed. if she still struggles, stand in front of her with your back facing her. Then each of you do it as she watches you and makes sure she is doing the same thing as you. In the case of a three step drill, which is usually where the footwork first gets mixed up, I would make the demonstration while calling out 1, 2, 3. The turn around and watch her walk through it while you call 1, 2, 3.

You want to get as many reps as timne permits doing these drills. Once you have a reasonable number in, you can add to either or both drills by making players get into throwing position after fielding the balls. Again, a slow numbered walk through should teach the steps if anyone struggles.

If you only have time to do the first two drills, with no throw maneuver, because your time runs out, that's OK. Thge next time you get together, run through the basic drills quickly and go into the throwing maneuver next. Each time you work on backhands, begin with the basic drills for a couple warm-up iterations. Then go into the throwing maneuver. Next run these two drills with more than a mere throwing maneuver by having the girls make an actual throw to a point on a diagnonal from where they field the ball.

After this, assuming you have sufficient space, I would perform the same two basic drills but have girls make throws to each of the various bases from all the potential points on the field from which they would have to make such a play. After these drills have been run and only after they have been run, you can start to hit live balls for the purpose of reinforcing the fundamental skills in more realistic circumstances. At each of your practices in which you do the old normal ground ball drills, you should make a couple minutes freed to do some bakhand practice both from close points requiring a single step and from further out requiring more of a run. Obviously, with respect to your outfielders, the run should be much further. But your middle infielders need to learn to take several strides and then make a backhand play.

After you have done these things, you can get into more complex drills using backhands like diving for balls, getting up and making the throw. But for now, these very fundamental skills which are almost always neglected, should vastly improve your infielders' and outfielders' play.

Outfielder Drills

2010-01-22T06:29:00.000-08:00

If you came here to grab some outfielder drills, you may have come to the wrong place. What I mean is, I don't like to just list out and describe a bunch of drills so that you can quickly grab them for your practices. Rather, it is always my goal to make you think about things and understand an approach rather than merely provide a handy cheat sheet. It is more important and useful to understand the approach than it is to have a pocket full of drills for a particular part of the game.

I often get questions e-mailed to me like "can you give me some drills for (outfield, infield, catcher, pitcher)?" Sure, I can give you those drills but I don't need to - you don't need me to. That's because, if I give you some drills without explaining their objectives, you are not going to use them properly. If instead, I spur your mind to consider the goals of drills, you can adapt practices to cover goals instead of merely having a series of drills with nobody thinking about the goals.

For example, if we consider what we might do for a pitcher in terms of defense, I could say have her throw pitches and then hit balls at her. That's simple enough. But what we want to consider is the sort of defensive plays a pitcher might make, the skills needed to successfully complete such plays, and what we can do to instill the skills while correcting errors. If we do that, we first develop a list of situations, then we think about how we would like to see the desired outcome accomplished, then we develop the skill set required, and the drills just come to us. We might decide that balls would be bounced back to the circle with: 1) nobody on, 2) a force play at second or third, 3) no force play on but a runner on second or third, etc. We might then decide that the pitcher needs to be able to move left and right, make good throws to each of the bases, etc. We then can see that she must do these things after making a pitch. The drills we would use become obvious at this point. The same is true for other defensive plays made by the pitcher as well as every other position on the field. The drills we can use become obvious once we consider the various plays and skills needed to accomplish each.

Many times when a coach has a mere list of drills, he or she runs them as he or she believes they should be run but with several mistakes. Further, the drills are run without explaining the objective(s), without describing the manner in which the play should be made, and without adequate correction when fundamental mistakes take place. This is not just a less efficient way to run drills but also a great way to reinforce bad habits and to make sure the player(s) in the drills will never develop the desired skills.

What's worse is when a coach has a particular drill, doesn't understand the goals of it, and then tries to modify it to make it their own. Many times I have observed coaches take a very good drill, teach it badly, and then later try to adapt it to make it more meaningful or harder without ever considering what the goal of the original drill was in the first place. I'm not going to give you specific examples because it angers me when I contemplate this. Let's just say that I have coached many times when someone has either taken a drill from someone else and then run it almost completely wrong, or has taken the drill and tried to change it in order to accomplish some totally different skill unrelated to the objectives of the original drill. The result is a pile of mud and practice sessions which merely fill time and accomplish less than optimal skill development.

A common mistake is to combine several drills into one and thereby proceed with the mistaken assumption that you are covering all skills needed in the shortest possible amount of time. It is often OK to combine drills in certain situations but when you try to accomplish 4 goals in one drill that should be four, you often don't get the desired result. For example, let's say that you have a drill which teaches infielders to deal with short hops the way a corner infielder often must. You also have an ordinary ground ball drill. You have a quick release throwing drill and yet another drill for dealing with slow rolling balls on the ground. You could run four discreet drills, each taking 5 plus minutes, or you might combine all of them into a single one and do it for ten minutes. You saved 10 minutes by combining them and that means you get to do an additional ten minutes of batting practice later. But in the course of combining the drills, chances are pretty good that you will miss one of the goals of one of these drills, fail to teach one or more of the skills properly, and give your players too few iterations of the drill to instill the skills.

Many, many times, I have coached with someone who really liked my drills one year and the next decided that, in order to save time, they would rather combine things. The result is a single drill covering four or more skills which the other coach does not really understand or teach to the kids. The kids practice but they do not develop the skills. Everybody is happy until game time when those players can't make a good play on a ball stopped on the ground. The coach says, "but we practice that all the time." But the kid has not been taught the skill and has not had enough practice iterations working it to have made it part of her game.

Further, the logical extrapolation of combining various skills and drills into a single element of practice is to simply line up the kids in the field and then hit balls at them while expecting them to make the plays. That saves time, doesn't it? You hit the ball to a player while telling them to make the play to X base. They throw it in and then you hit another. Each kid gets five balls hit to them and every practice involves a different set of five such plays. That's just great! This approach is to be avoided. That's why we conduct drills in the first place. If you want to merely line the kids up in the field and hit balls to them for a half an hour or so, go ahead. See what the results are.

When you line kids up in the field and hit ball after ball, invariably something gets missed and you bore the kids to tears. I once talked with a girl whose team practiced this way. She told me that she would often get so bored after 15 minutes of just standing there that when her turn came, she wasn't paying attention or had gotten so cold that she couldn't make the plays the way she was supposed to. She noted that during many practices, the coach would forget about her and get so distracted that he actually forgot to hit her any balls at all! She suggested that this happened during more than half the practices. She came to think of practice as a time during which she had to stand in the outfield for half an hour before being sent to the batting cage to take some swings. That's an absolutely dreadful way to run a practice. By contrast, this girl who was then on our travel team would get completely exhausted at our practices while having to do 25 of this, 25 of that, 25 of some other skill, etc., etc. The two practices were so completely different that she could not contemplate the two as both being practices. One was practice, the other was a joke. And I hate to tell you what she thought of her coach as a result of the poor manner in which he conducted practice.

Today, we want to consider drills for the oufielder. So first let's consider the various plays she might make. Obviously, grounders, line drives, and fly balls might be hit directly at her, to her left, to her right, and over her head (at her, to the left, to the right). If the outfielder is RF, we must consider balls hit to the line that are fading - spinning away from her towards the line. If she is LF, we have the same issue but in the other direction.

RFs have to consider hard hit line drives which strike the ground in front of them on which they can make a play at first. LFs should consider the same play when runners are on first and second when there may be a play at third. They should also consider making a play with a runner on third when the ball is hit hard enough that the runner freezes and then heads for home right as the ball hits the ground.

In the case of both corner outfielders, we have the issue of flies into foul territory with runners on base tagging up. Tag ups are important to consider whether the ball is hit fair or foul but we want to make sure the OF considers and makes her throws on fly balls hit into foul ground. It is a fairly common mistake for OFs to forget about tag ups on foul balls. Obviously, we have to consider tag ups in general as well as those where the ball is hit into foul ground.

CFs have slightly different plays to make though many of them are very similar. Let's not forget that all OFs need to be able to vector a ball off the bat - from home plate - and that they must track balls while running over grass covered ground. Sometimes they must take their eyes off balls, run to a spot and then pick the ball up again.

With all the possible balls on which a play is made, we have to consider the various throws to bases. Each one requires different footwork. Each, arguably involves a different sort of throw. Each kind of play involves slightly different skills that need to be worked on. So the next element of coming up with some drills involves creating lists of the various plays and the skills we need to develop. Then we ought to be able to design drills for our practices and even come up with new ones on the fly in order to make practice more interesting and, therefore, meaningful.

I want to emphasize this point. When a practice involves everyone moving and being kept interested at almost all times, it is more fun, interesting for the players, and accomplishes more. If you have 12 girls standing in various places in the field waiting for their turn while each play involves just two of them, you have at least 10 bored girls at any given moment. If, instead, you provide just enough time for each kid to get her wind back before having to do something, you are running a better practice.

Many times, the OFs get the least amount of real consideration when their skills are contemplated. Some coach takes them all out to the outfield and hits fly ball after fly ball from one of the sidelines while the infielders work many and various complicated plays over and over again. There is a value to hitting fly balls to the outfield but they need more than that. A worse kind of "drill" occurs when all 8 or 9 defensive players are put into the field and each one gets a few balls hit at them. This is an OK pre-game warm-up but each and every practice cannot be conducted this way.

It would be better to design drills and keep all OFs moving for most of your practice time and then hit some flies towards thje end of a workout. For example, you might form a line in left and throw balls to the fence which after trying to catch them, they must retrieve quickly from the fence and then throw to a cutoff standing near the infield. In another drill, you might want the OFs to run with their backs to you and then pick up a ball hit or thrown high into the air. You may want to work hard hit balls hit right at them which will strike the ground before they get there and on which you want them to make a quick release throw to a base.

One of my pet peeves is when OFs are lined up in one place and a series of balls is hit to each in turn and the only emphasis is on the OF performing the loopy crow hop before throwing the ball back. Yes OFs need to learn the crow hop in relevant situations but that is not the only relevant footwork. How many times have you seen a RF make a play when she could get the runner at first but she does that OF crowhop and gets the ball there too slowly. Contrast that with those times when an infielder plays right and the same situation occurs. More often than not, the IF will get the out which the crow-hopping-trained OF cannot. In other words, your OFs need to do some short quick throws in their drills. In other words, you need to have a drill which teaches, emphasizes and reinforces making those short throws.

So I strongly suggest that rather than reading this and copying a set of drills to use in your practice, you step away from the computer with a couple sheets of paper and a pencil. Then jot down a list of plays you can come up with on your own. Now spend more time thinking about the skills need for each one. &nb sp; Then jot some short notes for some drills you would like to do. Now I'll do the same thing and here is a specimen workout for the OFs that I come up with:

1) Take all your OFs aaway from the IFs. Have them warm-up throwing balls back and forth from 40 feet, move back to 60 after 5 minutes, and then move back to 80 after another five minutes. Once they are reasonably warmed up at 40 feet, work in the footwork needed to make quick release throws. Correct players not doing it right.

I forgot to mention that you want to make sure you have ample room in which to work. The outfield while infielders are doing their own drills is probably insufficient. If you have two adjacent fields, take the OFs over to the vacant field. If your field does not have fences and instead has a large open grassy area, use that by moving far away from the IFs. If you are stuck in the OF of the only field your whole team has to practice on, there's nothing you can do so adapt accordingly.

When the girls are moved back to 60 feet while throwing, have players on one side throw line drives at their feet and have the other side field them like sharply hit balls on which they need to make a quick throw to the infield. Have them charge, scoop and quickly get into throwing position to throw the ball back to their partner. Then, obviously switch sides.

When the girls are 80 feet apart, have one side not throw the ball to the other player and instead have her bounce it to her partner. The retrieving side should make a play on the ball, crow hop, and throw strongly to the other side. Then switch sides. You now have fin ished 15 to 20 minutes of your OF workout.

After this throwing, you want to make the examples more extreme. You want girls to really run before retrieving balls and making throws. Line up girls at one spot and then move to a place 80 to 100 feet away from them. Cones would be useful to establish the line and a target point to which to run. each girl in succession runs at the target point and then when they get to a certain point, throw a ball into the air which requires the fielder to run hard in order to make the catch. Do this in each direction causing the fielder to make plays requiring a forward and backhand catch. This can be accomplished by you moving to another point after each girl has a turn in one direction. Emphasize hard running, not mere jogs. Make the plays somewhat difficult to make.

After this is done, you have another 10 minutes more of practice completed, bringing you to about the half hour mark. The next drill might be to keep the girls right where they are and move to a point from which you can throw pop flies in front of them which require a long run to catch. In each drill, you want to make sure that things move along quickly. You, the coach, should break a sweat. If you aren't sweating, you probably are not moving fast enough. RTe minutes more has passed and we are 40 minutes into the overall practice.

The next drill will involve less distance. Give each player a ball and have them each in turn throw it to you and then start running. You will throw it after about one or two seconds and then have them run the flies down. Do a turn throwing the balls to their right, another to their left, another directly over head, and several more varying where you throw the ball. This is another 10 minute workout and you should probably give them a couple minute break for water.

Once they are back, work some outfield fence plays. if you have a fence, try tossing the balls back to it and having the OFs make plays while finding the fence and catching the flies. Then work an outfield retrieval drill where they can't possibly make the catch and instead must race to the fence and then make a throw to another player. You are probably about an hour into practice and now you can liune the girls up to hit a series of fly balls.

If you are on a free field with nothing else going on, hit balls from home. Keep those girls who are likely to play corners in the corners and those likely to play center in center. Alternatively, you can have each rotate to the various fields after say 5 balls. Also, have some of your Ofs take turns covering bases and have your OFs make attempts at throwing to each. Do this sequentially so that each OF gets the opportunity to throw to each base except you don't really need to have CF and LF throw to first and your RF really should work on making a cutoffable throw when her turn to go to third comes. Hit the balls hard and then hit some soft ones. Hit balls directly at them and, if you are able into the gaps. Make sure that on every ball a girl is yelling for it. It is most common in this softball world for college and high school coaches to want their players to yell "ball, ball, ball" when calling for it. I suggest you use that. I don't really care for that - I'd prefer I got it. But when we coach,m we prep for the next level so use ball, ball, ball and don't try to fight city hall.

