Girls Fastpitch Softball

California Dreamin

2009-11-09T10:37:00.000-08:00

I'm not really sure what I expected when we recently made our way across the country so that my daughter could guest pitch with a Gold team at a showcase in California. For my daughter, I wanted her to dip her toes into the vast ocean of high level softball as well as the relatively icy Pacific. For myself, I wanted to compare the OC Batbusters Early Thanksgiving college showcase tournament with others I have seen. In the end, I suppose we could have been anywhere in the country doing the same thing. She would have experienced about the same level of play. I most likely would have learned the same lessons. Yet, it was somehow better that this was in California, the epicenter of fastpitch softball on planet Earth.

For my daughter, the experience was invaluable. She is a high school freshman and the team for which she played was a couple sophomores, mostly juniors and one or two seniors. She knew one of the girls on the team and had played in years past against a few of the others. But she felt really alone for the most part. That is an experience in itself but she's been on enough teams made up of strangers to overcome any anxiety caused by the situation.

My daughter has pitched against high schoolers here and there for several years, since she was 12. So the idea of pitching against high schoolers was not particularly intimidating per se. But these hitters, these teams were some of the best in the country. There were serious college coaches coming to keep tabs on many of these kids. Some will undoubtedly play for some of the top 50 D-1 teams in the country. Now that should intimidate anyone heading into the circle. But she survived despite making a bad pitch or two. Her very first pitch was met with a determined swing that drove the ball sharply into left center for a clean single. Her second pitch was swatted to the left side of the infield and played smartly into a 6- (or 5-) 4-3 double play by a teammate at 2B whose college scholarship is signed and sealed. The next batter popped out or grounded one back to her. Inhale deeply!

In my daughter's second inning of work, she was much more relaxed. She walked a kid after recording one out and then got the next two without much happening. Her first GOLD outing was over with no runs allowed. She was a much more confident kid. I won't bore you with the details of her entire showcase pitching experience but I do want to share one little piece of it with you before getting to the heart of what I really have to say today. In her second outing, she retired the first 3 batters she faced and then got up 0-2 on the next hitter. She threw a pitch that was fouled off and then tried to get the kid on a drop curve. That was her first mistake pitch! I do not believe they have yet found the ball. The last I saw of it, it was going over the fence about a millisecond after it came out of my daughter's hand and caught the fat part of the plate about 6 inches above where it should have been.

That's what happens at these kinds of tournaments. A pitcher who has never given up a homerun before (my daughter has - that is not a new experience for her), can make one mistake and only watch helplessly as it clears the fence. There are often 9 good hitters arrayed against you at this level. I have heard the various pitching coaches talk about working lineups and throwing certain pitches to the 3, 4, and 5 hitters while going right after the 7 and 8, etc. You cannot do that when you are a rookie playing showcase ball against Gold teams. The guy with the book might just as well say "this is their number 4 hitter" before each and every kid comes to the plate.

I don't think my kid was mentally prepared for the speed of the players at this level. That is a difficult adjustment to make. I did tell her that this would be the case but it is difficult for anyone to expect speed to that degree. You have to experience it for yourself. When a ball was hit back to my kid and it bounced off her shin, she hustled to pick it up and make a throw to first but I think the kid beat it, though the ump exclaimed "out." She did not have the same degree of sense of urgency which the other kids who have previously played this level had. My hope is that she now knows what I meant when I said the kids are faster.

But enough of my daughter's experience. I can't speak for her. What I can tell you is my experiences were many and varied.

First of all, the reason to play showcase ball is not really to compete at the highest level. This is the business side of the equation and the business is college recruiting. There is competition to be sure but there is no tournament winner or loser. There was no bracket play, just pool games. And a team's result and record do not count nearly as much for anything as do the individual players' exposure to college coaches. The results of game play are more about team pride and, I suppose, about who does and does not get to play on premier fields in future events.

As I said earlier, my kid is but a freshman and we weren't very much concerned that she get tremendous college exposure. We understand how the process works. But all we were after was an opportunity to dip her feet into this level of play and see how she likes it. Not everybody who gets involved with Gold or showcase ball gets such an opportunity to test the waters. We were very fortunate to have the chance.

As we were planning to fly out to CA, we decided that we should fake it until we make it - go ahead and contact college coaches to see if any would come to watch her play. I expect that not everyone understands this so I'll go ahead and explain. When one seeks out college exposure, it is not enough to merely play or play well at some recruiting venue. College coaches do not roam these things looking to cold prospect. They don't watch a game, pick out the one or two or three best players in it and then contact them to offer full rides plus meals, dry cleaning and a car, if those players will deign to come to their institutions. Generally the way it works is a kid will 1) register with the NCAA clearing house, join a team that plays important showcases, sign up for NFCA recru8itment camps or some such, pick out a number of schools to target, fill out prospective athlete recruit questionnaires, make some sort of contact with the softball coach, and keep them apprised of any big tournaments they are playing. This is done with an eye towards getting the coaches' attention, making a favorable impression and hopefully being "followed" by that coach for a while afterwards. I've been told that many coaches will follow a kid for a year or two before making up their minds.

I have also been told that coaches will take a look at any unsigned seniors briefly, are really interested in any juniors they have been following, and will pay a good deal of attention to sophomores from whom they may find the new talent to follow over the next year. They are not particularly interested in freshman unless those freshman happen to be six feet two 70 mph throwers with great movement and impeccable command. They would also be interested in freshman who hit numerous homeruns or demonstrate gold glove level defensive skills. But I have overheard a college coach complain about some 8th or 9th grader being too good for her program because everyone else at bigger programs is likely to grab her too.

So we sent out e-mails to about 4 coaches expecting about a normal response rate - 0%. Typically, you need to send out dozens of contacts to get a few responses. And we went to our first game looking to see where coaches were from and never expecting to see anyone we had contacted. We were shocked speechless when at our first true game, there was one of the coaches we had contacted and he was asking about our daughter by name.

There are a couple lessons in this experience. You need to contact coaches if you are heading down this path. If you didn't know that before, now you do. You should target schools in which you are really interested - those that offer the sort of academic programs you want. And you should not be completely amazed when they show up to watch you / your kid play. If you are paying thousands of dollars for your kid to play showcases, you should not place all your chips on the remote possibility that some coach from UCLA or Arizona will just happen to walk up to the field as your kid rounds the bases after going yard.

One other thing almost slipped my mind. Our team played a couple "practice games" on the day before the tournament officially opened. Most big showcases afford the opportunity for teams to sign up to request such practice games for a charge which is about what umpires fees would be. If you are in a position to consider going to such a tournament a day early and playing "practice games," do it. Maybe not all the college coaches have arrived by the time you take the field but I can guarantee you some have. We saw as many coaches at our "practice games" as we did the regularly scheduled, official ones. Basically, so-called practice games are actually additional showcase games. If you're gonna throw a couple hundred bucks down for flights plus a hotel room, you would be well advised to go for an extra day just to get a little more exposure.

The most important lessons I took home from the left coast are more general in nature. I have watched elite, Gold level CA teams on numerous occassions before. But I have never seen so many all in one place at one time as I did at the Batbusters showcase. In years past I have had the opportunity to watch the Batbusters, San Diego Renegades, and several other top flight CA teams play showcases. This time I saw countless teams I had never heard of before. That was worth the price of admission (and flights, food, housing, etc.).

The teams we played and those I watched were not the absolute best ones in all of softball in general or CA in particular. They were merely good teams, with tons of experience, and with many bona fide college prospects filling a good portion of their ranks. The level of individuals' play was not anything new to me. I have watched the Shamrocks, great Texas teams, Gold Coast Hurricanes, and many top 10, 20, or 64 ASA Gold teams play in person before. The teams we saw at Batbusters were more of the run-of-the-mill CA showcase teams (if that's not too much of a contradiction in terms for you). They had good players and somewhat weaker ones. They made good plays and bad ones. They all shared certain characteristics which any team at this level shares. It was very interesting and worth going over in some detail.

The pitching was of particular interest to me going in. I was not overly impressed with it. CA pitchers are not mechanically superior to pitchers I have seen from Ohio, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, or anywhere else. They do not throw harder. Their pitches do not have more movement on them. But what was evident was pitchers with apparently more experience, better command, and the ability to grind through when they did not seem to have their best stuff. I saw one kid who threw no more than 50. I saw a few harder throwing types but nothing I have not seen elsewhere. I did not see many very good rise ballers. Most pitchers threw a lot of drops and curves. As I said, they had good command of almost eveyrthing they threw, aside from the rises which frequently struck the backstop. Most of all, and I want to give this as much emphasis as possible, almost every CA pitcher I saw had an above average change-up she was not afraid to throw and was able to throw for strikes.

I know I have tried to impress you with this before but I'll say it again at this juncture because I do not believe enough have heard me. The best pitch in softball is the change. I do not believe enough pitchers give it enough of a working in their throwing sessions. The most effective windmill pitchers have good, effective change-ups. If you do not spend as much time working on this pitch as you do on trying to break the 60 mph barrier, you're making a critical mistake. And, finally, if you want to be a successful pitcher, the correct pathway is via command.

You have to throw hard. You have to have good movement. You have to have a good change. And you have to be able to hit spots - spots, not approximate areas.

I have been told that CA pitchers are good because they face CA hitters all the time. I am sure that the pitchers from CA face good hitters a lot. As I said, these pitchers seemed to be more experienced than their age would predict. But I remain unconvinced that they benefit from facing all those great CA hitters because, quite honestly, I did not see many of those.

The hitting was fine but it was not anything which stood out to me. We saw perhaps the same percentage of well hit balls as we have seen in many other venues. There was not a single team which had a monstrous lineup of powerful hitters. A few teams had a couple very good hitters. But the average hitter was an average gold hitter, good but nothing to write home about.

What I did notice was, of the non-slappers, most of the kids hit rotationally. What I mean by "rotationally" is via the Ted Williams style. I d0o not merely mean girls who use their hips by "rotating" them. Almost every decent hitter does that. Ted Williams allowed his hips to fly open early in his swing. So-called "rotational hitters" open their hips before their hands come forwards. They also tend to drop the head of the bat as well as making a couple of other characteristic movements which can be fairly easily traced to Williams. The CA hitters I saw at Batbusters almost all used this technique.

I have to admit a bit of surprise at seeing so many rotationally trained hitters. When, in the past, I have watched top level CA teams play, I certainly have seen some rotational hitters but not a high percentage. There are certain weaknesses to the swing and top level hitters employ parts of it but are not easily characterized as "rotational." At Batbusters, I saw only two kinds of swings, rotational and slapping.

One major difference between the typical rotational hitter I saw in CA was all these girls crowded the plate tightly. I suppose the biggest weakness a rotational hitter has that can be exploiited is down and moving away - like a drop curve or outside drop. The CA hitters cover this weakness by going toes to the line and beyond. This allows them to see an outside, dropping pitch like one over the heart of the plate or even inside. One thing you do not want to do is pitch a rotational hitter inside and low or over the middle of the plate and down. Ofxcourse, this leaves them vulnerable to an inside and up screw but I did not see many, if any, girls who could do this. I have heard Gold coaches speak at length about going high and tight. Now I understand why. If you are going to be effective against these hitters, you must go up and in.

I think I also understand why pitching coaches continue to emphasize the riseball despite the movement down of the strike zone to the solar plexus from its historical upper location at the armpits. It is very difficult to develop a good riseball. Many lay claim to it but few can actually execute on the claim. Among the few who have a legitmate rise, even fewer can throw the thing for a strike under the old strike zone, let alone the new one. But umps at large do not seem to have altered their perceptions to conform with the rule change. Pitches above the plexus and at or slightly above the armpits continue to be called for strikes. If rotational hitters are taking away the down and out, coming up is the next best way to get them out. It is nearly impossible to hit even an average rise ball above the belly button with the bat head held beneath the hands as rotational hitters generally try to do. Rise balls can be dangerous as a bad one travels a great distance. But pitching coaches still consider the pitch to be the Cadillac because it gets rotational hitters out.

Now as a final commentary on CA hitters, oh the slappers, oh the slappers! I saw more well-schooled slappers in CA than I have ever seen in a single place before. In order to discuss this, I mus first define what I mean by a good slapper.

I have seen a high number of kids who hit with a style I would call "tapping" or "tap hitting." &nbsop; This is a technique where a kid who is fast but struggling at the plate, moves to the left side and tries to just tap the ball into play. I see this a lot in high school ball and at the younger ages of travel where the kids are just learning to slap hit. A girl takes up position deep in the box, runs forward as the pitch is delivered and sticks the bat out to make contact as she exits the batter's box. To me, this is not slap hitting. That is why I call it "tap hitting."

Good slappers strike the ball after just a few steps which are taken to build momentum in their run to first. The best ones are quite capable of hitting the ball beyond the infielders. The very best are able to hit the ball to the wall or over it. When good slappers come to the plate, the infield is usually shifted around with one or both middle infielders coming forwards to about the same distance from the plate as the pitcher. There are a variety of other changed fielder alignments so I won;t go into detail. But suffice it to say that if the outfield is pulled in too far, good slappers can take advantage of that but putting the ball over their heads.

The vast majority of CA slappers I saw were very good. In fact, most runs scored as a result of the efforts of the teams' slappers. There were only a handful of well hit balls, hit by non-slap hitters in several games. There were easily double that number in slap-hits of all varieties. What was worse was each team had more than two girls who could slap hit effectively. Some teams had as many as four kids in the lineup who were well-schooled slappers. That's a nightmare for most teams to defense against.

One result of so many teams having so many slappers was that the CA teams seemed much more capable of defending against the slap. Infielders, particularly middle ones, were Kobata quick. They fielded slaps on the ground or bounced and made quick throws to the bases. I'm a huge fan of defensive softball. These infielders played it flawlessly on the slap. My guess is that there are so many slappers in CA that players and teams simply must learn to defense against it. The result is the kind of defensive infield play I saw. And that is the major difference between teams from CA and those from outside the state.

To wrap up, going to CA was a great experience for my kid and for my entire family of softball crazies. We saw some pretty good play and learned a bit about the college recruitment process. We saw some average players including pitchers. We did not see the "great hitters" we expected but the slappers were well above what you see elsewhere. Pitchers had command but were otherwise indistinguishable from their counterparts around the country. Oufielding skills were also about what you see anywhere at this level. The catchers were no more impressive than those from other places. But the rest of the infield was very good. My guess is that when you see slappers all the time, you either learn to deal with them or take up soccer.

As an additional comment, going into CA, we were told that the umpires there favored teams from the state over those from outside it. I saw some pretty bad umpiring. My kid did not experience any sort of negative calls made against her. Actually, to be quite honest, I think she benefitted from most of the bad calls when she was pitching. Some pitches that were clearly out of the zone were called strikes. But I watched a lot of games and I have to say that the theory I heard going in held true. There were bad calls made for and against all teams but the worst ones I witnessed and those which made a difference in the outcome of games were those made against out of state teams. I never saw any game changing calls made against CA teams.

What's worse is there are certain bad calls you have to live with. There is no point to arguing balls and strikes, ever. The ump is not going to change the call and he or she is not going to change the zone. But it is hard to watch one pitch to an area be called a ball and another to the identical place called a strike. There was no strike zone to speak of with most of the CA umps.

Further, while certain plays require a call whether the ump sees it or not, certain others require a call only when the ump sees something affirmatively. For example, if a plate ump blinks on a pitch and does not see it, he still must make a call. He will call ball or strike based on what his gut tells him. Similarly, if there is a play at first, the field ump will call safe or out regardless of whether he is actually convinced one way or the other. He has to make a call. But umps should never make a call on other types of plays unless they see something absolutely. For example, if a runner tags up on a flyball and the ump is not sure he saw her leave the base early, he should not call her out on appeal. That is a seeing sort of call, not a required call where the gut will do. Similarly, an ump should not call a baserunner out for leaving too early unless he actually sees this occur. Also, an ump should not call a base runner out because the base coach touched her unless he actually sees the contact. He cannot think that very possibly these things happened so "I'll go ahead and make the call." He has to actually see the thing happen. In CA, we saw umps make many phantom calls. I say "phantom" because the acts called did not happen. That is rather unforgiveable.

Well that's it. I advocate showcase ball but planes, trains, automobiles, and hotel rooms are expensive. I suppose there are a few other ways to skin the cat of college recruiting but showcases are the best way to make contact and gain a following. CA showcases draw a high number of college coaches as do the NFCA recruitment camps, the Rising Stars stuff in Florida, the tourneys in Colorado, Texas etc. On the other hand, I suppose one's softball experience cannot be complete without hitting CA at this level at least once.

Tough Throws

2009-10-20T05:47:00.000-07:00

There is a TV commercial in which some kid throws a basketball onto the roof of his house, it bounces from there onto a basketball court far away, hits the macadam, and bounces up into the net. That's a tough shot - I would say it should be about a five pointer! The commercial reminds me of a game we used to play called H-O-R-S-E in which one contestant made a basket and all the guys behind him had to make exactly that shot or "get a letter." You would get a letter until you spelled horse at which point you were out of the competition.

If you were a poor basketball player, like I was, you had to come up with creative shots to have any chance of winning. For example, I once went into the bushes, found a beat up football with a leather strip hanging off it, and developed a shot to give me an edge. If I made my shot, the guys after me had to grab the football by the strip hanging off it, hold it with just two fingers, turn their back to the basket from a ridiculously far point, lift their right foot into the air like so, and throw the ball directly over their head without looking at the hoop. Also, hopefully, the shot had to be banked off the backboard!

No, I didn't make that shot. But I made many like it. And that was the only way I would ever win at horse.

So, why the talk about basketball and horse? Well, while creative shots, like mine, in basketball are inadvisable in an actual game, sometimes we have to make odd, difficult throws in a softball game to get an important out.

You know the plays that kill you in fastpitch. There is a grounder between 1B and 2B which is fielded cleanly but which is in the zone at which the fielder is uncertain whether to throw it overhand or toss it underhand. If she throws it overhand a little too hard and a little offline, the 1B will be handcuffed and miss it. If she underhands it, it has to be strong and she has not practiced tossing underhand very much. She quickly decides to throw it underhand and flips it towards first. You watch helplessly as the girl discovers she has a sort of riseball. The ball travels more up than out and gets to your 1B at the apex of its flight, just out of reach of her highest recorded leap. Error! Runner on first.

That's one kind of somewhat routine throw we don't often practice that results in failure to get an important out. Another is a ball into the hole between short and third with a runner moving to third, or perhaps a ball bunted back to the pitcher's right hand side with, again the ITB runner moving to third and an opportunity to end a threat. The SS or P fields the ball cleanly but she is in an awkward position. She either straightens up to make a clean throw that is too late, or she makes an awkward throw that gets by the 3B, allowing the runner to score.

There are all sorts of odd throws possible in softball which often result in bad plays. I just mentioned a couple of them to get you in the right frame of mind. If you think back over the years about blown plays which cost your team, most likely you can come up with dozens of them. I know I can. My guess is that everyone has seen many of the same type over and over again, plus a few nobody else can think of. These kinds of seemingly one-off plays are often the difference between winner and loser in semifinal and championship games and you can prepare your team to make them. You just have to think creatively, as if you were playing basketball horse, and have your players practice making the tough throws.

When we first teach 7, 8, 9 year-olds to throw, we put them in perfect position and teach just the basic, fundamental type of throw. We have them get into a scarecrow-like position, throw over the top, and hit a stationery target. It is an easy drill but one which must be done early on so players develop proper throwing technique without injuring their shoulders and elbows. This represents throwing 101.

Just about everybody does this kind of drill with young players and they should. Then we have them progress to fielding rolled balls, hopping into that perfect position and making the elongated throw to the target. That is 102.

Unfortunately, after that, most kids are left to their own devices until they reach high school at which point the high school coach teaches the outfielders to perform a crow-hop and the infielders to perform a few somewhat more creative throws. The really good players learn more than this at defensive clinics. But, for the most part, nobody gets all the skills they will need in tight games unless they goof around in the yard on their own.

At the typical softball practice, what we see is a bunch of girls standing 15 feet apart, tossing the ball back and forth via overhand wrist snaps. They then move to about 30 feet apart and toss back and forth. Then they move to about 60 feet apart and throw from the perfect position back and forth to each other. Sometimes, coaches have the team long toss from 80- or more feet apart but that's about it.

This goes on for about 15 minutes or so after which there is a round of grounders for the infielders and pop flies for the outfielders. Then we progress to running defensive plays - get the out at first, double play, throw to third, first and third situations, outfield cutoffs, bunts, etc. with a full defensive alignment. After that, perhaps some fielders get special drills or we do some kind of complex, but ordinary throwing drills. Then we go to hitting. Often we run some complex plays, like the kind which require the coach invoking a command from the dugout. But we never teach or drill the oddball throws.

Coaches can do more of a service for their teams by bringing in more creative throws to their drills. The kinds of oddball throws a player may find herself making without ever practicing include those which require underhand or backhand motions, ones in which there is a decision to make regarding whether to throw overhand or underhand, off balance throws, those from the ground, some with your back turned to the target, etc. I think we do have our middle infielders practice the obvious underhand tosses when we work double plays. But, for example, we don't work our corner infielders or pitchers enough on these and other oddball throws. We accidentally have outfielders practice making throws which begin with their backs turned to the target and we teach this to routine cutoffs like the middle infielders. But we leave out other players. We don't teach enough technique. And we don't have them work these kinds of throws enough to make them as routine as they should be.

For beginners, I think every kid who walks onto a softball field ought to practice underhand tosses. Sure the pitchers do their underhand wrist snaps and can make routine underhand throws since that is part of their trade, more or less. But all your infielders ought to be able to throw a ball accurately underhand. They should "go to the same school" as your pitchers by practicing wrist snaps from 15 feet and even perform underhand throws from further than that. The more they do of these, the better they will become at them and the more likely they will be to get routine outs from close distance to the target base.

To take it a step further, infielders ought to be able to lead a player covering a base, not merely be able to hit a stationery target. I hope that you work on this with overhand throws already, as when the 2B is covering second on a ball hit to 3B. If you don't, you should. The technique is similar with underhand throws. The throwing fielder must aim over the base - throw to the base not the player - and lead them to the target. Say the ball is hit to the 1B and she is tossing the ball to the 2B covering first. She wants the ball to get there right as the 2B does, and have it be on the infield side of the bag but not make the 2B stop or reach for it. Presumably, your SS already can perform this throw to the 2B covering second and, again, the technique is similar but you need to work it enough so that it is routine.

Similarly, the SS should be able to toss the ball to the 3B covering third and vice versa. Also, the 2B presumably can make the non-overhand throw to the SS covering second. These involve backhand throws in which the elbow leads, the ball is snapped from the elbow, and the body follows the path of the ball towards the target. Again, leading the player to the base is necessary som practicing this is pretty much mandatory.

When I think of the types of plays which good teams make, these often involve the SS moving to her right and getting the lead runner who was forced or mistakenly went to third. She doesn't have the time to stop, hop into position and make a perfect overhand throw. But she composes herself enough to get the ball out of her glove and shuffles the ball backhand to the 3B just as she gets to the bag to cover and gets the force or allows for a good tag play.