I suppose I forgot to work a drill into the early sequence which does nothing more than have OFs in two locations judge whether they should make a play or allow the other OF to make it. We do want to have such a drill and make sure that one girl is going for it and calling it while the other is backing up properly. If you forgot too, work it into your next practice. Don't just assume you will cover it when you hit to the whole field.

I suppose that when I go back and read this, I will realize that I forgot several drills. I don;t have time to list out every possible play, skill, and a drill for each. That is yet another reason I want you to use your own brains to develop drills. I doubt I have offered up anything here that you couldn't have come up with on your own no matter what your experience level is. So your takeaway from this piece is, sit down and make your own list of drills. If you have taken sufficient time and put in the effort, you will cover all the skills your OFs need. And if at some game or other situation, you realize that you have forgotten something, just add to your list and make sure you cover it in the next several practices.

As a final note, if you live in a cold region and are now working indoors, you should still take this approach. Works out the skills and design your own drills. You will do much better this way than you would by copying someone else's drills without understanding the objectives of each.

Have a good practice!

Set Sights, Do The Work

2010-01-20T06:37:00.000-08:00

Today I want to switch gears a little and talk about college softball recruiting a bit rather than discussing mechanical and practice issues, or getting into some arcane rule interpretation. In order to do that, I need to dispel some myths, correct what I see as mistaken impressions of a few friends, and throw some stuff at you second hand that I picked up as a result of discussions I had with people I believe to be in the know. My hopes are not that I will offer a thorough education of the process in its entirety. Rather, I hope to shoot enough buckshot at the wall to give you something you don't know, to correct a mistaken view or dispel a myth propagated by those who pretend to be in the know. I'm gonna stick to what I believe is the beaten path. I may repeat items I have written about in the past. OK, enough of that. Here goes.

Note that I refer to college recruiting not college scholarships. That is because college softball recruiting is about more than just scholarships. College recruiting is about playing college ball whether there is athletic money involved or not. Scholarships alone is a too limited view and I'll explain why in a moment. I will also state some obvious things about playing in college in order to explain why I am discuss recruiting generally and not merely focused on scholarships.

There are a finite number of college scholarships out there for softball players. D1 schools have up to 12 of these to offer. D2s have less but a fair number. D3s do not offer athletic scholarships. There are other scholarships available from junior colleges and schools not in the NCAA. But the total number is fixed and it is not a huge one when compared to the number of kids playing ball at fairly high levels and who aspire to play in college. Also note that if a school has 12 scholarships to give, it gives those to all four classes. So in any given year, a school with 12 has an average of 3 available, excluding obviously the renewal of existing ones.

Also, college athletic scholarships are often split into equivalency pieces. For example, one "scholarship" might actually be split into two or more partials, one kid getting 50%, another receiving 30% and still another getting 20%. Top, top players may get full rides but most others get partials of some percentage. I know of a baseball player who received something like 60% and then was able to cover another 10% with academic money. His family must pay 30% of the cost of attending that university. That's a far cry from 100% but each family knows what it can and cannot spend on education.

A very good softball player I know of received an offer of 50%. Often folks talk, and I know I have mentioned this before, about colleges spending their money first up the middle - pitcher, catcher, SS, CF. But that does not mean these four positions should expect full rides while the others should expect partials. That may, on the hole, represent the average but I know of players up the middle who got partials, sometimes small partials, and others not up the middle who received full or large percentage scholarships.

If you are not playing softball for one of the top 20 or so teams in the country, chances are very good that you will not obtain a full ride to play ball at Arizona, UCLA, Florida or one of the other perennial members of the top 25 D1 club. When I say top 20 teams, I mean Gold level national powerhouses. If you are playing for one of the teams in the next tier and are an impact player, you have a shot. but if your level has nothing to do with Gold, high level showcase ball, or some other recruiting animal that has a track record of placing their kids at the top schools on full ride, you have to either get yourself up into this upper echelon or set your sights on something else. If you are the number two shortstop on an ASA B team, in all likelihood, AZ is not going to be picking you up on their radar.

Secondly, if you are not really looking to get a full ride or any athletic scholarship money at all at a top 25 NCAA D1 school, if you are not even looking at D1 or D2, the field is fairly wide open but you need to set your sights and do quite a bit of work. If your goal is merely to play somewhere, you still need to look into this recruiting thing. I would not advise you to ignore the college recruiting world, choose your school, get accepted and then plan to walk on and make the team once you arrive. That is much harder than it would otherwise seem. And if, by chance, you do make the team, chances are not that great you'll ever get onto the field or up to the plate during actual games.

To prove the point about merely walking on vs. being recruited though offered no scholarship money, consider that someone who is asked to come to a party stands in at least a little better shoes than someone who invites themselves. If say a college coach with no money to offer but at a small school that has an impeccable academic record wants to field a reasonably competitive team, which most do. She has to find herself players at each of the nine positions who can actually play the game pretty well. She will attend the showcases and other recruiting events in order to find said players. She knows that her two best pitchers, catchers, or outfielders are graduating in 2010. She will attempt to entice the players she needs to fill those roles. If you happen to walk on at such a school and, for example, you are a catcher the year the school has two incoming freshman for that position, lets just say that the only icing of your catching hand you can plan on, if you are very lucky, is out in the bullpen or after practices. Besides, if a coach were to recruit kids while offering no scholarship money and then play some walk-on of approximately equal talent in front of a recruited kid, her other recruiting efforts would likely begin to shoot blanks as word of this began to spread.

I'm not saying that a college coach has a moral or other obligation to keep or play a recruited kid. I'm simply stating the obvious which is that people act in their own best interests and that includes a college coach with no money to offer who recruits kids to play on her softball team. I once had to listen to the complaints of a parent whose son tried to walk onto the baseball team at a D3 school. He was a good player. He had a good tryout. He estimated that he was better than all the other walk-ons (non-scholarship players). He didn't even get looked at. His father angrily told me that the results of the tryout had been pre-ordained. The coach knew who he was going to take before tryouts began. These were all freshman. How did the coach know about them before the tryout?!

So, recruiting is about playing, not merely about scholarships, not merely about D1 and 2, and not merely about going to those big name schools everybody with a TV set knows about. Recruiting is about playing just about any level of college ball. Recruiting is about a bigger world.

Next, college coaches do not cold call at high school games. I know I have told you this before but I find I need to mention it again because I heard someone recently claim I was wrong about this. I couldn't disabuse him of the notion so I need to vent again. Let's agree that from time to time, though rarely, a college coach will actually go watch a high school game. Chances are that such a coach will not be coming to watch your .500 team play a non-conference game against another .500 team on a cold, rainy day in May. They may go to watch a team play when a kid they are already recruiting is pitching, catching or playing SS in the state playoffs against some undefeated team who has an ace pitcher that is going to a rival school next year. In such instances, it is also likely that the college coach is visiting a sick Aunt who lives in the vicinity of your school field because she happens to be in town for a game at a nearby college tomorrow and she happens to have nothing else to do. It is conceivable that she will be impressed by a freshman catcher who throws everybody out and hits three homeruns during that game. She may make some inquiries. But she is not there to look at all the players and see if she can find a few recruits who just don't happen to play travel ball.

It is also extremely unlikely that any college coach is going to come prospect at your 16U PONY tournament in June after her team has put down their uniforms for the year. She will not be at the ASA B tournament that draws in the best town teams from at least 15 miles away. She probably won't be at the "showcase" event featuring teams from two states which occurs the same weekend something really big occurs someplace else.

As a side note, there is a fairly common misconception that kids who fly to the west coast, Florida, Colorado, etc. to play showcases are looking for full rides to PAC10, SEC, ACC, Big 10 or Big 12 schools. The assumption being that the local coaches within driving distance of my area wouldn't go out there to recruit kids. Aside from the fact that some small school located far from these showcases has an impact player from California, Florida, Texas or some other softball haven, coaches from all over the country populate these events. I know many kids who went or are going to various schools within 4 hours drive from their homes and would not have ever met them nor been recruited if they didn't make 4hour flights to be seen by the local college coach.

I have been to a few recruiting events here and there. I have seen smallish northeast schools in California and Florida, junior colleges from the deep south in New Jersey, etc., etc. I know from reviewing tournaments and showcases that there are small colleges from upstate NY who have been to big events more than a thousand miles from their schools. There are D3s from all over the country at Florida's Rising Stars showcases. There are noon-NCAA schools from the Midwest at California showcases. The point is, if you are seeking to be recruited by a small local school that does not give athletic scholarships, you may still have to travel far from home in order to get their attention. They do not restrict their recruiting efforts to an area within 4 hours drive of their schools.

To drive home the point, let's say that the best pitchers come from California or Florida. Now, assume that at a large showcase featuring 100 or more of the best teams in the country, there are 300 or more pitchers. All the D1 and 2 schools in the country cannot hope to absorb all these pitchers. But somebody will likely have some of these girls on their team. If a school of solid (decent to great) academic reputation but no athletic scholarship money can draw in one of these kids who happens to be better than anyone else pitching in their conference, do you think they might pick up such a scrap? Is that made more evident if you consider the kid needs no financial assistance and is looking to major in a subject for which the school is one of the best? What if, such a kid finds the school through her own efforts, writes to the coach requesting that she come watch her play while also telling the coach how much she wants to go to her school and why? Coaches at many and varied schools attend the big showcases. It is not merely the top 25 D1 schools who are out shopping in California, Florida, Texas, etc.

Well, that discussion involves a lot about some showcases and I don't want to go deeply into the general subject of showcase ball. I do want to firmly state that college coaches are not out watching high school games on cold calling visits looking to find prospects. They are also not just staying close to home. If you limit yourself to local high school ball or travel ball on the middle range, they are not going to find you no matter how good of a game, month, or season you have.

I think the contrary mythology has developed because, when you visit a college's web site and view news or profiles of incoming freshman and existing players, the girls' high school accomplishments are often listed while not much from travel ball is. Also, here and there folks will claim to have seen a college coach at their high school or B travel game. Many times the supposed college coach is some guy who nobody knows that came to watch his relative or friend's kid play while wearing clothing from his alma mater or a college team he follows.

I know a fellow who likes to go to local college games in various sports. When he goes, he gets "geared up" with sweatpants, sweat or t-shirt and cap sporting the school's logo. Sometimes he leaves the college event to go watch his daughter's high school sporting event. He does not change his clothes between events! He and I often have a good chuckle about how people give him the eye and watch everything he does in such instances. I sometimes find myself in these situations too! This fellow and I have joked many times about how one day we are going to put a stopwatch and clipboard, maybe radar gun, into our cars so that when this happens, we can really look like college coaches!!

I once noted some guy I was sure was from Providence (RI school) at a high school game. I knew a girl on one team playing had already verballed to that school and assumed this was the coach coming to see her play. Then later I saw him again so I asked the girl's father. He laughed and told me the man was some other kid's father and "he just loves Providence, especially their men's basketball team." On yet another occasion, I was watching some 18U travel games and saw somebody wearing college garb. I asked a parent who he was and they told me he was the uncle of one of the girls who had signed with that school. . He was so proud she had obtained a scholarship that he purchased all their clothing and wore it everywhere!

Enough about that. Now let's talk some more specific stuff for girls who are not top players for top teams playing a grueling showcase schedule against other top teams in front of huge throngs of college coaches. When you go to see showcases, clinics, etc., one thing should strike you. Some of these girls are absolutely unbelievable athletes. The remainder are pretty good but nothing all that spectacular. There are the best and then there are all the rest.

The best and all the rest principle is true at every level of play. It is true at top showcases, lower level ones, and clinics put on by colleges or others. It is pretty much true no matter where you go in the softball world. I really don't know how it is possible to distinguish between many of these kids in terms of playing abilities once you get past the obviously great players. Yet, some of the rest will get full rides to some schools. Others will get partials. Still others will be recruited and get campus jobs more easily than the rest of the kids or perhaps find certain arcane kinds of financial aid is available to them but not everyone at the school. Some will get into institutions they might not otherwise be able to achieve. Some will go to schools of their choice that provide no assistance whatsoever and become the third pitcher or back-up CF ahead of other kids of equal ability who tried to walk on without having been recruited.

So how did these kids get recruited when they do not stand out from the "all the rest" crowd? That's pretty easy, at least in concept. They figured out where they wanted to go, learned what they needed to do to gain favor, and then did the work necessary to go there while being recruited.

The first part of the equation involves choosing schools to target. When I was in high school, I had no idea where I wanted to college or what I wanted to do once I got there. That was truie right until the day I graduated and walked away from childhood. Kids need help narrowing the very large list of possible colleges because not only must they accomplish the task, it is better if they do it in say the freshman or sophomore years so they have more time to target the softball coaches.

What I would do to begin the narrowing process is to list a kid's academic strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, and potential areas for several possible careers utilizing her strengths. If you are strong in history and English comp, you should probably not target schools known mostly for their engineering programs. If a kid is very strong in math but says she wants to teach high school or something along those lines, you don't want to target Ivies or other schools that have no programs in her areas of interest.

Try to be as honest with yourselves as possible and narrow the list of schools down to the ones which might be the best fit academically, socially and otherwise. Some kids need to be at a relatively smaller school because that's her personality. When I jumped to college from high school, my HS graduating class was just over 400. The college I chose had class size of about 2,000. That was a good fit for me. My brother graduated from the same high school but he was unintimidated by large throngs. He went to a much larger school that had, I think, 10,000 or more per class. I have heard stories and seen personal instances of kids who do much better in very small setting but who went off to large state institutions and then had to leave because they just could not take it. It takes more than brains top make it at Princeton. You kinda, sorta have to fit in to the kind of people who typically go there. Very large institutions where they get 100,000 at home football games are not necessarily well suited to kids from high schools having class sizes of 100 or less. An extremely bright, borderline genius kid may not like a teaching college despite the significant athloetic money thrown at her.

There are more types of colleges than there are flavors of ice cream or ways to cook shrimp (ha, yet another Gump reference!). There are many schools out there that are possible success stories for your kid but you must pare it down to a reasonable figure focusing on schools that seem like a good fit. Once you do that, you can look to see if they have softball teams. Create a list of your schools and the reasons why they seem like a good fit.

As an aside, I would try to list out schools which are in reasonable proximity of you. You know whether you and your child enjoy 8 hour rides or not. You know if you should cross off this school or that because she does not want to commute under any circumstances and it would be silly to enroll at a school around the corner from you if she is adamant about staying on campus. By contrast, a school as close as 30 miles can still be OK for staying on campus if they provide housing for kids that close.

Choose schools that will accommodate a kid who wants to change her major from English to Biology if your kid is strong in all subjects and is perplexed about whether she wants to write the great American novel or cure cancer. If your child is strong in science but may want to be a science teacher, make sure the colleges you choose have that available.

Also, be aware of the approximate cost and available, non-athletic aid at each school on your pared down list. Add a field for these figures noting the date on which you made the note because these kinds of things can change. Some schools' costs increase more rapidly than others. Some may lose or have lost a good portion of their endowments due to bad financial times. They very possibly may cut aid in the future. You'll want to re-verify your figures as time moves forward. Generally having these figures to reference will be a good aid to your decision making process but you will need to update them next year.

Now that you have your list of schools, the reason you (your child) would like to attend each one, whether they have softball or not, and the costs associated with each, start contacting the ones which do have softball. If you are a freshman trying to get recruited for softball, there isn't much reason to contact schools that don't have the sport, at least not until you are a junior. Don't drop them off your list but there's no reason for a freshman to contact a college so early except for the purposes we are discussing.

The best ways to contact college coaches at your schools of choice are via e-mails but before you start doing this, do the following:

1) Get registered with the NCAA Clearing House at NCAA.org
2) Look for, complete and file any prospective athlete questionnaire the ionsitution has online. If you don't find such a document after much effort, go ahead and contact the coach bec ause they will probably send you one.
3) Create some sort of record-keeping method via spreadsheet or written page on which to note dates and responses of your college contacts and keep it updated as the process moves forwards.

You most likely can find an e-mail address for most of the coaches you need to contact on the University's web site. Some few have forms to use in order to e-mail coaches. &n bsp; You can write your message offline and then use the form once you are ready.

Before you send an e-mail, it would be a good idea to not see this like texting or your other e-mail correspondence. Write out what you want to say as if you are writing an essay for school. The student-athlete should write the message but parents must review the writing before it goes out. Parents who write such e-mails should go over them with their daughters and allow her to change word choice to something she is more comfortable with. The coach knows he or she is dealing with a 14 or 15 year old kid. They do not expect advanced legalize from high school kids. And they are looking to connect with the kid, not the parent. They are also seeking kids who are mature enough to handle tasks like this.

Your first e-mail communication should tell the coach some things about yourself like why you want to attend their school. You are selling (I guess almost recruiting) them. Don't simply tell them that they have a wonderful softball program or you like their logo or mascot name. Tell them you want to go there because of their academic record and the fact that they are strong in the majors you are considering. Tell them that you expect to be able to have your application for admission accepted when it comes time for that because you fit their student profile. If you have a 100 average in honors mathematics or took the PSAT early and scored very high, you can tell them that, if you think it is important to establish your bona fides academically because this school has such high standards. As I understand things, Ivy League schools will not consider girls who have not yet taken the SATs. But many softball programs obviously will actively recruit kids who seem to have their academic houses in order long before they sit for entrance exams.

If you are going to play some showcases and suspect that the college coaches you are writing to may be in attendance, I strongly suggest that either in this first e-mail or in another sent shortly thereafter, you draw attention to the coach that you will be playing. Provide them with more than your name, the team name, and your uniform number. If you have a copy of your schedule, send them that, including times, places, and opponents. Let them know if your coach is amenable to putting girls into the lineup to allow college coaches the opportunity to see them. Some coaches are not and I suggest you get away from them since showcase ball is about, um, showcasing, not winning. If your coach finds it perfectly acceptable to be asked to put a player in just for the coaches, invite the coach to inquire if he or she does not see you on the field.

As an aside, I am rather serious about getting away from showcase coaches who won't put you in, maybe even get offended, when college coaches ask to see you. This is no way to coach a showcase team. Folks who cannot accommodate such requests should find another hobby. I recognize that there are many coaches out there who are like this. I just don't understand it. There are times when a team must show that it can play competitively to remain in a showcase in following years or to hold onto good field placement. But coaches on teams charging perhaps thousands of dollars, which deprive you of the opportunity of being seen when college coaches ask, should be avoided. Better yet, make sure everyone in your area knows that the ultra-expensive team repeatedly turned down college requests. They soon won't have a team to play and that should open the field up for another, more well run one.

At this particular juncture, I would like to raise a subject which relates to the topic and which I found rather interesting. I recently attended a brief recruiting seminar conducted by an organization promoting a new tool for aspiring college softball recruits. When I first heard about the tool, I must admit that I was not optimistic. I felt it was just a web site for putting video tapes and opther information online at a cost, a cost I was not willing to pay. I believed it was put together by some local coaches in order to make money from college softball recruiting. My understanding, if you can call it that, was corrected at the seminar.

The web site is Fastpitch Online Showcase (http://fastpitchonlineshowcase.com). The organization which runs the site held a "college showcase" event which was run like many of the camps and combines. Players performed certain drills, pitchers pitched under the radar gun, catchers popped under the stopwatch, hitters hit, all while being videotaped. The tape of the "showcase" in its entirety is being placed online for college coaches to view for the next month. Folks involved in the showcase suggested, though never stated, that a bunch of college coaches would be in attendance. I signed my daughter up purely to get the experience of participating in a combine setting, not to get in front of college coaches. Some folks made public inquiries as to whether there would be coaches actually in attendance or not. They rightly suspected that there would be few. I believe there were 4 or 5 actually on site.

But this thing was not some local get-rich-quick or fundraising scheme. And it was not intended to draw in tons of coaches. It was really intended as a sort of introduction to this new service. And, at least on the surface, these service, the web site, and the costs associated with it, would appear to be very reasonable. The idea in everything we have said up to this point is, most of the girls aspiring to be recruited for softball need to make connection with coaches and get the coaches out to see them play. This service is designed for that purpose. They have a database of schools and the e-mail contact info for those schools' coaches. The site itself offers up space to hold and present a fixed number of videos to use in order to draw the coaches in. They provide guidance on how to go about making connections with the coaches. They also can videotape players to make recruiting tapes to place on the web site.

I'm going to leave it at that because i want you to do your own homework on http://fastpitchonlineshowcase.com. As of this writing, I am not subscribed to the service and I am not making any sort of income from mentioning it. I merely came upon it and want to bring it to your attention for further investigation. if you do subscribe and have positive or negative feedback, I invite you share it with me.

So the idea is to develop a list of schools and then contact the college coaches. make this a personal message. Don't write some canned message and then personalize it with a "Go Fightin' Randoms" phrase thrown in to convince the coach that you have school spirit. if they have a beautiful campus and everybody knows that, tell the coach that you know that. if their engineering program is world renowned let the coach know that is why you want to go there. A college professor once told me that everybody has some one thing good about themselves. At times, with certain people, I have come to doubt that. But when one is courting another, it is customary to offer a compliment or flattery of reasonable measure in order to win them over. On the other hand, canned "lines" usually end up getting you soaked by a thrown drink. Be smart. Otherwise, maybe college is not for you!

If you have a video, I suppose you could mail it to the coach. Video is a great way to show your skill level. But the guy or gal making the decisions usually does not view every softball tape that the school receives. If someone is viewing it, it is probably an assistant chosen to screen such things before the head coach wastes their time. Your tape may very well end up in a box on the floor. The actual physical videos can be rather expensive when you have to send out 20 or more of them. It may be unproductive and inefficient to send hard copies. Instead, many kids today put their vids on Youtube or other types of web sites. That can be much more efficient assuming you can get coaches to go and watch it. That is really what the previously mentioned web site is all about and I agree with their premises on this. They believe it would be far more productive to place your vid where other softballers have theirs. It is hard to refute that logic.

Either in your first e-mail correspondence with the coach or in subsequent ones, it would be good to send along a link to your videos. This way the coach can quickly determine if there is any chance that you are a prospect. They probably won't come right out and say anything since their communication to you is very limited. Don't take it one way or the other if you don't hear back from them regarding your video. Instead, keep reminding them of it and you by e-mailing them once every month or something like that. An remember that the objective is to get them out to see you in person. So, if you are going to attend a showcase, one of the NFCA recruitment camps, or some such, write them with your schedule, etc., invite them to come watch you, and remind them about your video. If they come out and see you, you have succeeded. If they don't, ask again next time. You aren't badgering them unless they have somehow communicated that you are wasting your time. E-mails are easy to delete. Addresses can be presorted into junk or other folders. It is not as if you are calling them each day as they walk into their office or get up to leave for lunch. It is just an e-mail. It can be removed with one click of the mouse. And, if you are e-mailing a link to your video, you are not junking up their small office or desk area with something which merely collects dust and must be cleaned after they get over their bout with the swine flu.

In summary, evaluate your station in life - your place on the rungs of the softball ladder. Select a list of schools that fit you on a number of levels. Contact the coaches and do so repeatedly, preferably by e-mail. Get them to come out and see you. Be on your best behavior and show them what sort of person, student, and teammate you are. And once you have done this successfully, be wide awake for any clues as to interest level they provide you.

If you have asked a coach to come and watch you, she does, and she invites you to a clinic, go to it. If you invite her and she comes and then you invite her again and she comes, there's a good chance she saw something in you - assuming there is not some other kid doing the same and she is really there to see them. If she invites you to a clinic, there are 80 other kids there all of whom play your position, two of these are called over to a station where the coach watches them closely while you are not, most likely she is not interested. That doesn't mean you should stop recruiting her. But it may be your clue that perhaps you should not get your hopes up and perhaps should look in other directions. In some cases, coaches at these clinics will tell a kid outright that she does not fit the profile they are looking for. In many cases in which kids are singled out for closer looks, coaches do not communicate their interest immediately or directly. You have to read between the lines some. The process can be disconcerting but that's the way the real world is. You can try directly communicating with the coach and asking outright whether she has any interest. But I'm not sure this is the right way to go about things.

The one thing perhaps you should avoid once you begin walking the path is any direct questions about athletic scholarships. You should already know whether the school gives any athletic money. You should also have gained an understanding of the sort of kids they recruit. If you are likely to merely be a pre-arranged "walk-on," you probably can gauge that for yourself. You can ask coaches about financial aid questions without bringing up athletic money. They may or may not respond with direct answers to your direct questions. Everybody is different. But as with courtship, the idea is to engender interest before we get down to prenups.

OK, so that's what I have to tell you today. I hope there is something in it which you have not considered before. When I take the time to go to a tournament or seminar, my hopes are that one thing stands out as a take-away. I threw a lot of stuff up in order to hopefully get you one thing you didn;t know or correct something you had wrong. I'm not an expert. I am merely a person like you who is interested in sharing what I learn. I hope you got something out of this. If you already heard everything I had to say, sorry to have wasted your time. If you have something to add, write me. Just please don;ty write me stories about how some kid got discovered and erose to be the ace pitcher for Arizona when the coach there read about her in the paper or saw her at a high school game. I don't want anecdotal exceptions. I want some principles others can follow.

Under / Over Opinions

2010-01-19T06:37:00.000-08:00

I begin today by recounting one of the most ridiculous comments I have ever heard. Some bright person suggested that pitchers could gain significantly by engaging in a sport which would result in a sort of "over training" that would improve their strength while enhancing their windmill motion. The sport of choice? Bowling! As I said, that is a ridiculous assertion. Another assertion of far less dubious distinction but wrong, nonetheless, is the suggestion that pitchers would benefit tremendously by training via long distance running. Finally, the over training practice commonly used which really gets me nervous involves using a 12 ounce ball to pitch under the assumption that throwing with a much heavier ball will vastly improve speed. Yes, over training does build strength and can improve stamina and speed. But this must be done sensibly and demonstrate a higher degree of common sense than that evident in some of the foregoing.

Let's quickly dispense with the idea that bowling is a reasonable training activity for windmill pitchers. To begin with, think hard about the movement of the bowler and how that differs from the movement of the windmill pitcher. The bowler rests the ball in her hand with the palm facing skywards and the fingers hooked into holes drilled into the rather heavy ball. She aligns her body so as to allow her arm to swing down and place the ball in the right visual tunnel - just about the same one every time. She walks rhythmically forward to gain some momentum, steps forward and places the ball down as she swings her arm forward in a measured manner, spinning the ball with her stiff wrist so as to hit the pocket in the right place and hopefully knock all the pins down. She gauges her speed so as to get the movement just right in an effort to hit the same place just about every time. She does not roll the ball as hard as she possibly can or even close to that. The spin she creates is the result of releasing the ball with her hand to the side of it and sweeping the hand upwards in a "shake hands" position as she follows through.

Now contemplate the windmill pitcher for a moment. She does not walk forward because that is not permitted. She must obtain momentum via weight shift and a minor sort of rocking (fallling?) forward into a single stride. She opens her shoulders and hips about 180 degrees. She raises her arm as quickly as possible over her head and then downwards through the release point - something no bowler would do absent some mood altering ingestion.