Another such play involves the pitcher fielding a slap hit grounder to her left. She is off balance but fields the ball cleanly as the runner blazes past her. She straightens up and makes a good throw but the runner is safe. If she had been able to make that backhand throw while still stumbling, she would have gotten her.

How about this one? The opponent has a fast runner on third and another runner on first with just one out. There's no way you can get the out at home on a routine grounder and you can't pull your infield in because the big, strong, but slow of foot, slugger is up. You don't want to give up a run but you really don't want a big inning to get started so you've got your middle infielders at normal depth and your corners in line with their bags. Your pitcher works outside and low with her drop or dropcurve and induces a routine grounder to the 2B. She fields it cleanly in that no woman-s land where she is not sure whether to throw it overhand or shuffle it to the SS. She wheels and throws over second but because she had to wheel into throwing position, she pulls the throw off the bag! The SS catches the throw but falls in the process of making the play. You get one out but the run scores and you've still got a runner on base with the team's other slugger coming to the plate. If, instead, she were a skilled backhand thrower, she might have led the SS over the bag with a sharp throw allowing her to get two and kill the threat. But you've got to teach that technique and practice a lot to get really good at it.

How about those squeeze plays in which the batter bunts the ball a little hard right at the pitcher who bends down to grab it and then needs to make the throw home in a real hurry? If she is a righty and has to go left to make the play (or a lefty who has to go right to field the ball), the throw is either going to be a late overhand one or a quick backhand shuffle.

In short, your infielders, including pitchers must practice their underhand throws as well as the backhand variety. They must learn to make these kinds of throws quickly and accurately. They must learn to lead other fielders to the bases. Practice this and they'll be good at it. Fail to practice it and, I guess you can wait to see the results.

Not for nothin' but, it may not be a bad idea to teach some of these techniques to your outfielders too. The play which sticks in my mind is one of those humpback liners directly over second. Our CF plays shallow. She came charging in and for a moment it looked like she'd make the catch. But she couldn't get there in time and had to short hop it while stumbling to stay on her feet. I suppose she could have dove but she didn't. The runner from first held up but then she was charging towards the bag. The CF still had the opportunity to get her but she was in between the overhand and underhand throw. She decided to underhand it but she was not a practiced underhand thrower and tossed the ball over the SS's head. The same thing once happened on a ball hit to left with runners on first and second. We could have had important outs but our outfielders are not skilled underhand throwers. You should rectify this by teaching technique and practicing it.

Moving back to young kids again, when we teach throwing and then insert the routine grounder, we have kids hop into good throwing posture, so-called scarecrow position, look over their front shoulder at the target, use their glove as a sort of gunsight, and then make the throw. Just about every good 10U rec player does this and looks good in the process. Their shoulders and elbows are protected by this practice and we should teach it that way, early on. It is slow but effective. But that's not the real world of fast, fastpitch softball.

In the real world, you don't have time for perfect throwing technique. In the real world, softball infielders pretty much throw with a similar technique as baseball catchers use. They pull the ball to their ear or near it, throw the elbow forward, and snap the throw. If they are good infielders, they pre-position their bodies so they have proper posture the way a good shortstop fields the ball while almost simultaneously in the process of turning her body to point the glove hand shoulder at her target. They do not field the ball, pull it to their waist, hop into scarecrow position and then throw from perfect position.

If you've ever been in a Howard Kobata clinic, this and other speed skills are the primary focus. Kobata wants infielders to use their body's momentum attained in the act of fielding the ball to add force to the throw without stopping and attaining perfect body position. This is achieved through working on proper footwork. Kobata's methods are very effective for teaching infielders to get outs quickly.

Kobata takes it a few steps further and works those throws in which the fielder is perhaps on the wrong foot or otherwise unable to attain proper posture. He has them throw balls with both the right and left foot forwards. Just as an NFL quarterback must learn to throw off both feet, if he is to be successful, a softball player must also learn to be accurate and reasonably strong when making throws with the off foot forwards. Infielders often have little time to make throws after making good plays on batted balls. They cannot afford to lose the tenth of a second or more required to gain their proper footing. They have to be able to make the difficult throws from awkward positions and be accurate with those throws.

The 2B who fields the soft grounder straight in front of her as she charges in is often past the point of being able to throw over the top, across her body and still hit the 1B covering the bag. She must practice those side-arm throws needed to make this play. The same is true for other infielders including the pitcher. Obviously, catchers need to be able to make throws from awkward positions. If they never practice these, they never get as good at them as they could be. Practice also teaches them which throws they can make and which ones always end up in the outfield.

The other kinds of difficult throws that are often blown are those in which either the player gets up off the ground or must make a throw to a target located directly in back of her. When players get off the ground, they usually do so in a hurry and they want to make the throw quickly. Back in the ole football days, we used to do a lot of drills which involved falling to the ground, getting back up again, and then running towards the play. I remember thinking they were stupid until one time I was pursuing a play and never saw my teammate on his hands and knees in front of me as I ran full speed. I tripped over him and then rolled naturally into a position from which I got up quickly, continued my pursuit, and eventually brought down the running back. You must practice going to the ground, getting back up again and then making a play.

Just to drive home my point, I suppose I never thought of going down and getting back up again as a "skill" until one day in an elimination game I had a player fall down. Her first reaction upon falling down was to sprawl out like a kid making an angel in the snow. When she started to move again, she realized that she was the only one close enough to make a play on the ball laying nearby. It seemed like it took an eternity for her to get up. By the time she reached the ball, she was completely discombobulated. She followed her awkward moment with a worse throw to an unseen, by me, target. It was a disaster!

Since that day, I have viewed getting up from a fall as a skill. I have watched countless players go to the ground and then take too long to get back up again. At one point I watched a very skilled SS go to the ground to field a ball and get back up again as if she were a big cat chasing dinner. She got the runner out at first as if she had never been on the ground. Sure, she was extremely athletic. But she obviously had performed the move before. She knew how to get up from the ground and make a play. It was not a skill she was born with. Softball players need to acquire this skill wherever they play.

I think we often have outfielders run to retrieve a ball which has struck the fence and bounced back towards or away from them. This is a common drill for the position. They are expected to grab the ball, turn 180 degrees around and hit the cutoff ... always. They practice this and across the broad spectrum of players, are, as a class, pretty good at it. The plays which stick in mind involving a throw directly in back of a player which are frequently blown are those in which an infielder has to go back, retrieve a ball and then make that same kind of throw.

Sometimes a pop-up is just out of reach behind of a middle infielder, or hit behind first or third, and results in an infielder having to sprint back to pick up a ball, turn around and unexpectedly make a throw to a base. This seems, on the surface, simple enough. You just have to run, pick up an unmoving ball and then make a throw. There's no need to drill or practice that! OK. So why are so many of these kinds of plays blown when the infielder makes a bad throw? [; You have to devise drills for infielders to retrieve balls on the ground and make throws accurately to all bases.

Part of me wants to write more about drills you could work into your practice to work on the skills we have discussed. Part of me recognizes that I have already written far too much for a single article. I'll meet you halfway and give you just a little of what you might consider doing in practice.

For starters, after your players have warmed up their arms and maybe done some long tossing, you could work in some simple underhand and/or backhand throwing drills. I suggest having them perform pitcher snaps back and forth for a couple minutes from about 15 feet. Then have them spend a few more minutes throwing underhand from 20 feet apart, then 30. I am not suggesting that they will throw underhand from 30 feet in games but I want them to practice throwing underhand from far apart to improve the skill.

I've "wasted" no more than five minutes of your valuable practice time so far. If you're game to "waste" a few more minutes, put your team in groups of three. Have one player feed balls to a fielder who then tosses underhand to a target player. This should be like my "five ball" drill in which players work on speed throwing but the target player need only be 20-30 feet away from the fielder. The feeder can throw the ball right at the waist of the fielder or she can roll a grounder to her. You rotate the players into each of the three positions: feeder, fielder and target. You can do multiple iterations if you like. But everybody goes at least once and you use 5 balls so they get 5 reps each.

In addition to normal underhand throwing, I suggest a similar regimen for backhand throwing. To save time, you could do regular underhand throwing at Monday's practice and backhand throwing at Wednesday's. After warm-up throwing have them do backhand snaps and then throws. Then maybe do the five ball drill.

In each of these types of instances, it is imperative that coaches observe and correct technique. Don't merely get into the rut of having the girls go out to the outfield and do warm-up throwing then underhand without any coach supervising. The idea is to improve the skill. Supervise and correct!

When you run your infield or full fielding practice, also don't get into ruts about allowing players to do whatever is easy. If a play truly calls for an underhand or backhand throw and the player instead chooses to make a slow, standard play, correct her. Use what happens when running defensive practice to teach when to use these techniques and insist that they do so.

Another kind of drill you can use to work on underhand throwing involves placing cones in a circle with a diameter of about 30 feet or so. Have player stand around this circle and make the particular kind of throws to each other randomly. To make it more interesting, put in a second, third, etc. ball and encourage them to move it quickly. You can have a predetermined order of girl A throwing to girl B but that should not be necessary. And to make it really interesting, have them run slowly around the circle while doing this!

With respect to the other kinds of tough throws I have discussed or those which you can come up with on your own, I think you can develop your own drills fairly easily. The trick is to identify a kind of throw which your team or half the members of your team seem to have trouble performing. Figure out the skill you want them to develop, teach the technique you'd like them to use, and then develop drills to work on the skill. It can seem silly at first. You can get input from the players themselves and let them develop their own drill. But you must teach and supervise the technique. Then you must insist they use it.

I believe that if yuou identify the kinds of plays which your players seem to struggle with or that good teams, but not yours, seem to be able to do routinely, you can identify the tough throws and other skills you want your kids to develop. That is at least part of the beauty of scrimmages and games. You get to see plays which involve things you never have worked on in practices. If the trouble plays recur with any regularlity over your coaching career, they probably involve skills you should work on. Best of luck with this important aspect of the game.

Cat's Village!

2009-10-13T07:40:00.000-07:00

For years and years, our friends have told of a wonderful experience their sons had with their travel baseball teams. Those teams qualified for and played in a very large tournament held annually at Cooperstown (NY) Dreams Park near the Baseball Hall of Fame. This year, my wife kept constant contact with a close friend whose son was playing in the event. His team finished in the top 10 out of about 100 teams. According to the friend, the experience was the most meaningful baseball experience of his life to date. My wife and her friend mused that it is too bad there is not a similar experience for girls fastpitch softball. They apparently jumped the gun. There is now such an experience available.

Cat Osterman has partnered with USSSA and investors to develop what I believe may become the greatest possible tournament experience for youth softball players. Information regarding the tournament and overall experience is available at Cat's Village. I will provide you with a synapsis of that information plus some editorial because I feel this development may be the most important positive one for US softball in quite some time and I really want everyone to look into it. I want it to be a success of incredible magnitude.

The first things that come to my mind when I think about a trip out of state to some far off location to play softball are 1) how much does it cost and 2) where is it located - what is there to do when not playing softball so we can justify spending our family vacation there.

First off, the basic cost is, IMHO, fairly reasonable. According to the web site's FAQ, "For six days and five nights, the retail price is $599 (per player/coach). If your team signs up before January 1, 2010, however, you can take advantage of the special rate of $399 per player and coach. That price includes fourteen meals, lodging, an eight-game guarantee, and a coveted U.S. Girls Softball Hall of Fame Ring and Bracelet that each girl will receive upon induction into the Hall of Fame." Note that players and coaches stay on the complex in team clubhouses.

Of course, if parents and/or the rest of the family make the trek, you need to factor in lodging expenses for them. I cannot possibly run down all the alternatives and their costs but suffice it to say that in the area, there are a ton of hotels and motels at various price levels. It seems to me that choices abound and one can plan such a trip at a reasonable cost, starting at about $50 per night.