The ball wrests more in her fingers than in her palm the way a bowling ball is held. She alters her arm angle ever so slightly and uses her fingers and wrist to spin the ball. If she is throwing a plain fastball, she may cock her wrist backwards and then as she comes to the release point she snaps the wrist to get the greatest possible spin and speed on the ball. If she is throwing a movement pitch, she will alter her wrist cock accordingly but then, again snap the ball so as to get the greatest possible spin of the desired type. The fingers play a much greater role in spinning the ball. And the wrist is loose, not stiff, as it snaps.

If a bowler did an arm movement like a windmill pitching at any point, she would injure her arm and possibly other body parts. If the windmill pitcher threw like a bowler, she would be slow and get little advantageous movement on the ball.

Bowling and windmill pitching have very little in common. The largest similarity between the sports is they both use a ball. They both involve converting inertial force into a thrown object though, in the case of bowling, speed doesn;t fit anywhere into the equation. Maybe the only other similarity is they involve somewhat, though not totally, similar underhand movements. I can throw a bowling ball down the ally as hard as anyone I know. When I bowl, people often stop and watch. Then they giggle. And the scoresheet shows the futility of a fast-bowled ball.

The stiff wrist is critical to bowling. It would be a killer in fastpitch. Bowling with the fingers used similar to windmill would result in nothing less than a bloody bowling ball. I don't care to go on about the differences between the sports. As I said, it is an absurd comparison. But the thinking behind it really stems from the theory of over-training which tells us that doing something a little more than usual will build the strength necessary to get stronger at the desired activity. And that generally is a correct approach, depending on what it is you are trying to improve.

The second assertion of using long distance running to improve pitching, or any sort of play on the softball diamond for that matter, is one I criticize carefully. Running a mile or two, maybe more, regularly is a very important part of healthy living and should be encouraged for any athlete. Every person who steps onto any athletic field is made better by being in better shape. Running for conditioning purposes can help an athlete in so many ways that I cannot possibly hope to list them all. But from the perspective of merely improving the play of an otherwise in-shape softball player because it will somehow make them stronger or better at some skill, well, that is a wrong assertion.

Fastpitch softball is a sport which requires many very short explosive movements. The longest duration of any exercise might be when playing on a field with no outfield fence and a ball is hit well over the outfielder's head. Either the kid who runs out the homerun or the outfielder pursuing the ball gets a sustained exercise of perhaps 12-15 seconds. Of course, the outfielder will switch out of adrenaline mode if she finds herself sprinting to retrieve the ball for more than about 6 seconds, knowing, as she does, that they ain't gonna get nobody out on this play! The baserunner will not likely be able to leg out a homerun if it takes her more than say 14-15 seconds no matter how far she hits the ball. So the longest possible exertion is perhaps 15 seconds.

A maximum 15 second assertion which requires sometimes rapid recovery stands little to gain from greater cardio-vascular health. Track sprinters at say the 100 meter distance do not spend a lot of their effort to run distances of say five miles and thereby improve their cardio. Sure, they're in great shape and that is necessary. But when they are working towards better outcomes in competition, they focus on explosion and repeating short sprints rather than performing marathons. That's not really a question. An athlete doesn't even really use the same systems for generating energy for the muscles when she performs a 10 second sprint vs. when she runs for a several minutes.

When swimmers train for their particular distance, the sum total of their training may involve a pretty good number of yards or meters. But for someone who sprints in their races, that long total distance results from many shorter sprints. They do perform over-training but, for example, someone who races at say 100 or 200 meters, is likely to perform race-level training at perhaps 25% to 75% of the race distance repeatedly with short amounts of rest between each rep. When reps at say 500 meters are performed, the swim usually involves some sort of stroke mechanics concentration or shorter sprints during the rep and slow downs in between. So even when the athletic endeavor involves over-all longer periods of time, the training does not involve significantly greater than the race distance.

Power lifters, for example, who lift say 300-400 pounds in their particular exercise do not perform 30 rep sets at one tenth to one quarter the goal weight of competition lifting. They do perform rep lifting to improve strength, recovery and general conditioning. But using one quarter weight in order to extend the exercise to use body systems never used in competition is largely a waste of time. That's true in almost every sport one can imagine. Fastpitch should not be considered any different.

Many pitchers do in fact use their legs. Leg strength is important if the pitcher relies upon it to generate speed. But given the nature of the sport, the leg part of the exercise during game conditions involves quick, very short bursts repeated about 10-20 times with about 10-30 seconds of rest between reps, followed by about a 5-10 minute rest during which no exercise occurs - unless of course the pitcher hits the ball over the outfielder's head and needs to leg out an extra-base hit. Then, of course, the pitcher repeats this routine until she is driven out of the game or it ends. Without judging the practice, if a pitcher is one of THOSE aces, she perhaps has to repeat this routine for as many as 300 iterations of the pitch in a day. The typical pitcher probably has to perform the exercise 100 plus times a day, possibly two or more days in a row.

I am not sure I see how running 5 miles per day, 4 or more days per week really helps the pitcher in the performance of her duties. It cannot hurt to be in shape for many reasons. But one does not develop the capacity to maintain speed through the explosion-recovery-explosion routine, no matter how many times it gets repeated, by running long distance. You don't even use the same muscle fibers in the two activities. Notwithstanding Forrest Gump's fictional accomplishments on the football field as well as those on the open road, someone who explodes in motion needs those fast twitch muscles to be developed well in excess of the longer twitch ones.

My conclusion is running is generally good to get an athlete or anyone in shape, though we won't address the impact on the joints of running on macadam. Athletes in this sport never run more than 240 feet. Far more commonly, they run 60-120 feet, even when they play the outfield. Therefore, it is common to see softballers limit their running distance to repeated sprints of 60 feet or less. I have seen both pitchers and other players perform sprints as short as 10 feet in speed-agility training. Yes, many college and high school softball athletes have coaches who make them run distance to get in better overall shape. But this is mostly wasted effort, not to mention time, if the athlete is already in good shape and the desired outcome from the exercise is explosiveness - faster pitching, faster running, better outfield performance, etc.

Taking a step back and looking just at the outfielders who are perhaps the only athletes on the field whose actual game benefits at all from distance running, in my humble opinion, their running should be done on surfaces similar to the outfield itself, i.e. grass of somewhat uneven nature. The reason outfielders benefit from running is because they must learn to run while keeping their heads quiet in order to vector balls in flight. By contrast, no matter how good of a distance runner a player is, if she bobs her head or allows it to bounce when she runs, she will have trouble tracking balls in the outfield.

Rather than having outfielders run miles on blacktop, I would prefer to have them run sprints between foul lines in the mid outfield with somewhat minimal recovery periods. Those runs would be over training for the outfielders. They're probably too long. You would perhaps get better results by limiting them to runs from the foul line to dead center since they'll never have to run any further than that. More importantly, the runs involve a realistic surface. And if they have to track balls towards the middle and end of that sprint, that would be best.

Personally, I would rather just put outfielders in the field and hit or throw balls to them for long periods of time to combine explosion-recovery-explosion training with other skills like tracking and mechanical issues at the same time. What is more critical to me than any outfielder's need to be in good distance running shape is her ability to keep her head virtually motionless when chasing line drives and flies. Good distance runners often keep their head motionless to conserve energy. But simply having your outfielders run distances is not going to engender that particular behavior.

Finally, I have seen large numbers of girls warming up or training while using those overweighted balls. I have a set of balls which range in weight from 8 ounces up to 12. The regulation fastpitch softball is 6.8 ounces. These we9ighted balls can be purchased individually or in a set of progressively heavier balls. The cannonball weighted training softball is often seen at fields and practice tunnels. Those weigh about 16 or so ounces, more than double the weight of a softball.

I do not have a problem with pitchers or others using over-weighted balls to train for softball but the way they are used often makes me nervous. I haven't read the literature for the cannonball but I have for other brands of weighted balls. And this literature advises against performing full windmill (and other throwing) motions while using weighted balls. Rather, the manufacturers encourage users to do motion isolation drills - partial motions - with their products. They do this for a particular reason - lawsuits. They don't want the legal liability when someone gets injured or perhaps ends their career by blowing out a shoulder while performing full windmill pitches with their product. That should tell you something.

The manufacturers tend to suggest certain specific, very limited drills like wrist snaps. Others who advise about how to train pitchers and others warn in all CAPS or boldly against overuse, more than 15-20 throws per session. For this, I am going to be a little over cautious. I don't think anyone should do a full windmill with a 12 ounce or bigger ball. My reason for taking this approach is I want all pitchers to do what they can to avoid injuries because the quickest way to make your pitching speed drop off is to be forced to undergo surgery followed by a months long rehab.

I really do want pitchers to get faster. But as I look out onto the vast pitching world, I seldom, if ever, see a perfect or near perfect motion. Actually it is a rare occurrence when I observe pitching motions that I do not see something that can be corrected which would yield better speed. So my suggestion is, before you go try to find something that will yield you greater speed, take care of the little things. Work on your mechanics. Then, take a look at the pitching motion as a whole and figure out what it is about it that can yield you greater speed.

There are few people in this sport who would dispute that pitching speed comes largely from the first and last parts of the motion. Some would deny that the beginning, the legs, provide much speed. Some emphasize the legs more than the arms towards the end. But almost nobody suggests that it is the in-between that generates the greatest speed. Yet, when you use weighted balls for a full motion, you are working the middle part in a manner which may be dangerous to your body.

I suggest to you, and here I have to steal from one visitor with whom I have frequent exchanges, that the windmill motion is a bullwhip. It begins with the biggest, heavy part of the body exploding into motion. The inertial force of the body created via the legs at push off is roughly equivalent to the first motions of a bullwhip - when the user thrusts the handle forward before creating the whipping movement.

To be clear, the in-between stuff is largely a harnessing of this inertial force. It isn't unimportant but it is not some weight-lifting move. It is the mechanics of the body as the force is run from the handle down towards its end point that are more important than strength. A good circle is very important to speed. But you do not need super strong (over-trained) muscles to accomplish the task.

On the other side, as the arm comes towards release point, the inertia moves towards the tip of the whip. Here muscular explosiveness again comes into play as the bicep and other arm muscles are invoked to transfer the inertial force to the finger tips as the ball is released. Obviously, weighted balls do not help the leg explosion. The weight of an over-weighted ball, used in a full windmill, wears on the shoulders and other body parts as the mechanics convert the body's inertia towards its end point. And then, at the end of the motion as the arm comes forward and the forearm muscles are invoked, this is where we tend to see weakness in the human body and precisely here that we need to work muscles, as well as mechanics, to realize greater speed.

Many folks in both baseball and softball mistake the weighted ball for some kind of panacea to improve throwing speed and strength. If that were the valid, then baseball players would be able to throw tennis balls very far and softball players would be able to really make a mark throwing a baseball. It doesn't work that way. If you were limited to throwing softballs for a long period of time and then picked up a baseball, I suggest that you would be very uncomfortable throwing the smaller ball. Maybe I don't need to tell you this. Maybe you have already tried it. I have. I used to love throwing a baseball. But after years of throwing with my kids using the 11 inch and then 12 inch ball, I hate throwing that little baseball. It feels awkward in my hand but more to the point, its lighter weight sort of bugs me. I might be stronger than I was but my mechanics for throwing the baseball are so messed up that I completely spaz out. I think I can actually throw the softball almost as far as a baseball. That shouldn't be true using the over-training logic. But it is true.

I read a comment on some product-buying web site made by a person who had purchased over weighted balls for training. That comment said, "Good way to warm up quickly ... compare it to swinging a heavy bat before batting." Do you use a heavy bat before stepping up to the plate? How much heavier? Does it work for you? Really? What does it do?

Guys in the big leagues use heavy bats, sometimes a mere steel rod, before stepping up to the plate. I suppose that after all the effort and money that is put into the sport, this must work and be important. But what are they doing when they swing the steel rod? The only thing they are doing is loosening up their bodies to prepare to swing their real bats. Anyone who picks up a very heavy bat and tries to improve their timing by swinging in the on-deck circle using that heavy bat as the pitcher pitches is fooling themselves. The timing of a swing has more to do with decision making than it does with being able to swing something heavy. If anything, you might mess up your timing by swinging too heavy of a bat because you are conditioning yourself to make a decision far too early. This is why I have never purchased my kids a donut or one of those weighted sleeves to place on their bats. I can see using a weight to loosen up but once you are loose, take the darn thing off and take some swings using your real bat by itself.

A worse practice involves dry swinging a significantly heavier bat than the one you use in games during the off season to build strength. When you do this, you are altering your swing mechanics - the more important element of a powerful swing. You are transferring weight to parts of the body in greater proportion than they will be used when you actually step up to the plate. If you use to much weight to train with, your swing is going to be all out of sync when you use an unweighted bat in games and scrimmages.

I suggest that a one ounce difference will give you all that you need. That means using a 32 ounce not a 34 ounce practice bat if you use a 31 in games. That means not taking a bunch of dry swings using a weight during the off season. I have nothing against bat weights used to loosen up briefly but don't think that a singles hitter will become a homerun goddess by using 4 or more ounces on her bat during the off season. The effect of using a significantly over weighted bat beyond the mere loosening steps is mostly psychological.

Moving back to pitching, a very slightly heavier ball may offer some over-training benefits especially for pitchers who have very good mechanics - a rare occurrence. Rather than buying 12-, 16- or more ounce balls, you can really make your own device without much effort. If you take very small nails and pound them into regulation softballs, you can create your own weighted balls. (Do I need to mention that there are benefits of using a real ball? The weighted softballs I bought are somewhat difficult because the seams are not raised the way real balls are. When you use them too much, you can lose the feel of the real ball.) So if you take real balls and put very small weights inside them, you can get a little over-training without endangering your body, with very little cost, and without loosing the feel of the ball. Very small nails (I don't know what they are called) can be pounded into ordinary balls at the holes for the seams. You can take a 6.8 ounce ball and turn it into a 6.9 or 7 ouncer. That really should be sufficient.

It is worth noting that most of the pitchers I see trying to use heavy balls to increase speed tend to be relatively slower pitchers. That is, they do not throw 65. They want to head in that direction. So they try whatever they can find in an effort to improve their speed. I cannot remember the last time I saw a really fast pitcher working with a weighted ball other than in the early stages of a mere warm-up when they are just waking up their muscles.

Fast pitchers have things which make them throw fast. They may have bodies made for the purpose - for example those 6 foot tall girls with long arms and fingers (i.e. longer bullwhips). They may have superior mechanics - this is probably the most common cause of speed. They may have a relatively high percentage of fast twitch vs. slow pitch muscle fibers. They may have developed their fast twitch muscles rather than the slow twitch ones. They may have built up their muscles for fast pitching through many, frequent, effective practice sessions while using proper mechanics since they were pretty young. But most likely, they did not achieve speed through weight-lifting of any particular sort.

I entitled this piece "Over / Under" and you may have noticed that the primary focus is "over." I'm not all that sure what to say about "under training." I sduppose I addressed it inadvertently when I discussed working explosive movements like softball players doing 10-15 foot sprints. I think under training has a similar place in sport as over training. Generally, the effects are psychological. Sometimes there can be real physical advantages but they aren't quite as powerful as some seem to think.

If you are used to swinging a 32 ounce bat, you train adding several ounces to it for dry swings, your real bat probably feels like an under training. Your bat speed will be very fast relative to the heavier bat. Similarly if you never add a single weight to your bat but, instead, train by using a light bat, your swing will should be quicker. Some folks like to use this technique - not necesasarily for swinging - in order to generate explosive speed in various movements. For example, some pitching coaches and trainers try to improve arm speed by having pitchers work with lighter balls.

I don't really know if this approach works. I suppose it could but I think the difference is, again, psychological. In track, swimming, and certain other sports, the athletes taper down their practice loads as championship competition approaches. This has physical effects as well as psychological ones. I suppose the physical effects are more important but I never want to devalue psychological impacts. By the time one enters the competition, one is about crazed by the lack of work. I remember as a swimmer that I felt as if I was going to kill someone if I wasn't allowed into the pool to compete.

Another thing swimmers do aside from tapering down their workouts is to shave their bodies under the theory that it cuts resistance in the water. I don't know in quantitative term s how much this matters. But I can tell you that cutting your head hair down to the nubs or shaving your head and then removing all or most of your other body hair does make you feel different in the water. I remember in college swimming in the conference championship meet. I placed fourth or fifth in the preliminaries. Then, we we came onto the pool, the guy who had finished behind me in prelims had shaven his head before the finals and removed I suppose most of the rest of his body hair. I had spent my time more wisely, going out into the Bronx and finding some low-life bar and pool hall in which to spend my meal money. I beat baldy by quite a bit. His time was slower in the finals. Mine was faster.

So under training may have some beneficial results but I think much of this is tied to the psychological. The one exception to this, I believe, happens when one is working fundamentals like pitching or swing mechanics. I believe that an athlete can work on mechanics without the tools and thereby help to train the body to perform better. I have used this in swimming, baseball and football. For example, I believe I greatly improved my ready position at linebacker and my stance for both offensive and defensive line by practicing it and moving from it without any equipment on, while working in front of a large mirror.

I was once putting too much weight on my fingers in down football stances. Coaches corrected me but the final result, which they highly approved of, involved putting too little weight on the hands. They wanted my head way up but once I started working this on my own, I quickly saw that I was not in a good explosive position. Working off the field, out of gear, gave me the best tool to fix my stance. I did the same thing for swimming my main stroke, butterfly, an d vastly improved it. Also, working in front of a mirror without gear or a ball in my hand was a far better way to improve my catching mechanics. I imagine the same is true for windmill pitchers - although it is very difficult to get girls to work their mechanics on their own, in front of a mirror because they feel stupid doing so.

When we use video to show a player major things she is doing wrong - not when we break down the smallest aspect of, for example, a swing - we are really doing something that could be done in front of a mirror. And if a kid under-trains by performing a swing or her windmill motion without a bat and ball, I think she can condition her muscle memory almost as well as she can on the field. I expect this can be accomplished with an underweight ball but I hesitate to suggest either that or a significantly underweight bat. There are just too many risks associated with this practice.

So in summary, I believe there are benefits to both under- and over-training. Those benefits are somewhat limited and these techniques need to be used sparingly and intelligently. No pitcher is going to get anything out of using a bowling ball! I hope I have explained myself well here but if you have questions, comments, etc., please feel free to write in with them. The only thing I ask is that you do not simply provide your opinions or tell me how you think it is OK for pitchers to throw full windmill using a 16 ounce ball. I have, I think, made clear why I am against this. I would prefer to be pointed to scientific studies which refute my opinions rather than merely consider contrary points of view.

Some Common Catching Mistakes

2010-01-15T05:11:00.000-08:00

Most fundamental mistakes, though certainly not all, begin at one's connection to terra firma, the feet. From there, the most common mistakes move up to the general stance though many of these are caused by the positioning of the feet. And then there are the little nagging habitual nuance type problems that plague most, if not all, players. The Catching position is no exception to this general rule.

Catchers make all sorts of big and little mistakes. But what I guess bothers me is many of these are actually taught by a majority of team coaches. No team coach can possibly know every position and I doubt many individuals can be a real expert in even one position. As team coaches, we have so much to be concerned about that it is virtually impossible to focus enough on one position that we become masters of all there is to know about it. Yet many coaches presume to know their most critical positions which undoubtedly includes the catcher. The reason private coaches exist in our world is that these individuals focus on one aspect of play, teach it, and then adjust their own thinking in accordance to results and the different opinions of their peers, or at least they should do this. If we team coaches presume to know a single position and teach what we know to our charges, it is critical for us to really study all the varying opinions about different nuances private coaches teach. we must approach the subject with humility. We must really think things through before we teach and then instill a habit to the play of our charges.

Like I said, there are a number of common mistakes catchers make. Today, I want to go over some of these. But rather than start with the feet and work upwards, I want to do the reverse. I want to go over some finer points and then drop back into the larger fundamental issues because I believe this 9is the right way to have you really consider some of the important issues.

First of all, I start with the fist. Many coaches say to their catchers, "make a fist with your throwing hand and put it behind your back or knee during the pitch so that you don't break fingers on foul tips." The motivation is right. They don't want their catchers out with a broken finger or two. And that particular problem is a common one. But the advice is actually quite wrong.

To begin with, the phrase "make a fist" implies that one does what one would do when throwing a punch, close the four fingers tightly and then wrap the thumb into the fist. That does not work to preserve a catcher's hand on a foul tip which strikes the throwing hand. What you want instead is to close the thumb and then wrap the fingers in behind it. If you did that and punched someone, chances are even that you would break your thumb. But you're not throwing a punch. You're protecting your thumb, arguably the most important digit for playing softball. Secondly, if you try this, you may notice that it is almost impossible to make a tight fist thumb first. That's a good thing because the tighter you make the fist, the more likely you are to experience a broken finger. There must be some give in the closed hand so that there is a shock absorber to the impact of the ball. A fist with thumb on the outside is tighter than one with the thumb inside. And that creates the give or shock absorber effect we need. The primary goal of making a fist is to preserve the thumb and the secondary purpose is to preserve all the other fingers by not leaving them hanging out there to be busted by a wayward ball.

Next, if you advise your catchers to place their closed fist behind their back or knee, I want you to perform a long study using videotape. Videotape every catcher you can find who puts their hand behind their back or knee. At the moment the ball is about 5 feet from the hitting zone, note where the catcher's hand is now located. At least 90% of the time, the catcher will have pulled her hand out from behind her and brought it towards the glove. This is a natural human reaction. Most people cannot help this. Most people cannot be trained to keep the hand back because it is a natural motion to put both hands in front of you in order to protect oneself.

If you force yourself to think about a frontal knife attack, you probably think the best and most natural move would be to dodge the incoming weapon. But, in fact, most people who are attacked like this do not react that way. Instead, what they do is instinctively try to protect themselves by putting up their hands. Obviously your hands and arms are not much defense against an incoming sharp knife. But that is what people do. That is what is commonly discussed as an instance in which the victim "put up a fight." But they put up their hands and arms because the body's most reactive tendency is to protect the vital organs. -; You can live with injuries to your arms and hands but you cannot live with a knife wound to your vital internal organs and rather than chance the injury and dodge the incoming person, the reflex action is to protect using the extremities.

So catchers are just as ill advised to put their throwing hands behind them as they are to make a punching fist. The first reaction is to pull the hand out from behind you. And when the ball is fouled, you are more likely to be struck. If you have a punching fist, that strike is going to bust a finger. catchers would be better off if they made the catching fist and then placed the throwing hand behind the glove by a few inches. If you watch a catcher who does this, what you will most likely notice is the throwing hand moves in tandem with the glove hand. The "fist" remains behind the glove and protected.

As side notes to this discussion, you do not want the hand right up against the glove because if will absorb shock on hard pitches. rather keep it back those few inches so that when the pitch is caught, it won't be struck by the shock absorbing glove and so that as the glove slows down, the throwing hand will be right there next to the glove. Lastly, the catching fist, with the thumb on the inside, is a much more natural way for the hand to go into the glove to get the ball. Because the four fingers are not tightly wrapped and because the thumb generally springs open immediately upon releasing the fist, it is just a hair quicker.

Another common error catchers make is putting on those ridiculous pads attached to the shin guards behind the knees. This would seem to be an innocuous mistake but let's take a look at it. What are those things for? What are they supposed to do? Protect the knees? Get serious!

The first time I saw those pads on a set of shin guards, I thought to myself, "I wish I had those when I caught. My legs would not have gotten so tired." Then I watched a catcher wearing them and realized that they are actually never used, not should they ever be used. It is easy to watch catchers giving signs to their pitcher and think they are some sort of seat which protects the knees by not allowing the upper and lower legs to close to tightly together. But if you put on a pair of shin guards with those things attached and then give some signs or pretend to, the first thing you'll notice is they are bearing no weight. That is, the pads behind the guards are too small to get your butt to without bringing your upper and lower legs too closely together. Even if you did bring your legs together enough, those things are soft and spongy. They can bear no more weight than a pillow. They crush up like any foam object when weight is put on them. They not only don't bear weight and thereby provide absolutely no support, but they tend to encourage catchers to sit when that is the last thing they should be doing.

As a final assault on the shin guard pads, there is one real effect they do have which is a negative one. But discussing this brings me to a mistake many catchers make which has nothing to do with any of the other stuff in this piece. The mistake many catchers make in travel and high school ball is not backing up first base.

When there are no runners aboard and a ground ball is hit to the infield, a catcher should run or trot down the first base line in order to retrieve the ball in the event the throw gets away from the first baseman. If she does that, about half the bad throws will be retrieved before the runner can advance to second.

Obviously, if there is a runner on third or second, the catcher must hold her ground and be there to cover the plate. But with runner on first, I would prefer she back up first on grounders because the runner from first should not even make third before she is able to again get back t0o home and cover her bag. The one exception to this general rule is when there is a runner on first and the batter bunts. In that case, there isn't much purpose to backing up first and the focus should be on either getting the ball if the bunt is within 5 or 6 feet of the plate, or telling the infielder where to go if it is further out.

For years I have watched fastpitch softball catchers not back up first. It bothered me but I wrote it off as just one of those things. Then I watched good girls playing at showcases and realized real softball catchers do in fact back up first. If they have those stupid pads on the backs of their legs, not only do they look foolish running but I imagine those pads bouncing up and down distract them and also perhaps slow them down a bit. So take those do nothing pads off your shin guards. They serve no positive purpose and the guy who invented them already has made enough money from his invention.

The next mistake catchers and their coaches make begins the move down towards the feet. When catchers repeatedly make bad throws to second, the natural reaction most coaches have is to tell their catcher that she is not "finishing the throw." What they mean and sometimes say is she is not following through. Unfortunately, that usually has nothing to do with the bad throw.

The most common error which is made when a throw to second sails to the rightfield side is she is throwing three quarters (like a two seam baseball fastball) or she is actually sidearming it in order to be fast. Both mistakes are bad. A third common mistake happens to the catcher who continually throws high and that would seem to be thje result of not following through. That may have something to do with it but is not usually the reason.

Generally sidearming catchers eventually play another position due to the sail of the ball and repeated errors caused thereby. Aside from the throw being an error, it also places the SS in a precarious position as she reaches to catch the ball right into the path of the incoming baserunner. Those who value their SS generally get pretty mad when their catcher repeatedly throws balls on the RF side of second.

Three quarters throwers also get some sideways sail on the ball but many times they are throwing three quarters to, again, be faster. It isn't so much a matter of finishing the throw. Yes sidearmers and three quarter throwers can learn over years of experience to adjust their throws and hit the mark. Similarly the 12 to 6 thrower can learn to adjust her throw and get it lower. But what is most commonly missing from the analysis is foot positioning.

Everything in athletics begins with the feet because they are our connection to the Earth. There is little you can do if your feet are improperly placed. You can't field a ball; hit; or throw, if your feet are in bad position. Catcher's feet are critical to many aspects of their play and we'll get to this in a moment but the point here is: if your catcher is making inconsistent or bad throws, don't look at the release point or finishing point of the arm. instead, watch her feet. When she attains proper foot position on a consistent basis, most likely her throws will be more consistent and better. If you want to know how the feet should be when throwing out a baserunner, you should consult a coach or, better yet, get Dave Weaver's New England Catching Camp video. If you fix the feet, your catcher's throws will be better.

Now, to the most critical element, to the item which caused me to write today's piece, to the single most common mistake in positioning which most catchers do and most coaches never correct or do not know to correct. The catcher's stance and foot positioning are the most common mistake.

Let's take a look across the broad spectrum of catchers. If you take a simple survey of catchers in travel ball and high school, what you will find is the majority of these girls are up on the balls of their feet and toes on every pitch. It does not particularly matter if they are just receiving the pitch or have a potentially stealing runner on base. They adjust their body position with a runner on but they do not typically adjust their feet. I'm not saying they should necessarily adjust their feet with runners on. Rather, I'm simply noting that they are up on their toes most or all of the time.