Secondly, the event is held in the riverfront city of Bellevue, NE which is located close to Omaha. Based on the spectators and family information page, there is plenty to do there, including visiting local zoos/aquariums, air force base; other attractions / entertainment provided at the complex (3-story high water slide, family BBQ, comedy night); and, for adults, some local casinos found only a few minutes away. We have friends who live in nearby Omaha and they claim there is plenty more to do in the area.

My next consideration is the level of play and the condition of fields at the tournament. There is no way for me to know the precise level of play but teams do have to provide a resume. Presumably, Cat's organization will look for a high caliber of teams as the Cooperstown baseball tournament does. Those teams will likely be from all over the country plus Canada. The fields are brand spanking new and one can imagine that the organization will place their highest priority on maintenance of the highest caliber fields. I'm extrapolating and putting in my own editorial comments (hopes) but I cannot imagine such an enterprise allowing the playing experience to be second rate.

The park is located on a 40 acre site which has 6 fields. Each week during which play is held (July 5-10, 12-17, 19-24, 26-31) will be exclusively for a single age group, 14U, 16U, 12U, and 18U, respectively. 32 teams will compete during each period. Each team will play an 8 game guaranteed minimum, of course, weather permitting.

There are some ancillary questions you most likely have. I cvan't answer them all. I imagine that if you spend some time on the web site, many answers are available there. I will note that for relatives not making the trip, games are broafdcast over the internet which is a very nice feature. The minimum number of participants is 11 players and 3 coaches. Teams must have their own insurance. It appears that everything has been considered in putting this thing together.

I have always encouraged fastpitch softball parents and coaches to venture outside your comfort zone to attend far off tournaments like PONY, NSA, FAST, ASA, USSSA national tournaments. There is a limit to the experience gained by playing only local tournaments with 3 Saturday games followed by single or even double elimination Sundays. Yes, it can be somewhat expensive to take a "softball vacation" but the experience gained is invaluable. And this particular venture seems to be priced at a reasonable rate which should make it available to most teams and individuals. If your girls are going to stand outside the local supermarket on Superbowl Sunday, this would seem to be a worthy goal to achieve in the process.

Command And Control

2009-10-08T05:13:00.000-07:00

The private coach watched his high school-aged student pitch for a while and then asked the question which had been on his mind for some time. "Do you just aim for the middle of the strike zone and then throw?" The student looked confidently back at her coach and answered his simple question. "Yes, that's pretty much what I have always done." The coach drew his hand across and down his face to his chin, pondered the issue, tried to craft the right thing to tell his student, and spoke in measured tones. "That's the wrong approach. You need to start pitching to spots or you're going to get hit."

There are two basic kinds of wildness. One involves the ability to throw strikes a majority of the time. This is the kind of wildness which yields excessive amounts of walks. The second variety involves what is often called "wildness in the zone." This wildness doesn't usually yield many walks but it does lead to other problems in fastpitch softball.

In the first case, usually we are talking about pitchers in their early years. When girls start learning the windmill, there are so many moving parts that it is often difficult to throw a strike using proper mechanics. Girls can perform parts of the motion in isolation drills but when they try to pull it all together into one smooth movement, the ball goes all over the place.

Even if the kid is not frustrated by lack of control, the practice catcher, parents or coaches often are. The inexperienced father complains, "just get it over" or "just try to throw strikes." The beginning pitcher gets frustrated with the reaction her lack of control induces and she begins altering her delivery to satisfy her critics.

Unfortunately too many young pitchers try to "just get it over" by using improper mechanics like bending at the waist, throwing with a bent arm, or making other gross motor adjustments. This is the pathway to future problems that cannot be resolved.

I remember a conversation I had with a 10U all-star coach who "informed" me that the most important element of softball pitching was the ability to throw strikes. He didn't care so much if his pitchers threw via conventional underhand soft toss, modified fastpitch, or a true windmill. If they could not throw strikes, they could not pitch. I could not help thinking "OK, you could not be more wrong but I must work with you so I won't argue the point. Just let me keep my own kids away from you."

The overall control problem is most effectively resolved via frequent pitching practice sessions. Each kid will get her basic control in her own time. Girls must learn proper mechanics and practice them without any worry whatsoever about where the ball goes. You'd be an idiot to think such girls don't care whether they throw strikes or not. But it takes a lot of practice to get the thing right. And there is no timeline which fits every individual.

I've written a fair amount about what parents of aspiring pitchers should and should not do at this point. The keys are:

1) don't have her pitch in games until she is ready because that exposes her to coaches and others who will display frustration whenever she can't get it over;

2) don't get frustrated with her lack of control - get yourself a bucket of balls and have her practice where you have some sort of backstop so you don't spend your time chasing balls (cut down the amount of time between pitches when practicing);

3) encourage proper motion/mechanics - don't encourage throwing strikes;

4) have her throw often to gain the feel of it and to learn the proper release point; and

4) keep her away from people who encourage throwing strikes by modifying the motion.

The result will invariably be a degree of control which will improve over time. If you instead encourage her to modify her motion or allow others to do so, you can plan on having her ready to pitch games earlier. You can also plan on her giving up pitching earlier. Heck, maybe that's a good thing!

The second kind of wildness appears in girls who have mastered the mechanical basics, begun to reliably throw strikes, and are now pitching in games. She no longer walks very many hitters. If she is strong and throws hard, she probably has experienced a good degree of success. She is getting hitters out for a variety of reasons and she is no longer being hurt by her excessive walks.

Many people, especially those with baseball backgrounds, think of this wildness in the zone as "effective" wildness because 1) it is prevalent in hard throwing baseball pitchers and 2) at first it seems to be effective in softball as well. But as girls move up in levels, the hitters become far more skilled and hit pitches that are not thrown to spots.

When we examine the notion of "effective wildness," we are generally talking about a pitcher who throws hard or who has movement on the ball which he or she has not yet harnessed. These pitchers get young batters out because the hitters are not comfortable facing them. They get hit or see others get hit by hard pitches. They see what they think are going to be strikes and wind up swinging at pitches well out of the zone. Eventually, they will become less fearful in the box and hold their ground. They will learn to better predict where a mnovement pitch will cross the plate. They will learn to hit pitches no matter how hard they are thrown. They will learn to adjust their "mental strike zone" to the natural movement of the pitch, especially after watching a couple from a particular pitcher.

In baseball, we see the prevalence of the fastball. Baseball pitchers get generally more movement on their fastballs than softball pitchers for reasons I won't go into. They throw different varieties (2-seam, 4 seam, cut) of the fastball in order to alter that movement. The ball is very small relative to the softball. So hitters have more difficulty dealing with baseball fastballs regardless of where they are thrown. That's not to imply that effective baseball pitchers, especially at higher levels, don't throw to spots. But a hard throwing pitcher can be effective if he has good speed and movement but still cannot command where the ball is going. The term "effectively wild" is a common one in baseball.

In softball, we do not hear of top pitchers being "effectively" wild. That is because the ball is bigger, pitch movement is less, and hitters are trained to deal with speed. If a pitcher can throw strikes at will, has normal to good movement but cannot know with any degree of certainty whether this pitch is going to be on the middle 60-70% of the plate, on the outer two 15-20% locations, up, down or middlish, she is going to get hit. Certainly, on some days, she is going to get lucky and keep the ball out of the middle part of the zone. But she is going to be inconsistent and on certain days be hit very hard.

There is another reason aside from hitters' abilities that pitchers need command of their pitches. We see umpires' strike zones vary quite a bit. I believe the strike zone is broader in fastpitch than it is in baseball. Just the other day we had a plate umpire calling pitches for strikes when they were clearly a good foot up and out. We have experienced a few umps who make pitchers throw into a pipe but for the most part, the umpires we have seen, extend the zone in some direction. There are some who like the outside and low pitch, a few who like it up and out, some who like it up but not down, or down but not up, and some who like everything in but won't give you an outside "on the black" pitch no matter what.

Pitchers have to make adjustments just like everybody else on the field. But their most important adjustment is to the plate ump's strike zone. If the ump is giving you a particular location, it may not be necessary to hit it every time but if you cannot hit it at all, you are preventing yourself from taking an important advantage you would otherwise have. Many times I have watched pitchers who are good at hitting one particular spot pitch to an umpire who favors that spot. They have their best games in those circumstances. But in another game, they might have an ump who favors another location. If they cannot figure out what that location is and hit it, they have less stellar games.

To be successful at pitching, you must possess the ability to hit spots which batters cannot hit as well as those spots off the plate which an umpire is calling. The only way to gain that ability is to practice it.

Once a pitcher is throwing strikes (has control) with good mechanics, the next stages have to involve learning movement and change of speed pitches, and learning to hit spots (command). As this piece is about location, we'll leave the other stuff to another day.

The first elements to pitching command involve inside and outside pitches. The practice catcher sets up "on the black" and the pitcher throws to the corners where the glove is placed. I think of this as stage 2 - level 1 because it is not enough to just throw to the corners. In stage 2 - level 2, the effective pitcher will learn first to throw to the corners and then to throw off them. If the count is 1-0, she tries to throw a strike to even up the count but she still wants to be out of the center. If the count is 0-1 or 0-2, she wants to throw near the corner but off it.

There isn't a good reason to throw an 0-2 pitch which catches the plate. Instead, what you want to do is expand the zone by throwing something off the plate which may induce the batter to swing at a pitch she cannot hit well. So pitchers must practice throwing off the corners. Additionally, they must learn to throw off the plate in varying degrees. Stage 2 - level 3 involves learning to throw 2 inches, 4 inches, 6 inches, etc. off the plate. This is because umpires might sometimes be giving you everything 2 inches off the plate causing batters to swing at outside pitches not in the "book" strike zone. And, if the count is 0-2, why would you throw a pitch that is within the ump's zone? Instead, you move a couple inches off that to see if the batter will swing at something she has no hope of hitting!

To recap, pitchers learn their motion, practice tirelessly to throw within the strike zone, avoid any "advice" about adjusting delivery to "just get it over," then progress to learning to pitch on and off the corners, to varying degrees in order to induce batters to swing at bad pitches and perhaps get umps t0o call strikes on pitches off the plate. That is command. That is the location goal but it does not stop with inside and outside corners.

Up and down are nearly as important as in and out. That's because some hitters can deal with, for example, the inside and low but not the inside and up pitch. Also, some umps will give you either the high or low but most often not both. Up and down can sometimes be more difficult than in and out. The pitchers I have observed who can move the ball to the corners and off it, usually go up or down by accident. They can comand the thing horizontally but not vertically. So the next stage (stage 2 - level 4) is command up and down.

In case you are wondering if we are just talking about fastballs in this discussion - which should get you upset since most realize that the fastball is not a commonly used pitch in softball, the answer is no. For all your pitches, command in and out, up and down are important. Obviously a screwball is almost always going to be in. There are the up and down are critical. We see many hitters who are very effective against in and down but who cannot hit an in and up pitch if their lives depended on it. If a pitcher does not have up and down command on her screwball, she is going to run into troubles against these kinds of hitters.

While many pitchers' curveballs can be throw in or out, as we discussed some time ago, the degree of out is very important. A curve right on the outside of the plate is probably going to be hit very hard by good hitters. But if it starts on the last tiny slice of the plate and moves 6 inches off it, that is going to be effective. Yet the pitcher probably needs to possess the ability to throw the curve for a strike on 3-0 counts. Further, if she can get a strike called or induce the batter to swing and miss at a curve which is a mere inch or two off the plate, she should throw it further off on the next one. She needs to find the edge of the ump's zone and then be able to hit that or move it off that, depending on the count.