Let's take a second survey. Ask a bunch of coaches, team and private trainers, whether this is correct or not. You will get a few people who will say that it is wrong and then explain why and how a catcher should position herself. But most of the answers will be either that it is right or that it doesn't make much difference to them but they would prefer that all their defensive players be up on their toes at all times. Some few will answer that they want their catchers to be on their toes at least when runners are on base. Only the first group, which says they want their catchers to not be on their toes or balls of their feet, is correct.

I expect some folks at this point are getting a little anxious if not downright mad at me. Some have just left because while they doubt I am right about the catcher keeping her hand behind her back and the fist thing is just a ridiculous comment to make since it really doesn't matter. What really cheesed them off was this foot placement thing. This guy is wrong. he just doesn't know what he is talking about. Most catchers are up on the balls of their feet and most coaches teach it that way because ... well ... it's right. That's the way I learned it and I was an all-county catcher. This guy has gone too far this time.

OK, throw a punch at me if you want to. I can take it. But if you have stayed and are considering what I have to say, start reading again.

In order to verify what I am about to say, you're going to need to go out and get yourself a catcher or a reasonable facsimile of one - somebody else. So go get somebody. I'll wait. I'm in no particular hurry and this point is so critical that the rest of the class will just have to wait for you. Get moving. Go get a catcher.

Tell your catcher to get into receiving position while making her stance begin with the balls of her feet or on her toes. OK. Now take both your hands and put them on your catcher's shoulders. Give a slight push and over he or she goes. It's hard to be balanced while crouching on your toes. Your catcher is unbalanced (maybe I am too but that's not relevant). That's test one.

Second test time - ask your crouching catcher to reach out to her sides with each hand as far as she can reach without moving her body. Mark the spots with balls. Now move those balls six inches away from her and the spot and ask her to pick them up. The first thing she'll do is shift her weight to the opposite side of the ball and then step with the foot on the ball side and reach for it while picking it up. That will probably happen equally on each side though one side will possibly be better, quicker and less awkwardly than the other.

For a third test, do the same thing but move the balls a full foot away. the distance at this point should be about the inside line of the batter's box on each side. In other words, all we are asking her to do is retrieve balls on the ground within the distance from the inside of each batter's box, left- and right- handed. The retrieval is slower and looks even more awkward. Again, if you had accurate instruments, you will find that she is slightly faster to one side than the other but both sides take fairly long.

The fourth test is to place a ball on the ground to her side as far away from your catcher as the worst pitch you have recently seen. That likely is a couple inches inside the batter's box on either side and the results will be similar to the previous tests.

Now, finally, put a ball three to four feet in front of your catcher, about at the plate, and ask her to pick it up. She will either get up awkwardly to get it or fall over forwards. Neither movement is particularly elegant looking and neither is a particularly fast motion. Something is wrong with this "on-toes" stance.

The reason we would like our defensive players to be "on their toes" is so they are able to react quickly. That seems logical enough. But we forget one simple thing when 3we encourage catchers to do this. When an infielder is on her toes, she gets there while watching the pitcher go into her motion. She does it at the last possible second like the way the batter perhaps loads. If we were talking about batters, we would never encourage them to step into the box and then load immediately while waiting for the pitcher to step onto the rubber, take the sign and then begin the pitch. That's because early loading causes the muscles to stiffen up and slows down the swing. Yet, we tell our catchers to throw the ball back and then load immediately, even before the batter gets into the box. How quick should we expect her to be regardless of how being on her toes effects her ability to move laterally or forwards? If anybody's muscles are too over extended to explode at the right moment, it is those of the catcher. But this is a minor point.

The more important points having to do with proper foot positioning of the catcher involve the acts of receiving and throwing out baserunners. The proper positioning of a catcher's feet are flat footed - heals down - and with the weight slightly on the outside of the feet.

I was watching two catchers ply their trade recently while standing with the father of one. one girl was flat footed, the other on her toes. I was with the father of the girl on her toes. He was commenting about each kid in a constructive way. He noted that he thought his kid was the better catcher but the other kid had better lateral movement, particularly to her left, particularly on balls in the dirt. I didn't mention the flat footed thing to him because I have done so before and he takes my comments to be wrong. But it was clear that the other girl had better lateral movement precisely because she was flat footed. I'm getting ahead of myself so I'll come back to lateral movement shortly.

Perhaps more importantly, while this fellow noted that his daughter had the better arm, he noted that the other kid was a little more accurate. As games wore on, this became more evident not due to watching more throws but rather because the kid on her toes got tired more easily. As she got tired, she had greater and greater difficulty getting her feet into proper position to make an accurate throw. The other kid, probably just as tired as the on her toes girl, continued to make accurate throws and I believe this is because it took considerably less effort to get into throwing position with the flat footed approach.

There is good reason why a flat footed catcher has better lateral movement but rather than explain this in detail, I'll demonstrate it to you. Hopefully, you let your demonstrating catcher go back to her De Grassi program. You don't need her for this one. Instead, I'd like you to experience it for yourself.

Get into the catcher's crouch on the balls of your feet. No imagine a pitch a bit outside and move to catch it. You either turn a bit sideways or you lose your balance to the side of the pitch. Now do the same for an inside pitch. Basically the same thing happens. Now try this with a wide base, flat footed, with your weight very slightly on the outside of your feet. What haoppens is your body shifts slightly and gracefully to the place of the ball. So the lesson is, when a catcher is on the balls of her feet, she cannot move to catch balls to either side of herself without getting a bit unbalanced or shifting her weight sideways. That's not good for a couple reasons.

When we incorrectly teach "framing" (Gosh, I hate that word), we emphasize the glove movements. We tell girls to pull the ball back "into the strike zone" as if that might engender a strike call from the umpire. I've discussed that before and don;t wish to bring it up in detail again. But let's just acknowledge that a catcher is fooling nobody when she pulls a ball back into the strike zone. What she can do instead is easily catch a marginal strike without giving the umpire any sort of body language hints that the pitch is marginal. That is accomplished when she moves only slightly to the side with just a little body shift. If she reaches, steps, or obscures the ump's view because she does not have good lateral movement, chances are pretty good that an ump will call what is really a strike as a ball. So having that good balance, position, and lateral flexibility is the real key to "framing" properly.

Perhaps more importantly, the flat footed girl with the better range had that better range because of her flat footed stance. To see what I mean, take up each type of position and imagine yourself catching an obvious ball well outside the strike zone. You should see, if you are performing this honestly, that you can move much more easily from the flat footed position. Thus, your range has improved.

Yet even more importantly, we teach catchers not to catch balls in the dirt but rather to block them. If you get into each position and then try to block a ball in front of you and to each side, what you will find is that getting into proper blocking position is A LOT easier from the flat footed position. Not only is it easier, it's faster. And when the average high school catcher has no more time to get down and block than a major league baseball catcher, she needs that additional time.

I have grown so frustrated listening to catchers' father complain that they just don;t understand why she didn't block that ball when she does it all the time in drills in their garage or basement. Yes, she does do it in those drills and she has built up the muscle memory but she still does not have enough time to A) recognize and B) drop and block when she is on her toes. To see what I mean, go get your catcher again. De Grassi is over anyway. Find a tennis ball and tell your catcher to pull her shin guards out of her bag and put them on as soon as she gets those "knee protectors" off.

Bounce the tennis balls at her low and hard and tell her to drop and block from each of the two positions. Bounce some right at her and then go to the sides, gradually further and further out. f you are consistent and push so that the balls are harder and harder to block, I think you will see that not only does she drop and block more easily, but also she has greater range with which to block. Better yet, if you ask her to retrieve the ball and get up after dropping and blocking, I'm gonna guess that she will do so faster from the flat footed position.

I didn't want to get into the proper foot position for throwing because I want you to consult experts on this. But I will add at this point that once you understand that, it is a heck of a lot easier and quicker to get into that position from the flat footed receiving position.

To sum up this piece, catchers should make their fists opposite to a proper punching fist, with the thumb on the inside. They should not be taught to keep their throwing hand behind them because they will immediately counteract any protective value reflexively. Take the knee protectors off the shin guards. They do not protect knees and serve no purpose. teach your catchers to back up first. All real catchers do this. When catchers make repeated bad throws, look at their feet, not their arm follow throughs. Learn a little something about the proper positioning of the feet in the various catcher's stances - giving signs, runners not on base, runners on base. Flat footed is better. Flat footed is right. If you consider these things and follow through with training, your catcher will break less fingers, she'll not look silly with flapping knee protectors, and she'll be a better player than she was doing these things the wrong way.

Duck - Iguana Warning!

2010-01-14T09:07:00.000-08:00

I was really looking forward to our trip to Florida last week. Either I'm getting old (very likely) or global warming (highly unlikely) is causing temperatures to drop this winter. The pre-Christmas snow created a pretty backdrop to the usual, though this year more reserved, holiday lighting spectacular in my neighborhood. But after the first day, I would have preferred a little warmth to the dirty slippery stuff. Then it rained and everything pretty much disappeared. Then it got pretty darn cold again. So, I was probably looking forward to a couple days in the Florida sun more than some fairly high quality Rising Stars winter softball showcase games.

It came as news to me that Florida can actually experience sub-freezing temperatures as well as, gasp, snow. I watched the weather before we left. Friday looked OK. Saturday threatened a little rain late in the day. Sunday would be cool. I wasn't worried. Florida always gets a little rain in the afternoon, doesn't it. If we could get 3 of our 4 scheduled Saturday games in, that would be just fine. It could rain a bit and that would be no big deal. And, so what if it was a little chilly on Sunday. 45 is still what we call Indian Summer where I live. I went so far as to pack an extra hoody. I was prepared.

We crammed ourselves into what pass for seats onboard the Spirit Airlines flight to Fort Lauderdale. It was an uneventful flight, if more than a little claustrophobic. We landed, collected our equipment bags, found our rental car easily and got to the hotel in short order. We spent a little time figuring out where the fields were located relative to our accommodations and were pleasantly surprised to see that nothing was more than a half hour away. We found dinner at a chain restaurant, held a team meeting and settled down at the bar while our high schoolers played elevator tag and watched Jersey Shore (a show about low-life New Yorkers) on MTV.

The TV was on near the bar but folks were too loud for me to really follow what was being said on the news. There was something that caught my eye about "if you think this past week was cold, wait for next week." But all I took from that was, after we leave, it is going to get cool here again.

The next morning we had a very reasonably scheduled 9:30 am practice game. Our team played poorly but it was good to be out in the sun and watch some softball for a change. It wasn't quite warm but very pleasant. Our showcase game later in the day was also a softball disaster but the weather was decent and we actually played respectably for an inning or two. We hit the ball. We made some decent plays. We scored some runs. The game was decidedly less embarrassing than our "practice" one. And all was well with the world.

During the evening, the "extreme exposure" games were held and I'll get to them in a minute. The weather was still decent. We visited the main site and bought some tournament sweatshirts. The food there was reasonably good though nothing to write home about. The equipment for sale was enough to keep us occupied before the games. We stood around and chatted then watched the games before going home and hitting the hay.

I awoke about 4:30 the next morning to see what the weather was going to do. We were scheduled for an 8:00 am start and I wanted to advise my kid on what to wear. When I arrived outside the hotel, it did seem pretty cool and the wind was kicking up. But I, not having checked the weather very closely, still held out hope that we would get in 2, maybe 3 before a Florida rainstorm shortened the day. I told my daughter to wear her under-armour and carry the hoody. I grabbed my hoody and down vest as we headed out for the fields about 6:30.

A few raindrops fell and the wind whipped as we approached the complex. Someone noted that they hoped we got in 2 as we huddled in the stands while the girls warmed up. Then the rain got sort of steady and the temperature dropped. By game time, the rain was decidedly steady and cold. I believe someone checked the temperature and found it to be about 40-45.

Nobody really hit the ball that game. I think our team had the only hit. The pitchers had great difficulty getting the ball over and walked a few kids. There were numerous wild pitches and the runners who got to first pretty much all scored. Backstops were deep and sometimes girls got 2 bases on one WP. It reminded me of rec games at 10U rather than showcase games. After 3 + innings of abject misery, umpires on all fields at our complex called rain delays and then rainouts. We went back to the hotel and called the hotline repeatedly to learn if our next games would be held. Finally we learned that everything at our complexes was called for the day and we settled in to watch the NFL playoffs.

The next morning, we were again scheduled to play the early game. We got word that everything was going off as scheduled for us and that we had been granted an exhibition game after our first and only scheduled game Sunday. We were mostly satisfied with this since we had been shortchanged by the weather Saturday. Some wished we had been given yet another game but that was before anybody went outside to check the weather.

As we got outside to head to the fields, the cold bit into our faces and butts. We rushed to our cars to get out of the wind and cold in the hotel parking lot. As car engines warmed up and frost was scrapped from windshields, the readings of our thermometers read an outside temperature in the range of 30-32. Burrrrr! We drove to the fields hoping that temp.s would rise a bit as the sun came out. The rain had stopped. The clouds were breaking up. We thought that if the temps would get up to the previous day's levels, everything would be OK.

While I was standing there along the sidelines, a parent from our team told me she had seen an interesting story on the news the night before. It was a "falling Iguana warning" story. I said, "falling what?" To tell you the truth, I wasn't aware there were Iguanas in Florida!

Just in case you have not heard this before, they do have Iguanas in Florida. They are, of course, cold blood reptiles. When the temperature falls to a certain level, 5 Celcius, their bodies go into a sort of involuntary state of suspended animation - similar to hibernation. Their breathing and circulation slows, extremities and non-vital functions stop working, and, because they live in trees, they have a tendency to fall. I suppose that, given the touristy nature of Florida, the newsies wanted the unaware to be careful around trees so as not to have the bejesus scared out of them. I know I might have been scared to death had some Iguana dropped out of a tree near me.

The parent from our team told me that she and her party had gone out after seeing the news specifically to look for falling Iguanas. They weren't disappointed. In about a two mile stretch, they had seen four on the ground. One was unfortunate enough to have been found by a turkey vulture who busily ate it alive. Ah, such is girls fastpitch softball!

But seriously folks, this story is about softball. For beginners, I want to point out some things I learned during my brief vacation. I had known about Rising Stars showcase for several years. What I did not realize, however, is that of the several of these things they hold each year, the winter one, generally the second week of January, is not a particularly important one. That is not to say there are no college coaches in attendance. There are some, just not a ton. We did not see the numbers we saw in California around Halloween. And that was far lower, I'm told, than the numbers who came to scout the Rising Stars showcase held in mid October.

It occurred to me that Rising Stars ("RS") does not publish coaches expected at each event and rather lists any college that has ever attended one of their showcases precisely because they do not want to call attention to the fact that the winter showcase, for example, is more sparsely attended. This is their business. They want teams to pay and come. They are not being dishonest by claiming more coaches will be there. They are simply just not highlighting the fact that this event draws fewer coaches.

It should have been obvious to me and anyone else that the winter showcase, not falling within the NCAA recruiting window, was likely to be a lesser event. It should also have occurred to me that while the fall showcase is next to impossible for a new team to get into, it was fairly simple to get into the winter show because the biggest name teams are not there.

There are many very highly regarded organizations in attendance at winter RS. About 25 states were represented plus Aruba and, I think, one team from Canada. I wonder what the Aruba kids thought of the weather! The level of play was mostly very good, aside from our team and a few others. Many high level players whose teams were not there arranged to guest with other teams. But we did not see very many of the top 20-50 Gold teams. I understand that many teams were elsewhere for another event. other teams are practicing to get ready for spring qualifiers and the summer showcase circuit.

The umpiring at RS was very good, better than California had been. Teams generally played at the right level for their resumes. The tournament is arranged in twenty something 7-team pools and the teams in each pool played just the teams in their own pool, except for any practice or subsequently arranged exhibition games.

The teams spanned the range of experience from 18U Gold teams down to 14U Pony teams. Most 16U teams played against other 16Us. The 14s played either other 14s or weaker 16U and 18U teams. There were, of course, exceptions, as some teams chose to hide their age by altering their usual name slightly to not highlight the age group they had recently played or would play the next year.

In general, the play was ordinary showcase play in which books and scores are not really kept and in which players are frequently rotated in order to provide opportunities for showcasing their skills. I've mentioned this before but for the sake of those who might have missed it, teams do not usually play to win at these kinds of things. If, for example, a pitcher is throwing a perfect game through her scheduled 3 innings, she is going to come out to make way for pitcher number two regardless of whether the score is 0-0, 1-0 etc. Similarly, a stronger player is going to be pulled in favor of a weaker one merely because that is the way the game is played. Nobody sits so the team can win. That comes as a shock to many but that's just the way it is. Of course there are exceptions but those involve teams which simply just do not understand the way showcase ball is played.

You can easily identify the showcase neophyte parents at RS. They are the ones who treat games the same way they treat travel ball games. They get upset when their kid hits a shot and some very skilled outfielder hauls it in with a great play. They get upset when their team threatens but doesn't score because the "idiot coaches" have that kid in the lineup and she strikes out. They get worked up when the third or fourth pitcher on the other team looses the plate and starts walking kids. They act as if winning and losing actually matters.

By contrast, the parents who understand where they are rarely cheer except for a good play or hit ... by anyone. If some kid gets up and goes yard for the other team, they clap. If some SS on the other team makes an all-star play, they clap hard and yell "nice play!" If their kid drills a pitch and it doesn't find the ground, they are happy because she had a really good at-bat and hit the ball the way she knows how to. If a kid on either team hustles and plays hard, folks are happy for that kid. These games mostly lack the competitive edge we are all accustomed to and that is the way it has to be.

The extreme showcase games are even less competitive. They are perhaps one of the better parts of this tournament. RS has a camp early on Friday before the regular games start. Then everybody plays a regular showcase game. And then, Friday night, they hold the so called "maximum exposure" games. The maximum exposure games generally involve sophomores and juniors arranged into 11 or 12 player teams. They play 6 innings in which 5 or 6 batters, depending on roster size, hit and then switch sides. Everyone is guaranteed 3 innings at their primary position and then they play wherever the team needs a player. It was great fun and the level of play was very good. We saw some wonderful pitching performances, some very good hitting, and outstanding defense even considering the number of kids out of position and the fact that these girls had not worked defensive plays together before. Girls from one showcase team were generally not placed on the same teams.

Everyone seemed to really like the extreme exposure games. In fact, I heard at least one person saying "this is the way showcase should be played." He wondered if it might not be a good idea to arrange an entire showcase using this format.

Most of the kids at RS were sophomores and juniors. The 14U teams obviously had some freshmen and 8th graders. But the vast majority were 10th and 11th grade kids. The extreme exposure teams and games seemed to be organized along grade lines. One game involved mostly soph.s while another had mostly juniors. The quad we spent most of our time at seemed to have 2 games of each grade going on. There was the soph game I was at and the next field over was juniors, then the next soph.s, then the next juniors. It is noteworthy that all of the college coaches were watching the juniors. I suppose this is a final or almost a final look at certain kids before offers are extended in July. Yes, they'll see kids at NFCA camps and a few showcases in the spring but they must make up their minds soon and this was probably a last look for many kids.

So what I learned is, RS organizes the pools according to the way it sees the level of each team, there are neophytes everywhere including this level, the coaches here are more interested in juniors than they are at other venues, the extreme exposure games are perhaps the best part of RS, and winter can still be winter even in the sunshine state. Additionally, I learned that regardless of anything I may have said in the past, teams which consider themselves to be underaged still sometimes go around bragging as if it is some sort of badge of honor.

The exhibition game we were granted was against a team in a higher (weaker) pool than us. They looked pretty small so we made inquiries as to why. It turned out that they were either a 2009 or 2010 14U team, I'm not sure which. They had a few older looking girls but most were pretty darn young and their pitching was decidedly weak. Their outfielders played shallow. And they could not hit very well.

When we inquired as to the age of the team, one person proudly told us the 14U/15U thing and how they had won their games 22-1 and 11-0, against older kids. They wanted everyone to know that they had come in as a very young team and kicked some butt against the 18Us. I doubt they did that. I think it is very likely that the teams they faced were either the same age as they were or were very weak older teams, mostly perhaps about the same age.

We beat this "young" upstart team pretty easily. And we were a pretty darn weak team whose roster included 15s and 16s. We were not an 18U team in the classic sense. I saw several better 2010 14U teams this past fall. But this team insisted on bragging on their extreme success despite playing against those evil older girls. Oh well, I suppose you just can't prevent teams from making fools of themselves.

Myu kid pitched the opening two innings and allowed one runner on a walk. We quickly scored 5 and then our girls began fooling around. It was very cold. There were no college coaches around. After this we were heading home. And these younger girls were not very good. Our next pitcher gave up a run on some silly play. Our girls started goofing off at the plate. Then we put in our third pitcher as time ran out. She walked several kids and we misplayed some softly hit balls. They scored a couple runs and the time ran out. It was fun but just not real good ball.

Overall, I would say we had a fun time going to Rising Stars. We got to play the Gold Coast Hurricanes 16U and actually played a couple good innings against them. My kid hit a shot against the Canes that might have gone over the fence were it not for the 35 mph gusts at the time. She had some very good at bats and we caught her swinging at a pitch in the dirt on film. It is a great picture. I'm gonna have it blown up and made into wallpaper for her bedroom!

If you want to go have some fun while playing against good players, I do recommend Rising Stars winter showcase. But try to avoid Spirit or similar airlines. We were significantly delayed on the way home and given no good reason for it. We got home at 4:00 am Monday and my daughter had to miss yet another day of school. Many teams can probably get into the winter showcase even the young ones. But don't expect a ton of college coaches to watch your kid. If you are a soph. or junior, get yourself into the extreme exposure games. And before you head down to sunny Florida, make sure you watch the weather. Running out to the car to empty your already packed suitcase to put on everything you brought with you is not the best way to deal with the weather. Oh, yeah! If it is extremely cold, stay away from trees. You don't want to be struck by any falling Iguanas.

Lil Bit Of History Repeatin

2010-01-05T05:40:00.000-08:00

Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

It appears as if those currently in power in the US were not paying attention in their college classes whether you consider economics - multiplier effect of government spending vs. private investing; history - causes of the protracted duration of the Great Depression and of stagflation under President Carter: mathematics - 4 minus 2 plus 3 does yield 5 but when the same circle is partitioned into 5 vs. 4, the result is smaller partitions, not a larger circle; or psychology - when a family's expenses rise from $100 to $125, the tendency is to cut spending to $80. But I digress. This is fodder for another sort of blog and would appear to have nothing to do with softball. But it does support the theory that whomever fails to heed history is doomed to repeat its mistakes. And that does have significant implications in our sport.

Many years ago I observed what I thought was an oddity. My kids were taking pitching clinics and private lessons towards the end of a season. We interacted with a number of other players of all ages and their parents during that span. The oddity I observed was a tendency to lose interest in the off-season, the resulting drop off in attendance at lessons or practice sessions, and the attempt to start up about a month or two before the following season or even after the next season began.

Over the span of a couple years, I often conversed with folks who had decided that they would stop their kids' softball training right at the end of the season. Then I saw them again and picked up my conversations when they started up anew. The dynamic which played out is noteworthy and instructive. But more instructive is the reality of the same dynamic occurring year after year with regularity.

I once put together a team in the fall which included certain pitchers who threw very well at tryouts. One of these kids almost completely stopped throwing in the off-season. Lessons were cut from once per week to once per month, if that. Personal practice sessions were totally shut down. By the time we started live-pitched batting practice, the results of this off-season were horrendous. She couldn't throw for 15 minutes and what she did throw slow were meatballs with no movement and little speed.

As indoor workouts progressed to scrimmages and tournaments, the kid had trouble getting back in to see her instructor. When early spring weather got in the way, she just didn't throw any more than she had during winter. I just could not throw her because her pitching was that bad. And they quit the team for an interesting reason. The father noted to me that "she needs to throw to get better." Really, that's what he told me. I just said, "I know."

Another kid I had on that team had a lot of potential. She had a good arm. She was starting to swing the bat pretty well. Her fielding mechanics were OK but we could work on that. But as fall turned into winter, the only throwing and swinging she did was in anger at her siblings.

This girl did get "back into" her lessons sometime late in the year but as soon as we began our indoor workouts, those lessons ceased under some notion that we were going to cover the same ground in our workouts. The kid's swing fell apart. Her fielding mechanics got better but because she had not thrown at all in the off-season, she ended up hurting her arm and missing almost half the season.

When Howard Kobata gives clinics in cold-weather locations during the indoor season, he provides a warning to anyone interested in participating. He instructs them to get out and throw as much as possible before the clinic or face the consequences. The primary focus of these things is getting the ball out of your glove quickly to make a throw to your target in as short an amount of time as possible. The techniques involve body and foot position but the drills involve a ton of throwing. After the first hour, you can usually tell who took the advice and who did not. Many girls are rubbing and stretching their arms. Some have to drop outduring the first session or do not show for the second due to sore arms. You see many of the same kids at the Kobata clinics year after year. Strangely, it is often the same kids who develop sore arms each and every year.

I once knew a kid who was a gifted athlete. She was long and lanky but pretty strong. She played several sports and was good at most of them at an early age. She could play any position on the field though she never really caught. She was a pitcher who could move the ball pretty well thanks in part to her Osterman-like finger length, at least for her age. She could play infield or outfield equally well. She had a defect in her swing and struggled sometimes with the bat. Her parents had her in pitching and hitting lessons when I met them during the season. But they stopped these immediately after the summer. Her pitching gradually dropped off over a couple years because she neither practiced it nor took any sort of instruction for half the year. The defect in her swing would go away after a half dozen sessions with the hitting instructor but immediately after it was successfully corrected, her parents would stop the lessons and it would creep back into her swing.

Year after year, I would have the same conversation with the father. He would say, "I've got to get her back in to see the instructor. We're gonna start pitching as soon as I can get in there." He would also say something like, as soon as it gets a little warmer out, we're gonna start pitching practice again. Weeks would pass. A few tournaments would take place and her pitching was pretty bad. Then they would finally get back in to see her instructor about midway through the season and she would gradually get better but did not progress the way one would expect.

The defect in this girl's swing would really trouble the father. She would go whole tournaments without a hit. Then he would make time to have her see the hitting instructor. The next tournament, she would be a little better. The next ones were gradually better and better until finally it seemed like she was going in the right direction. Then the instruction would cease and she'd be back where she was.

Like I said, this kind of thing happened over and over and over again. At first, I didn't think much about it the first time. But you know, when you hear something over and over again, it isn't hard to put two and two together. I came to expect the same kind of comments and the same kind of playing difficulties each season. And that's kind of what happened.

I say "that's kind of what happened" because I saw history repeating itself but, you know, kids get older. As they do, the small problems get bigger. A kid who struggles at the plate due to some defect which gets reinforced over several years finds it more and more difficult to overcome that defect. A pitcher who does not progress each season will find herself in a little too deep when she moves up to the next age group again and again until one day she finds herself in 16U, 18U, or high school varsity. History does not merely repeat itself but rather repeats itself with a vengeance as time wears on.

Many of these instances of history repeating itself might be characterized as the "playing to get into shape" myth. When I was a youth, kids often played three sports and those filled the entire year. Today it is more common for a young athlete to play one or, at most, two sports. You can argue that this is a travesty of the modern world and I won't dispute you. But we live in reality - the world as it is not as we wish it were - and reality is more and more of the single sport phenomenon.

I understand why kids cannot compete in more than one or two sports. If, say, a girl likes softball, basketball and soccer, she will play these sports first at a recreational level and then attempt to play club as her interest grows. Those reading this blog probably know that travel softball involves a season which runs from thaw to the end of July, a fall tryout, a fall scrimmage and/or tournament season, a month or two off, and indoor workouts starting no later than January. Other club sports have their own grinds.