Similarly, pitchers need command of the change-up. A change-up which is above the belt and in the center of the plate can travel a great distance if the batter deals well with the timing aspect. If it cannot be throw for a strike, it is not an effective pitch since many teams train their hitters to lay off the change unless they are way down in the count. Pitchers must learn to throw the thing inside the zone, keep it low, and move it to the outside corner as well as just off it, etc. I think we see more pitchers who have trouble landing their changes for a strike than with any other pitch. And once they are able to throw it for a strike, that seems to be anough command for them. But learn a good change and then learn to command it in terms of down and out, and you have a really effective pitch, perhaps the most effective pitch in the game.

Dropballs are almost always down and rises are almost always up. But if you can learn degrees of up and down as well as in and out on these pitches, you are much better off in the long run. Many batters cannot hit a drop well or even make contact with a rise. But these hitters learn to make adjustments with where they stand in the batters box and to lay off any marginal pitches they can't hit. So if a drop or rise pitcher cannot put these pitches inside the zone, they aren't going to be effective. And if she can control the up or down but cannot throw to the corners and off them, she is limiting her effectiveness since some hitters will be able to deal with outside drops or inside rises and some umps will give her certain locations but not others.

When pitchers are learning command of pitches to locations, catchers are often involved. The catcher sets up in or out, up or down and the pitcher throws to the location of the glove. This is fine for learning 9in practice and fine if you have a talented catcher. But I have often heard pitchers and parents of pitchers complain that catchers are not setting targets appropriately. If the pitch is called outside, yes, she sets up outside. But her outside target is always in the same place. She does not move slightly off the plate when the count is 0-2. I once heard my own daughter complain about this. The pitcher must not cede command control to the catcher unless that catcher is completely in sync with the pitcher's way of thinking and pitching.

What I do with my own pitchers is, when we practice, I might hjave them work on command by initially setting up at the location they are pitching to. But after some reps of that, I tell them I am now going to set up right down the middle and I want them to pick a spot, not in the middle, to pitch to. For example, say we are working on the fastball. She throws ten fastballs just to warm up the pitch. Then I move and have her throw 5 to the outside corner, 5 off it, 5 on the inside corner, and 5 off it. Next I have her throw up and down. Then I might have her throw 1 inside and up, another out and down, etc. with me moving the glove to the location.

After that location by catcher's glove location, I set up right down the middle and tell her to throw a strike on the outside corner at whatever height. Then I tell her to throw one off the plate by an inch or two. Then maybe further off. We work location by glove location and then location despite glove location. In this way, I teach her to throw where she wants it regardless of whether she is throwing to the gifted catcher on her travel team or the make shift one for the school team (or vice versa).

What I'm telling you is, yes you must learn to throw strikes, then you must learn command. You must learn these things up and down, in and out. You must learn to throw to your locations rgeardless of where your catcher is set up and regardless of how talented she is or is not.

Now, obviously, we are talking about degrees of magnitude here. If my pitcher is throwing 60-65, has five pitches including a killer change, can throw to specific locations at will 100% of the time, she is prepping for top 25 D-1! All she needs to learn at this point is stance / swing analysis, and then how to break down a hitter!! But your reaction to the discussion should not be one of "if it's that complicated, my kid is probably not going to pitch for more than a year or two after this 10U season ends." Rather, I am trying to give you a sense of where to take things after she gets the basic mechanics down and after she is able to reliably throw strikes.

Maybe you are wondering when you should introduce location and command to your young pitcher. I suppose it is never too early to start the introduction but my sense is, if she can't throw a strike about half the time, you are probably wasting your time trying to get her to throw an outside strike at this point. Half is a decent rule of thumb. If she can throw strikes about half the time, put in some attempts to throw outside strikes in her pitching practices. If, for example, you are throwing 100 fastballs in your session, try getting her to throw 20 - 30 of them on the outside corner.

Break things up a bit. Maybe you usually throw 50 pitches in the first phase of this practice and then call balls and strikes for the remaining 50. In that case, I would have her throw 10-15 of the first fifty on the outside corner. Then, when you are calling balls and strikes in the second fifty, every 5th pitch, call one outside. And don't forget to call pitches as strikes if she hits the corner or is slightly off it. Don't set your mitt on the outside of the zone, tell her to hit it, and then call "ball" when she nails your unmoving glove.

As you progress with this for a few weeks/months, you may have her throw some warm-up pitches which do not involve location but after those, everything should be to location, in or out, on the plate or just off it. And once this is accomplished to an acceptable degree (use 50% again) begin having targets in the zone, 2 inches off it, 4 inches off it, etc. The furthest you need to be away from the plate is about the inside line of each batter's box or just past it.

Once you start to work off the plate by degrees, also start working the up and down aspect. I would say that initially, all you need is above and below the batter's theoretical waistline. Then that should progress in 2 to 4 inch intervals. And don't stop at the bottom and top of the strike zone. Include parts above and below the zone as you are doing with the in and out.

The riseball pitcher who can land her pitch just below the upper reaches of the zone and get a called strike one, then paint the edge of the line for two, and then throw one about eye level is going to get a lot of Ks. The dropball pitcher who can throw her pitch for a strike and then bounce one just off the plate is also going to get most batters out easily. Location frustrates hitters like nothing else. You have to hate facing the kid who throws to the weakest part of your swing and then, when you adjust, puts it back where your wheelhouse was before you made the adjustment.

You may never get to the point where your young pitcher is throwing pitches precisely one foot outside, just above the shoulder of the batter with 100% accuracy. Mopst likely you never will be even close to that level of precision. Still, the idea is to work on these things to improve command. The pitcher who works location will be better off than the one who doesn't. Even if a girl is not able to throw 5 of 10 of a given pitch to location, her command will be better and she will be a better pitcher.

The trick is to practice the right way. As the parent, guardian, or coach of an aspiring pitcher, you do her a diservice if you allow her to stop refining whenever she regularly finds the strike zone. You are only 20% of the way home when that happens. Don't allow your pitcher to confidently aim for the middle and then just see what happens. This isn't baseball.

Suicide Sqeeze Is Painful

2009-10-05T06:36:00.001-07:00

The second most painful event in fastpitch softball happerns when you give up the go-ahead run on a suicide squeeze executed flawlessly by your opponent.

Your going along in a tied game, perhaps nothin-nothin, and the other team gets a girl on second. Maybe you are in ITB. There are no outs. You have two strikes on the hitter and you get your pitcher to waste something which might fool the batter into striking out, putting you in a great position to get through the inning without giving up a run. Let's see - a dropball short of the plate! That should do it! But the ball bounds away from the catcher and the runner at second moves to third uncontested.

Now you have no outs a 1-2 count and a runner on third. Your pitcher strikes out the batter, making you feel just a little bit better. You just need to get one more quick out, preferably with an infield fly or a hard grounder to your now pulled-in infield. Then you are confident that your team will get the final out and you'll be the one threatening to score.

It wouldn't be fair for your team to lose this game. This is the first runner they have had at third. You've had girls there all day. But you have failed to put across a run. It just wouldn't be fair for you to lose.

Everything is moving in slow motion now. Just as your pitcher comes around with her arm to the release point, the batter squares and lays down an average to poor bunt. You're sure your kids can hold the runner and make that play without giving up a run. For a millisecond, you are happy. But then you realize that the runner from third broke with the release and is coming full guns. Your pulled in third baseman snags the ball quickly and seems to know instintively that she must come home with it. She makes a decent throw. Your catcher makes a clean play and tags quickly. But the runner is already underneath her and you fix your gaze on the plate ump. It looks for a moment as if he is going to make the out call but he doesn't. Instead, he moves both arms and hands and does the unthinkable. SAFE!!

Like I said, that is the second most painful event in fastpitch softball. The single most painful event happens when it is your runner on third in the bottom of the last and you fail to pull off the squeeze.

You've got a runner on third for the first time this game. You got her there by giving up the first out of the inning on a sacrifice bunt. It just so happens that the baserunner is the quickest, fastest kid on the team who also is to be a terrific baserunner. She gets off the bag well, runs like a cheetah in pursuit and has slid under too many tags to count.

Their pitcher is GOOD! Only two kids have gotten hits this game, those came several innings apart, and not very many of your kids have so much as put the ball into play. You can't count on the fates to allow the current hitter to break out and get a hit or drive one deep enough to get the runner in. She hasn't hit well all day and looked very bad in her previous at-bat when she struck out swinging at a ball two feet outside the zone. This pitcher seems to have the girl's number.

So you think perhaps you might be able to call a squeeze except that this hitter is not that great of a bunter. Actually, she doesn't care very much for bunting. Neither do her parents who have watched way too much high school, college and professional baseball. They think bunting is for kids who can't hit. Their kid can hit! If you so much as ask this kid to bunt EVER, you are setting yourself up for an hours long discussion with the mother since the father will not deign to even speak to you for weeks after you ask his kid to bunt. But you'd really, really like to call a squeeze play right now.

You give the sign and the girl scrunches up her nose, calls time-out and jogs towards you. Oh great! Nobody can figure out what you are up to! You've got the element of surprise going for you ... NOT!

You ask her, what she wants. She whispers, "you want me to bunt? Now?" You say, "yes. You gotta get this one down. Do it and we win the game." She trots back to the box as the opposing coach instructs, "watch the bunt. Hold her at third but get the out at first. You have plenty of time." (This batter is not a fast runner.)

The pitcher goes into her windmill and your batter breaks her hands squares about a half second too early and then bunts at the pitch as your baserunner commits suicide and blazes towards home. The batter whiffs by a good six inches and the catcher tags your runner out. Two down, 0-1 count, nobody on. The batter takes strike two, swings and misses at another riseball two feet over her hands, and you go on to lose the game. The batter and her parents are actually a little PO'd at you for putting her in an 0-1 hole from which she was pretty much forced to strike out wqhen they thought maybe she would go yard and win the game.

That's pretty darn painful!!!!

Sqeezes often end like this. That's why a lot of teams don't attempt them. But if you want to win ITB games against really tough pitchers, that's often your best option.

Everybody ought to work on squeezes. Every player who steps onto a softball field ought to be able to bunt. But the reality is many girls cannot put one down into play at will.

We work on bunting all the time. Very often I hear one, two or more girls complain under their breath that "I hate bunting." I have coached teams where more than one girl has, I believe, been told by her parents or taken the position on her own behalf that if I am called on to bunt, I will simply miss the bunt and then get a chance to hit away with just one strike.

As a coach, it is very frustrating to encounter girls with this attitude. We tell them that if you cannot bunt, you do not belong playing softball. If you want to play money baseball, that is played on another field and you are welcome to go there.

Still, even with extensive bunt practice, with everyone fully understanding that an at-bat in which you are asked to bunt and don't pull it off is a failed at-bat, girls still often fail top put one down in play. There are a few kids who always get it down. But those girls never seem to be up with a fast runner on third in the tight games. It's always the "big hitters" in the midst of a slump.

If it isn't the big hitters, it is the girls who can bunt but only in drag situations for basehits. The trouble with those girls is they struggle to make plain vanilla sacrifice bunts. They get bunts down and get on base about 25% of the time but the usual sequence involves missing the ball completely the other times. You can't count on them to get a sac down. You can't count on them in a squeeze situation.

I think I have set the stage properly to discuss an alternative strategy to the suicide squeeze, conventional sac "bunt" which requires that the batter A) absolutely make contact with the ball, B) absolutely not pop it up into the air, and C) hopefully get it down in fair territory. What I'm talking about involves not splitting the hands in a conventional bunting manner. What's important is contact with the ball. What's important is not popping it up. The rest depends more on the baserunner than on the quality of the "bunt."

I have observed many teams which utilize what I refer to as the "two-strike swing" approach in which the girls do not pull back to a full load and, thereafter, do not take a full swing at the ball. Instead, they place the bat into the zone and pull back about three quarters to full, take a quick chop at the ball, and generally make contact. This is utilized anytime the batter is down to her final strike but becomes very important when there is a runner on base and a grounder is needed to move her over. I've watched many girls at high levels use this to great advantage. But that is not exactly the technique I want to use in my squeeze scenario.