I was talking to one of my daughter's friends, a thirteen year old, who plays club soccer at a high level. Her team is one of the top 20 soccer teams in the country. Soccer is more organized under a single umbrella so I feel comfortable making this claim. During her off-season, this kid sees no fewer than 4 separate trainers each week. Before you think we are talking about some sort of soccer robot, this is a normal kid who is about as well-rounded as any of her peers. She just happens to be good and has found a very good team. Even at a lower level than this kid plays, the soccer kids are working throughout most of the year.

A few years back, I was talking to a coach of a boys' club basketball team. I knew they had just competed at some large, national-draw, end-of-season tournament recently. So I asked the guy if he was happy to have some time off to relax and not worry about basketball for a while. He replied, "Oh, no, it's always basketball season. We start back up in a few weeks."

It's like that in higher level youth sports. That is reality. It is very difficult to compete in more than one sport except at very low levels because the seasons all run into each other.

I can think of a few kids who have tried or are trying to compete in several sports before they get into high school. Often they must choose one primary sport to play club ball and then a couple secondary sports to play either only rec or lower level club. A very few kids have or are trying to play higher level in more than one sport. I've heard about a kid who plays high level softball, basketball and soccer. She is good at all these and still finds time for school. But the grind is inhuman and I don't think I'll go into that. Suffice it to say that I have heard more than once of the girl running from a tournament in one sport to another in another multiple times on some weekends. Not many parents would be willing to do that. Not many kids would hold up physically or mentally under that stress.

Further, it becomes increasingly difficult to compete with the kids who play a particular sport year-round. Not every high school is the same but, for the most part, I would say that the starting members of any decent athletic team at our local school are all year-round players. The basketball players all play some sort of club ball. They compete during the school season, have some time off, and then play for summer teams. The same is true for other sports whether there is a significant youth club program in the area or not.

With regard to field hockey, there are a number of girls who play the sport at the club level and several who got into it because it was offered by the middle school. When they got into high school, they figured they could continue to play it the same way they did in junior high. But what they find is some girls develop greater interest and start playing club for almost the entire year. When that it isn't the predominant case, what is common here is for high school teams to form leagues in the off-season. Coaches of the varsity squad are not permitted to interact with players but some parent will supervise the team. They play indoor or out depending on the time of year. Field hockey is a fall sport here but the other day I went to watch an indoor competition which consisted of players hoping to make varsity next year. I looked at the league standings on the facility's wall and realized just about every high school in the area is represented. Even school sports are an almost year-round pursuit.

So the situation of the one sport kid is probably the most common reality. Unfortunately, this can sometimes result in kids not really being in shape for their sport at certain key times of the year. If you play softball at a reasonably high level, your team's annual schedule may preclude you from participating with the school field hockey, basketball, or soccer team's off-season league or with a travel club in another sport. But you do not really do any good off-season work unless you make a concerted effort to do so.

You get through the fall tryout season and perhaps play weekends through early November. You do nothing in December and then start up once or twice weekly workouts in January until spring. In the spring, you play school ball, travel tournaments, or both. This lasts into the summer and sometime in July, your season ends. You are physically and mentally exhausted and need to take time off. But during the following fall season, you are not really working that hard. So by the middle of November, you are almost completely out of shape.

I realize that the discussion I am engaged in can get a little tricky. On one hand, I am claiming that girls can only play one sport because the season never ends. On the other hand, I am stating that girls get out of shape. How is it possible to get out of shape if you're playing during the full year?

I am not really talking about being generally out of shape. I'm really addressing being out of shape for the sport. A girl could be in excellent physical condition including muscle flexibility, etc. But if she has not thrown a ball in two or three months, she is not in shape for softball. Just like the kid who attends a Kobata clinic without having thrown in several weeks, she is going to develop a sore arm. The further problem is that she may not get sufficient time to recover if, for example, she gets that sore arm in school ball and has to practice or play every day. This is a particular problem for catchers and infielders. I have seen more than a few kids develop arm problems during the high school season and not be able to heal until after the season.

If a kid is a pitcher who has not practiced for more than 10 weeks, she is going to have a hard time working back anywhere near where she left off. Sometimes this can be particularly problematic. In our school ball, the first day of practice happens early in March. The team does drills for very few weeks and then tries to do scrimmages almost immediately. Then the real games begin early in April. That isn't much time to prepare. That is not enough time for a pitcher to get back to where she left off, let alone make progress.

I am a fan of kids being given sufficient off-season rest. When activities involve intense physical exertion or can cause repetitive motion injuries the way softball can, it is advisable to have a significant period of rest. But if that period extends over too long and sort of slides into a slow, late start, injuries can develop and difficulties ensue. Worse, many times when a pitcher or other player is dissatisfied with early season performance, she can press too hard in order to make advances and cause her own injuries.

A pitcher might look for an increase in speed and throw her mechanics off kilter thereby leading to an injury of the back, shoulder or knee. She might try to spin the ball too hard and hurt an elbow or wrist. There are any number of possible scenarios.

A batter might have worked shoulder, back, etc. flexibility all off-season. But if she never picked up a bat and took cuts, she may find herself over-swinging early in the year which can lead to all sorts of injuries. It is one thing to do yoga or stretching 5 days a week. It is quite another to rip at a pitch explosively 50 times a day after a three month layoff.

Secondarily, I am talking about allowing mechanical skills to lapse. It is not great when your musculature isn't where it was as you start back into intense practicing. But muscles are not the only thing about your game that can atrophy. Mechanical skills can too.

The most well schooled veteran athlete has some difficulty recovering her mechanics at the beginning of pre-season practice after a significant layoff. The junior members of the travel softball circuit have more difficulty, especially if they have done no preparatory work or been involved with instruction. College pitchers often have coach mandated layoffs with heavy weight or other sorts of training workouts. It can take them several weeks to get their mechanics back to where they were last season. But for the most part, these highly developed athletes need the time off more than they need to pitch because their mechanics are well set by then. The same is not true of 11 year olds.

It stands to reason that if an athlete has swung, thrown or pitched several thousand time each year over 8, 10 or more years, her mechanics are not going to leave her for good after a couple months. But if a kid is in her second or third year of lessons for hitting or pitching, the muscle memory has not developed enough to be set in stone. If her mechanical lessons and practicing are for half a year or less, it is quite possible that she will be far behind where she was at the end of the previous season unless she does some sort of off-season work to retain and further enhance them.

Lastly, I am talking about not making appropriate progress from year to year. As girls age up from 10U to 12U and so on, it becomes more and more apparent who is doing the off-season work and who is not. In my early pitcher example, it was patently obvious. I suppose I focus more on pitching than anything else because my kids pitch. But I also know that when I look at a girl during the fall and she's pretty good, I expect her to be at least that good when we start working out or get outside to play scrimmages. My hope when I brought her onto the team was that she would be at this particular point when we start up and then make progress throughout the year. I am not hoping that she will be behind and then get back to this point towards the middle or end of the year. And pitchers may make progress during the actual season but they make more of it if they retain their skills and then make some progress during the off-season.

Recently a travel organization held its first practice of the new year. Most kids had not thrown since the first week of November. There were sore arms. But they practice once or twice a week and the kids will recover. It was apparent that few, if any of the pitchers had thrown at all recently. several girls had control issues in the spring which went away as they worked outside during the spring and pitched tournaments during the summer. By fall, most had really hit their strides. But at this practice, they were far behind where they had left off. The coaches met, rearranged workouts and now they'll have to put aside an hour for just the pitchers to work. They realized after that first practice that their pitchers are not throwing at all on their own. They have to make sure they throw at least once per week now or risk some serious problems at early tournaments. Also, many of the girls play high school ball and they want them to be ready to endure those rigors. There is no other option. They must conduct pitcher workouts. That is probably a waste of otherwise good team practice time / facility rental.

I discovered this same sort of problem several years ago. What I did was find somewhat cheaper space which i could rent for a shorter duration than the full team practices. I conducted pitcher-catcher only workouts for that segment of the team. And because this was outside the normal course of team practices, I had the pitchers and catchers pay for the space separately. Do you know what happened? I spent more time listening to excuses about why this or that kid couldn't come to the workouts.

Quite often kids could not make these workouts because they played rec basketball or did other activities which were reasonable under the circumstances. But these kids were not doing anything on their own. I conducted these workouts because I had to, not because I wanted to. If they had been doing any throwing at all, I could have saved time, effort and money

I also ended up personally spending more of my own money to cover for the kids that didn't show up. Say I had 6 kids and the space rental was $60. nbsp; I told each kid that it was $10 a session. Often I had three kids which cost me an additional $30. And my pitchers were not well prepared for the season. if I had it to do over again, I would charge everyone up front and make attendance mandatory. The only excuse I would accept would be if a kid was doing her own throwing and attending lessons. And I would be the arbiter of whether I believed the work was being done. if she wasn't throwing well enough, I would require her to attend.

You know, this sport is very difficult. It requires considerable effort in terms of the season's tournaments. It requires considerable effort to develop one's skills. It requires off-season work. The dedication needed to succeed in fastpitch softball is as much as any other sport, sometimes more. Kids who pitch must attend lessons unless they are working with a parent who has an equal knowledge base to professional instructors. Those lessons cannot merely be for 3 months of the year. Kids who want to throw well, must throw often. Kids who want to hit need to see professional trainers and work at drills on their own. Kids who want to be good fielders have to attend clinics like the Kobata ones. They must enhance their mechanical skills through whatever means they have. You cannot be good at this game on a part-time basis. The other girls who are working their skills will most definitely pass you by.

I believe in a six week resting period after the rigors of the season are over. But more than that is going to be a problem. While an absolute rest period is important, it is equally important to remember that what we are resting from is an over-taxing season. Once the period of rest is over, it is very important to begin pre-season preparation.

Pre-season preparation is generally nowhere near as intense as in-season stresses. So we really are not ending a season, giving rest, and then immediately throwing kids back into the fire. What we do not want to get into the habit of doing is ending the season, resting, and then procrastinating about starting up work again only to find time has slipped away from us. So I'm not saying that every pitcher fr0om age 8 up ought to throw six times per week, 52 weeks per year. I'm saying that after a tough season, yes, by all means, give her 6 weeks of not seeing a ball. But immediately thereafter begin throwing some and work your way back up to whatever your top level of training is. The same is true for every other player.

If you have had 6 weeks off without swinging a bat, start swinging one. If you;ve got the room in your house, basement, garage, attic, start today. if you have no space available, put on your winter coat and go outside to do it. I know its cold out there but I don;t think you will get frostbite inside of ten or fifteen minutes.

Don't take 100 swings at some 65 mph machine pitched balls. l; Take 10 swings wherever you can today. Take 15 tomorrow, 20 on Thursday, 25 on Friday. Take off for the weekend if you need to. But start back up on Monday taking 20 swings again until you build up to 50 or 100. Then stay there.

You do not have to do this 15 or more minute workout every single blessed day. The first week might only be three or four days. The second week might be one additional day. You can get up to 6 or 7 days per week quickly. And you'll have to because, folks, it is already a good ways into January 2010. In just a couple weeks, it will be February, the shortest month of the year which happens to be followed by March when many of us start getting outdoors and the high school teams start their tryouts. That means you have less than two short months.

If you are a pitcher or fielder who needs to throw and you have absolutely no space, you're in a bit of a bind. But there must be something you can do. Pitchers can pitch without a ball in a hallway. They can also do portions of their pitching motion into a laundry basket filled with towels using an actual ball. Players who want to throw inside of little space can take a knee and throw into that same laundry basket. They can slo perform throwing motions without a ball in very little space. What all this takes is commitment, commitment to do something softball related every day or most days no matter how silly it seems at first.

You can take up a ready position in the hallway or in front of a full length mirror and visulaize fielding a grounder or flyball. Practice your footwork and make a throw without a ball. Do 10 or 20, more if you can. Then run down to the laundry and get that basket. Snap balls into it. Practice you underhand flips. You may be surprised how much of a throwing or pitching motion you can accomplish in a ten foot space with a laundry basket. And finally, resolve to go somewhere and do some real stuff at the first opportunity.

As soon as there is any sort of warm day, get out and throw. It snowed 2 feet here before Christmas. Then it got rather warm outside. Kids could have gotten out and tossed a ball for 15 or more minutes just to do it, if they wanted to. Then it got very cold here and snow flurries have been falling ever since. But one day in January or February, it is going to get wamr for one or more days again, at least I hope it is. Get out and do something when that happens!

There are any number of facilities around which can help out a softball player for a reasonable price. No, most of us cannot go every day and rent an hour or more worht of time. &nbsop; But we can afford to go out and rent a half hour to pitch or throw a bit say 3 times before March. if we do all these other things and then get in a couple sessions of throwing or pitching before our outdoor practices begin, we should be OK. But we should probably do more.

If there are reasonably priced clinics around, and I believe there are many in most places, we should sign up for them. I know economic times are tough and many of us are struggling just to make ends meet. You do what you can. But if there is a gym or other facility nearby where you can spend 20, 30, 40 bucks and get in some off-season preparation, it will be money well spent.

If you just cannot wing it this year and you have no space in which to throw or swing a bat, don't feel bad. But understand that if you do nothing and then go to your first practices or games, you cannot expect things to be just like they were at the end of last year. You probably will struggle to make progress. You may struggle to keep up with other kids. But this is a tough year. And you will survive.

On the other hand, if you are able to do most of these things, if you are able to go to clinics, if you are able to work indoors, but you do not, well then, there is no excuse for you whatsoever. And if each year, you always seem to get a rough start because you haven't done anything in months, well, you can either learn from your own history or be forced to live it again and again. Groundhog day was a decent movie. But in that, the main character actually progressed each day. He was able to learn from his own mistakes. Groundhog day is, what, maybe a month away? Don't let history keep repeating itself over and over again.