What I want you to teach your batters to use when they are called upon to execute squeezes is a "pepper" swing in which they merely put out a check swing and tap the ball into play the way they would when playing "pepper." You have your team play pepper, don't you? You should!

If you don't know what pepper is, listen up. You place three or more girls about 20 feet from a batter, give 'em a ball and say, "play pepper for a few minutes!" basically, the three fielders toss the ball underhand to the batter and she taps it back to them. The player who picks up the ball tosses it again and the batter taps it to hopefully another fielder. It is a great exercise to awaken fielders' reflexes. It is a great exercise to have batters practice their hand-eye coordination, not to mention bat control skills. It is a great exercise to have fielders work on their underhand tosses. And now, you know, it is great to work on suicide squeeze "bunting."

Basically, when playing pepper, the batter keeps the bat near the strike zone and then reaches to tap the ball into play towards the fielders. It is a lot like bunting exceopt for the technique with the bat. It is not a conventional bunt. It is a check swing. And most girls given very little practice can make contact with nearly every "pitch" tossed to them.

Playing pepper is not enough of an experience to teach girls to get suicide squeeze bunts down. You n eed high speed, live action "batting" practice for that. Turn the pitching machine up as high as it can go and have girls repeatedly tap balls into play. While you are doing that, have your pitchers warm up. Then have them throw live-pitched tapping practice.

Tell your pitcher to deliberately make it hard for the batters to make contact with the ball. If you get to game situations with runners on third and the other teams suspects you may try a squeeze, you can bet the oppposing pitcher will waste one high or outside on the first pitch. You want your pitchers throwing this practice to do the same. They can mix in some strikes, throw their movement pitches, etc. But they must sometimes waste some pitches since that provuides the most effective suicide squeeze "bunt" tapping practice.

I was watching a game on TV when i first saw this technique employed. I cannot remember which game it was or which teams were involved. All I can tell you is that the game was at a reasonably high level - that should be obvious since it was televised. The batter easily tapped the ball into play. It was not really a "good bunt." The ball was hit a little too hard to call it that. But, do you know what? It was a very effective technique. The batter had absolutely no trouble making contact against an otherwise tough pitcher. The baserunner from third had no trouble making it home in a not very close play at the plate despite the infielder making a clean play and good throw. I believe that, if you practice this technique, your percentage of successful suicide plays will increase dramatically. I hope none of our competitors are reading this!

Suicide squeezes are always painful. That is never a question. They are always painful for one of the parties involved. Which one do you want to be, the inflictor or sufferor?

Repeat ... Repeat ... Repeat ... Repeat ...

2009-09-24T06:08:00.000-07:00

I saw an e-mail from some coaches to their players the other day which, on the surface, doesn't really contain anything wrong per se but which, after some contemplation, I realized misses the mark by quite a bit. The message said something along the lines of "good players don't need to be told to do something twice. They hear what is told to them and thereafter they do it the right way." The idea of the message was to cause players to take personal responsibility when something they do is corrected. It implores them to take coaches' words to heart and to try harder to incorporate constructive criticism into their games. That is a good thing to tell players. But if you think they're gonna get that message the first time you give it to them, think again, and again, and again ...

Human beings are creatures of habit. Think for a minute about some mundane aspect of your life such as your morning routine or what you typically do after arriving home from school or work. I would be willing to bet that you do things in almost precisely the same order when you get up in the morning at about the same moment each day. I know I do. If my morning hygiene regime is examined, I know that I do things in precisely the same order and that if a stopwatch were to be put on the routine over the course of a month, there probably would be little variance throughout the period.

The phrase "routine will set you free" makes use of the human habit phenomenon in a constructive way. If you use habit to accomplish certain tasks each day, you are freed up to handle non-routine events more easily. If you didn't have habit, the every day things would take you twice as long to finish. If you do not believe that, try mixing up your morning routine or some such pattern and see what happens.

Let's say that you shower, do your hair, dress, eat something for breakfast, drink some coffee, then brush your teeth, etc. Try doing things in a completely different order, within reason. Put that proverbial stopwatch on yourself and see if it takes about the same amount of time to do things in a different order each day or if your normal routine is faster. My guess is the normal routine is very much faster. Worse, I'd be willing to bet that if you do everything in a different order, some of the time, you will forget to do something. Most people function that way.

When I worked an office job, I usually got up at exactly the same moment each day; then got into the shower first; then shaved, brushed my hair; brushed my teeth; got dressed; drank a cup of coffee; pulled out my computer to review news; got up from that at exactly the same moment; packed my bag; got into the car at precisely the same moment; drove to the train station, parked in a spot within 5 spots of where I parked every day in a lot which contained hundreds and hundreds of cars; bought the same newspaper and a cup of coffee from the same guy, walked to almost precisely the same point on the very long train platform, stood next to the same people, and got on the same train at almost the same spot; got off the train at the same location; walked to the same place on the subway platform; jumped on just about the same subway every day; got out at the same spot; walked the same walk; got on the same elevator; and found myself at my desk at about the same time each and every day for something like 12 years. What strikes me in the history of this morning routine is that I often saw the same people on the same train, subway, even elevator. That was true despite some of them coming from New Jersey, others from Connecticut, a few from Pennsylvania, and several from places within New York City or Manhattan itself. That is kind of odd when you think about it. Numerous people waking up at different times in locations far apart, doing essentially the same tasks, taking different means of transportation, and all arriving at the same location at the same moment, over and over again, over years and years.

But enough of the mundane. The point is, people are creatures of habit. Network TV stations work hard to get you to tune in their channel on Sunday night before you go to bed because they know that, on Monday morning, you will turn on the TV and leave whatever channel is on alone. The supermarket business makes trade on understanding people's habits and placing impulse buy items according to that pattern. All of marketing is essentially a human psychology effort and one which makes use of habit perhaps more than anything else.

I heard a softball coach the other day say to his team, "look girls, I am tired of repeating myself over and over again, and not having anyone listen and follow through. I tell you to do it this way and you do it that way once, maybe twice, but then a day or two later, you do it the same way you did it when I corrected you. I'm tired of this. From now on, I want you to listen to me when I correct you and do it the right way thereafter." If you have ever strongly felt this way, I suggest you take a step back and think hard about what coaching entails before moving forward or backing away from the game. Repeating oneself is not only important in coaching, it is the foundation upon which everything else rests.

Let's draw a picture. Lets say you have before you a new team. They can all throw and field OK. They've never really played the game before but they have all the requisite skills. So now, all you need to do is teach them how to react to different things that might happen. You decide the very first thing you want to teach them is bunt defense. You explain to them what each position will do. That takes perhaps 5 minutes. You set them all up in the field, then tap or hit a ball into play a few feet from home and yell, "BUNT." Of course, every girl will do everything exactly as you told them just a few moments ago, won't they? I also suppose that you are now done with ever mentioning bunt defense. They all know what to do and they all practiced it once. If they are real athletes, if they listened to you, if they were paying close attention and took what you said to heart, all of these girls will do everything exactly right on every bunt play they ever face.

OK, so that's an exaggeration. If two days after your single bunt defense practice you were to play a game in which the first batter walked and the second batter bunted, the reality would be somewhat different. The 2B would run headlong into both the SS and CF as all three tried to cover second. The girl fielding the bunt would whip the ball into right because nobody was covering first. The RF, not aware of any particular responsibility on this play, would be busy picking grass out of her fingernails and not see the ball go right past her. The LF would run past the foul line and ask her mother to "bring a bottle of water to the dugout after this inning." The 3B would back up home. And your pitcher would quit the team on the spot, walking off the field because she does not want to spend all that time practicing her pitches just to play with a bunch of losers like the girls on this team.

I don't think I overstate reality on this point. If you want to run a solid bunt defense, you've got to explain it at length, impress everyone of your players with the fact that every position on the field has a specific responsibility, tell them what their responsibilities are, and then run through a typical bunt many, many times. Then at your next practice, you will spend less time explaining the play and more time running through it. You likely will continue to run through bunt defense many more times at every practice for the entire year. And you'll do the same thing again next year with the same group of girls.

Each time you run through bunt defense, you may make little tweaks to speed things up. When you see little mistakes made, you'll correct them. The team will get better and better at this play. But in games, they will make the occasional error on it and then you'll work it some more in practice. That is what softball is all about, repetition of conditioned response.

When a windmill pitcher, catcher or batter takes private lessons to learn the mechanics of her craft, I suppose theoretically, it should take a finite number of lessons before she gets it absolutely right and, thereafter, she should never again need another lesson with respect to the skill. That theory should pan out if the girls taking the lessons are paying attention to their instructors, listening hard and taking the instructions to heart. But if that were the case, private instructors wouldn't be in such high demand. It really is not an issue of girls not paying attention or of perhaps starting them out too young so much as it is a matter of players always needing to be reminded of certain aspects of their mechanics which tend to atrophy over time.

There really are not so many aspects to playing this game that it takes a lifetime to learn them all. There are plenty but it is a finite set. And each skill takes a long time to truly master. If players needed just one iteration of a skill shown the right way and then they had it down pat, it might take about 2 to 3 years and a gifted athlete would be ready to play at world class level. If that theory worked, we wouldn't need coaches to do very much at the highest levels. College and ASA Gold coaches could just get themselves the most skilled and athletic recruits, arrange them on the field of play and simply watch. In case you haven't noticed, that does not happen.

There are probably more coaches kept very busy at the highest levels of the game than anywhere else. Colleges have pitching instructors, catching, infield and outfield coaches, batting instructors, trainers and conditioners, etc. They need these coaches in order to properly prepare athletes who have been playing the game more than 10 years. They have selected and recruited the best athletes their programs can entice and yet they need coaches to train the kids! Why is that?

The other day I was watching a couple coaches in a 14U batting practice. The team was a new one. The coaches had selected the best kids they could draw and put together a team. Now they were a couple weeks into practicing them twice a week. At each practice they spent about half their time on hitting. Each girl would stand in and hit balls pitched to various locations by one coach while another stood and watched their hitting mechanics. These coaches were of the hybrid swing mechanic genre though they were not particularly aware of that fact. The kids they had picked for their team were, of course, the ones who had done the best at tryouts. A large percentage of these kids were rotationally trained.

The coaches liked the way most of the girls turned their hips to drive the ball. They all seemed to do well with pitches inside and in the lower portions of the strike zone. But when the coach threw balls high or on the outside corner, all of these girls would struggle. And they often tried to pull the outside pitches. When this would happen, the coaches would stop the batting practice for a few minutes and show the batters what they were doing wrong. In some cases, they had already told the particular girls to correct their mistake by doing X or Y. But they could not understand why they had told this or that girl to do X and she refused to do it the next time she hit. In one case, a girl was told to do a partuicular thing and she did it fine right away for numerous practice pitches. Later, when she faced live pitching, she reverted back to her errant ways. The coaches were again frustrated.

At this batting practice, one girl would rotate her hips, drop the bat head, and then take what could only be described as a golf swing. The girl had been trained to do this for years because, when she was younger and small for her age, she had trouble generating enough power to hit the ball out of the infield. Now that she was about normal size and of above average strength, she had great difficulty changing her swing mechanics. The coaches told her that any decent pitcher was going to see her swing and know to keep the ball up in the zone to get her out easily. They told her what to do to correct this and she did as they said perhaps once or twice, but she just couldn't repeat it for any length of time. This kid is going to be quite a project for quite a long time.

In addition to problems with habit and learned errors, kids have a lot on their minds. The girl whose swing, throwing, or fielding mechanics (perhaps all three) are being corrected at Wednesday practice also is trying to remember how to conjugate some Spanish verb, how to solve quadratic equations, and / or the order of events in the American Revolution for tests on Thursday and Friday. She is trying to remember if that cute boy likes the Kansas City Chiefs or the Miami Dolphins / the New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox. She is focused on what Doris told her about the boy who is going to ask her to Friday night's dance. She is thinking about the fact that her mother told her she must either clean up her room or she has to stay inside all weekend to help with some boring job around the house. She is trying to remember so many things that if you tell her to keep her butt down just once, you would have to be out of your mind to expect her to remember it even though she is perhaps your most focused ballplayer.

I was working with a girl who plays first base for us. She is a good player, quick, athletic. She struggles with hard shots hit to her right. Over two games, the only errors we made in the games were balls hit to her right. She got there too late on both of these plays and the ball careened off her mitt. She is a tall kid and has a tendency to stand too erect. She has, for many years, played from a ready position in which her legs are fairly stiff. What I wanted her to do was get her legs bent with her butt down and her mitt able to touch the ground. Then I wanted her to get on the balls of her feet and be ready to go in either direction very quickly.

I explained what it is I wanted her to do and she made some first efforts at it. I had to explain again and emphasize the getting low aspect because her normal position was so high that her first efforts at getting low were only about half of what I envisioned. Eventually, with some prodding, I got her low enough. We went through maybe ten grounders after that. The next practice, she was back in her normal ready position. I could have said, "I'm tired of repeating myself ..." but I didn't. Instead, I said, "remember, you gotta get low." And she went to the halfway point again so I said, "no, lower." I expect I'll be saying this same thing to this same girl until the end of the year. At some point, maybe it will click in her. Then again, it might not!

I remember a particular SS I worked with for a full year. She had a bad tendency to field everything with one hand which slowed her down. She also tended to field sideways instead of with her shoulders square. Everything else was fine but this one-handed tendency really killed her. I had her for a year and I thought we had tamed the thing. But that was several years ago and I had occasion to see her recently. She is doing a pretty good job in LF but she almost never plays SS anymore. Her coaches picked a girl to play that critical position who has better habits and makes fewer errors. I suppose that puts the truth in the original statement I discussed above, "good players don't need to be told to do something twice. They hear what is told to them and thereafter they do it the right way."

From a personnel point of view, coaches do want the kid who is "easiest to coach" playing the most critical positions. That kid is the one who does not need to be reminded to use two hands, to keep her shoulders square, to bend her knees for the ready position, to not drop the bat head, to rotate her hips, to cover the outside corner, to do this or that to hit against high pitches, where to go on bunt coverage, to block balls in the dirt and how to do that correctly, etc. Coaches are going to pick the kids who listen to them, take constructive criticism to heart and otherwise not make them repeat themselves too much. But coaches themselves should never tire of having to repeat themselves. This game is about repetition. It requires TIRELESS repition of mechanics, plays, and verbal advice. Don't get tired of repeating yourself, just do it. Repeat ... Repeat ... Repeat ... Repeat ... Repeat ...

Pitching Foundation

2009-09-10T06:54:00.001-07:00

In order to build a house, you've got to start with a foundation. OK, so we're not trying to build a house. We're trying to build a windmill. Take a look at the picture. Now that's a windmill with a foundation! Sure, it is obviously quite an old windmill. The modern ones are built with a much more slim look. But the modern versions are built with very sturdy materials and cost quite a bit. Besides I'm not convinced these newer windmills will stand the test of time. And that's what we're after today, a windmill that will stand the test of time.

I could have called this piece pitching fundamentals but everybody shies away from anything called "fundamentals." Similarly, I could have titled it something "beginner." But some would jump over this and seek out something better or more relevant to their situation. We, as a society or culture, have an aversion to anything called fundamental. We want to jump ahead to the intermediate level of everything. We're looking for nuance, tips and tricks, shortcuts. That is not a formula for success with anything complex. Windmill pitching is complex.

Another reason why readers of this blog might look beyond anything fundamental or for beginners is they already pay a coach for lessons and the fundamentals are the coach's responsibility. I've got absolutely nothing against pitching coaches. To me, they are critical. I'm not prepared to make myself into the expert the way Mr. Tincher did. I doubt most of you are either.

Pitching coaches are great but let's not forget that they are selling a product. The pitch9ing coach is putting out the product he believes you are willing to buy. If the coach has you as a client and you are less interested in fundamentals than say the curve ball or making your daughter into a functional pitcher today, that is what he or she is going to sell you. If the pitching coach does not offer what his or her clients want, there will not be sufficient customers to continue the practice. So, while most pitching coaches do teach fundamentals, they need to move things forward to a level at which you are willing to pay for their expertise pretty quickly. I'm going to get into the fundamentals in a moment but before I do, I want to explain a little more deeply why pitching coaches often do not address them and why parents of pitchers are often not only none the wiser for it but often the actual cause.

The typical kid who first steps into pitching lessons is a rec pitcher, say about 8 to 11 years old. The parent of the pitcher wants their kid to be a functional pitcher, one who does not get pulled in the first inning for walking in 3 runs before getting an out. They want their daughter to "just throw strikes." They are less interested in the kid building a foundation that will last into high school than they are avoiding personal embarrassment this Saturday. They are less interested in a proper wrist snap or good body posture than they are having their kid throw those strikes. They are less interested in her starting with two feet on the rubber than they are with her getting outs. They are less interested in avoiding a crow hop or leap than they are in her speed. They are less interested in her having an effective change-up than they are with her learning to throw that curve or drop.

If you want to pitch past 10U, you've got to learn some basics and learn them well. I have seen too many pitchers who have a defective wrist snap, who bend over to deliver that strike, who walk into their pitches or don't even push off the rubber, elt alone drag away from it, who do not develop pitches in the right order or who rely too much on a particular pitch because they can throw it for a strike and are getting batters out. The result is often a pitcher who will get hit hard at the next level, up an age group or over to a higher level of travel. The result is often a pitcher will be frustrated in the future and perhaps give it up before her time is due.

To begin into the foundations that every pitcher ought to work on, I see a couple items which should be given more attention than perhaps most people are willing to give. When coaches build pitchers from the ground up, they usually begin with the release point and work backwards. The release point follows the wrist snap so that's where we'll start. Before the wrist snap is a good "perfect" circle. Before that is a leg drive and drag from the rubber, followed by good body posture. And before that is two, yes two, feet on the rubber or pitcher's plate.

Having a good wrist snap is absolutely critical. Some pitchers develop lazy wrists which results in a rollover or a straight-wrist release. They put a cut on the ball one way or the other. This often gets missed because they still throw the ball hard and because they get baby hooks or cuts on their pitches, batters miss the ball.

I remember seeing a couple 12 year old pitchers at different times who had cuts on their fastballs. They got batters out. But they didn't nearly get the speed they might have on their pitches and, in fact, they had less movement than they should have on their fastballs as they got older. Eventually they became mediocre pitchers or gave it up altogether. A "true" wrist snap is 12 to 6 on the clock. There is no such thing as perfection in any human endeavor. If there were, our eyes couldn't tell us anyway because they are not that keen. But a ball which rotates nearly perfectly is what we're after. If the catcher sees any sort of dot or wobble in the pitch, the wrist snap has not been as near to perfect as it should be.

When a pitcher throws a very good wrist snap, the ball rotates rapidly. This causes a couple things to happen. First off, a rapidly rotation ball is harder for a batter to vector. batters' eyes put together the meeting point of bat and ball in subliminal ways and apparent rotation factors into the hitter's subconscious mental equation. A rapidly rotating ball tells the eyes something about its expected speed. Batters have trouble with good, fast rotation.

Secondly, whereas the errant pitcher's cut will cause the ball to move early on, as she ages and gets faster, the movement will diminish. A good 12 to 6 wrist snap will put harder and harder break on the ball as a pitcher gets faster and faster. The baby hook will not get the job done. As pitchers get older and faster, their hooks need to be more pronounced, more clean, faster rotating than the slight cut. Pitchers who have cuts often get the batters out in rec. They also find success in 10U and 12U travel. But as batters get older and better, they learn to deal with real hooks. Baby hooks are like candy. Hard drops remain one of the hardest things to deal with.

Finally, having a clean snap aids in the development of other pitches. For example, if you want to develop a peel drop or good change-up, having a clean snapped fastball is the route. The peel drop is a great pitch because it looks like an ordinary batting practice fastball but breaks hard as it approaches the plate. It is very hard to judge whether it will be in the zone or not and it is very hard to adjust to and hit into play with anything but a simple grounder. When girls get to changes, they often either grip the ball completely different than the fastball and use the fastball motion, they do not snap at realease, or they use some different technique. Having a true, reliable, 12 to 6, hard wrist snap with which to change off of is the way to go. If a kid has a cut on her fastball, the change-up can be very hard to perfect.

To work on the wrist snap, you have to do a lot of boring repetition. But this work needs to be done. The pitcher stands about 15 feet from the catcher and merely snaps the ball to him or her. She can do this facing the catcher, sideways or both at different times. Emphasis should be on the isolated movement of the wrist, straight up. Of course, some girls struggle with merely snapping - they need to move their arm some. That does not represent any particular difficulty provided that the arm motion is slight and the emphasis is on the actual snap.

Wrist snaps should be done as often as a girl pitches. It should be the first of many warm-up drills. I like to use a pre-set count of snaps as our first step. If you are getting ready for a game, sometimes you are in a rush and you don't have time to do a lot of snaps. I have nothing to tell you about that. But in a normal prac tice session, you really should begin with 10-20 fronts and 10-20 sides. My kids have been pitching for a number of years and always do at least 10 of each. I would strongly suggest that beginner (0 to 2plus years) ought to do more. On some occassions with my kids, when they were starting out, they threw as many as 50-100 snaps to improve their mechanics. On occassions when they were too tired or sick, we did entire practice sessions of nothing but snaps. Once, when my kid had a broken non-pitching arm, we did well more than 100 snaops in order to keep her pitching arm in decent shape and to retain her mechanics. The beginning pitcher needs to do loads of wrists snaps over a long period to get this critical foundation set. Older pitchers who have bad snapping motions should be treated like beginners for purposes of fixing what is broken. As you probably know, fixing a busted foundation is tougher than fixing a leaky roof.

The next foundational piece to pitching involves the circle. I've explained why the longest poossible circle is the best before but for the purposes of anyone new, I'll do it again. If you take a string and twirl it in a circle like the axle of a wheel, one point will remain basically stationery while others will be in motion. The point on the string moving the furthest around the circle will be the end point. In one second elapsed time, the point on the string which is at the center of the circle will move zero distance, the center of the string will move some distance which we'll call "1/2 X," and the furthest point on the string will move double that distance which we'll call "X." The end of the string at the center of the circle moves at speed 0, the middle of the string moves at 1/2X per second and the end point at the outside of the circle mnoves at X per second. So, in other words, if you compare the string to a shoulder and arm, the shoulder is moving very little, the elbow is moving much faster but about half the speed of the hand which is moving the fastest. When you windmill a pitch, the ball is released while moving at the speed of the hand. The shorter one's arms are, the slower the pitch is released. The longer, the faster. So if a pitcher does not legthen her arm, if she short-arms it, she is slowing down the pitch. That is why the length of the circle is so important.

There are two main reasons why pitchers short-arm it. For one thing, if you windmill your arm in a circle, once with full extension and once with a shorter arm, the full extension feels out of control. The short arm is an attempt at control. So, if a girl needs to throw strikes to shut her parents up, to avoid sighing from the sidelines, to prevent the trip to the mound by the rec coach who says, "just throw it over the middle of the plate," she short arms it to control the darn ball. This must be avoided.

It is better to not pitch at all in games until you can control a long armed pitch than it is to pitch and develop this bad habit. I remember watching a kid who had little formal training. She was the right physical and mental specimen to be a pitcher long into her later years as a player. But she pitched with an incredibly bent arm. It almost seemed like she was pretending to windmill. She dropped out of pitching by 14. Her mechanics were terrible.

I have also seen kids who have been through formal training develop the same habit. The cause is invariably the desire to control the pitch, to just throw strikes, usually in rec ball or for the middle school team. Walks are a disaster and kids who walk lots of batters don't get to pitch. But kids who have bent arms pitch only in the very young years. After maybe two years, they are washed up.

The other reason kids develop the short-arm problem is because it feels faster to pitch with a bent arm, particularly early on. If you spin your arm around in a circle while trying to judge in which case it is moving faster, I'd be willing to bet that the shorter arm version feels faster. Perhaps it even is slightly faster. But again the geometry tells us that even if the short arm is moving slightly faster, the hand is not until it reaches nearly full extension. So kids who short-arm it because they feel faster, should be discouraged from doing so. once they master a longer extension and practice it, that will be faster.

Think of it this way, of the best pitchers you have ever seen, not at the lower levels, how many short-arm it and how many get good extension? I guarantee you that Cat Osterman, Monica Abbott, and some of the other big names get very good extension. The best kids I have ever watched at 12U through high school all get exceptional extension. I've never seen a short-armer succeed for very long.

The next subject involves body posture. The pitcher's back should be straight up, perpendicular to the ground, not hunched over. If you think of a tripod, the weight is balanced. If there is too much weight on one of the legs, the thing falls over. We want our weight to be balanced pretty well at the release point. If a girl is all hunched over, leaning over her front foot, she cannot get much on a pitch. Girls do this, again, because it feels as if they can gain control on the pitch. They do this just to get the darn ball over in the strike zone, in order to "just throw strikes."

When we are sitting in the dugout watching the opposing pitcher throw her 5 warm-ups before a game, the most frequent comment I have ever made or heard others make is "oh, she's a leaner." We know that this is a girl who is trying very hard to throw strikes, meaning she probably has not progressed all that far with her location. We are going to tell our hitters to go after anything in the zone because we expect they'll be able to hit it. Girls develop the leaning mistake because they have been coerced into throwing strikes at the cost of a proper motion.

Another possible reason some girls develop leaning tendencies is in order to get spins on some pitch they are trying to master. Some pitchers have decent posture on their fastballs but lean when they throw their change or drop. They are still often doing it to throw strikes. But sometimes they need to put that extra body language on the ball in order to get it to drop. In any event, it is a very bad habit. Not only does it prevent any sort of speed from being put on the ball, it can actually cause you to get less spin and it is a back problem looking for an opportunity to show its head.

Our next foundational piece is the leg drive. Usually, if you short-arm it or lean, you can't really get that good push off. But more importantly, some of the biggest problems I have seen with the push-off and leg drive are crow-hopping and leaping problems. Now, for years, umpires have not been calling crow-hops and leaps but they are starting to. We watched the same pitcher ply her trade for freshman through junior year pretty successfully. This year, in one game, she had double digit illegal pitches called against her in just a few innings. There have been complaints about crow-hoppers for years near me and over the past couple of years, I have seen umps call them against college and even Olympic pitchers. &n bsp; It is slowly getting around to travel ball.

The other day, we were playing a fall ball game and a new pitcher was brought in. I watched the kid for a batter or two and dsaid to one of the other coaches, "hey watch this girl, she's hopping like crazy." My comments were meant for just the other coach but the plate ump overheard me and was apparently thinking the same thing. He called out the other team's coach and discussed it with him. the coach went out and talked to his pitcher. This league is essentially an organized way of scrimmaging. We weren't looking for any illegal pitch calls and the ump was not about to make any. But he did feel obliged to point the problem out to the coach and have him work with the girl on it. Umps are getting very sensitive to hopping and leaping. If you or one of your pitchers are doing it, watch out. You're gonna get called.

I think girls develop crow hopping early on due to the way in which they are taught to pitch, with certain pause points in their motions until they get the whole thing ready to pull together. There are also some pitching drills which require one to crow hop and stop. Unfortunately, some girls never break out of the tendency to hop. If your kids are pitchers, you really need to understand what a crow hop is and break your kids of it as early as possible.

Another reason kids develop into crow hoppers is because they propel themselves closer to the batter at realease and thereby are able to put pitches past them more easily. Also, when kids practice their pitching in gymnasiums or at other facilities without being able to push off from a rubber and drag properly, they sometimes develop hops in order to maintain balance that would be easily accomplished on a real field. Whatever the reason a crow hop develops, it should be corrected before it becomes habit.

Leaping is more difficult. I'm not sure why it develops. The difference between a hop and a leap is on the hop, a new pushoff point (a new point of impetus) is found. With leaping, the pivot foot becomes airborn, it does not drag away. I have one kid who developed this and I really don't know why. But what we did to correct it was place a cloth on the ground underneath the pivot foot and make her drag that cloth all the way through to her finished pitch point. I'm not sure if that will help you fix a leap or not but again, umps are more likely to call leaops now than at anytime in the past couple of years. They are looking for them.

Finally, one foundation piece I really want to emphasize involves starting with two feet on the rubber. Little League, PONY, NFHS and perhaps others do not have a requirement that the pitcher start with both feet on the rubber. But ASA and college definitely do. Even if you are not intending to pitch in college, it is more than likely that one day you'll play some kind of ASA ball in which both feet is a requirement. Why not do it at the get-go. Most pitching
coaches will not emphasize this precisely because high schools, PONY, and LL don't. Parents of pitchers should force their kids to start with both feet on the rubber just to avoid future problems and because, if addressed early, it really is not all that hard.

To go one step further, there are two minor bad habits which should be addressed when teaching the pitcher to start with both feet on the rubber. The first of these is to take the sign while on the rubber. I have seen more pitchers take the sign before stepping on the rubber than I have seen take it while on it. But this is in the rules. Pitchers are required to take a sign or pretend to take a sign once they get on the rubber. Understand that I really don't give a rat's arse where a girl takes the actual sign. What I want is for a girl to step on the rubber, compose and balance herself before throwing the pitch. if she takes the sign in back of the rubber, grabs her grip, then steps onto the rubber to pitch, chances are pretty good that she is not going to really be balanced and centered and then she is also running the risk of an ancillary problem of walking into the pitch.

Walking into the pitch happens when a pitcher successively steps onto the rubber and then begins her wind-up without hesitating. This is definitely not fair to batters and is often called. Pitchers, by rule, are required to step onto the rubber, take the sign, bring their hands together for about a second, and then pitch.

If a pitcher steps calmly onto the rubber (with both feet in my view), pauses to take a sign or to pretend to take a sign, if she only then brings her hands together (presents the ball) and then, after about a second, delivers the pitch, she will never walk into her pitch and get her rhythm broken by an umpire requiring her to do so. If she has a hood wrist snap, she'll find more success than if she doesn't. If she has a straight arm in her windmill, she will pitch better. If she keeps her back straight up, she'll not only be better, she will also not develop back problems so easily. If she avoids hopping and leaping, she'll avoid confrontations with umps. If she pushes off well and practices sound fundamentals, life will be better for years to come.

You need a foundation to build a house. You need a foundation to build a windmill. It is easier to build the foundation before the structure. But if you've already built the house on a faulty foundation, you should still try to fix the foundation. Otherwise the thing will fall over eventually.

Scrimmage (def.)

2009-09-08T07:33:00.000-07:00

Jeff wrote in to ask, "Have you written an article on the 'Reasons for Scrimmaging' or something like that. nbsp; I have several parents who think the sole purpose of a scrimmage is to win. I have tried to explain that I use them as a controlled game environment, so that I can see the girls perform certain skills under game situations. I coach both High School and Travel softball."

Jeff's question should not be of sufficient interest to justify much elaboration. The concept of a scrimmage is simple enough. I wouldn't suspect that anyone would any trouble whatsoever getting their arms around it. But, alas, apparently too few people get the idea.

First let's define the term:

Scrimmage (def.)
n. = "A practice session or informal game, as between two units of the same team."
v. = "engage in a rehearsal" / "practice playing"

So a scrimmage is essentially a practice, a rehearsal, a chance to do what you have been practicing in a game-like setting. It is not a contest which figures into standings for a league or otherwise should matter in a competitive sense. In other words, the goals of a team, its coaches, the players and their parents, generally do not include winning as they normally would. Other items are of much greater importance. And winning the thing usually does not even factor into the equation, especially when it cuts into other, more important goals. Some few times, coaches might make winning an important part of a scrimmage, especially towards the beginning of a season. But most of the time, it is an agent of preparation.

If you are familiar with major league baseball, you should know what spring training games are and understand the references to "grapefruit league" and/or "cactus league." These are somewhat comical references to pre-season games (ie. scrimmages). When athletes, like professional baseball players achieve a certain level of conditioning and skill expertise, they need less of what we think of as ordinary practice. They gain more from playing in game-like conditions than they do from repetitive drill sessions. They still spend time working on skills by performing those boring drills but they need live situations to work out the bugs. They need dress rehearsals to perfect their skills.

The same is true of athletes in most other competitive team sports like football, soccer, and, yes, softball. When the USA Olympic softball team wanted to get ready for the real games, they engaged in numerous prep games (scrimmages) against college teams. Some of those games were complete blowouts, a few were hotly contested, and one even went against Team USA. The idea was to have batters face live pitching and conduct offensive and defensive plays in real situations. Certainly Team USA wanted to win every game because they were playing against teams obviously inferior to themselves. It would have been embarrassing to lose. But I guarantee you that coaches did not always play the best possible player at each position. They also did not chose to use certain pitchers because they felt that this or that one would shut down their opponent for the day while sitting this pitcher because she might be vulnerable. These were practices, though practices meant to hone the competitive edge of the team's players.

Not only highly trained, world class athletes need scrimmages. 10U players can benefit quite a bit from them too. Just about every level of competitive softball team plays some sort of scrimmage at some time or another. You really need to scrimmage in order to properly prep kids. You can put out your infield and put the other half of the team in helmets so they can run the bases but the infield drills you'll run will still not be the same as a scrimmage game. In a scrimmage game, you never know when somebody is going to hit a ball into play, a baserunner is going to try to advance, or somebody is going to make a bad play or overthrow. These things will certainly happen in the real games and the best way to prep the kids for those is to scrimmage, at least a few times, before the real stuff starts.

So the concept of the scrimmage is pretty easy to understand. But that is just one part of Jeff's question / comment. The other part involves explaining to the parents of scrimmage participants that winning is not part of the equation. From my perspective, it really goes on to levels beyond just the parents. Many times I have seen scrimmage participants (coaches, etc.) just not understand what it is we are trying to do out here today. I have witnessed much of the same kinds of reactions to scrimmages that Jeff is bringing up. I have also witnessed things well beyond those parental disappointment reactions.

At one point several years ago, I was looking for a fall league with which to prepare a very inexperienced group. The director of one league advertised his league as a great place for teams moving up in age group. My team was majority moving up with a few second years sprinkled in plus many kids who had never played travel ball before. After corresponding with the league director, I decided to join. Many of the teams were exactly as advertised. But the director himself had a team in the league and they were moving up and out of our age division the following spring. He had basically organized the thing so his kids could beat up on some easy competition. In one game, he brought in a 13 year old to face several 10 year olds. It was ridiculous. Long afterwards, in another correspondence, I told this fellow what I thought of him. I told him that if I had my 13 year old on his team and he pitched her against a bunch of little kids, she would not be returning to his team ever again. I told him that he was foolish not to play up in the fall and that he had developed quite a reputation among the coaches he had encouraged to join his league. The team's best players began to drop off the squad fairly quickly after that fall season. Within one year, the team folded. There's more to the story than my experiences but they all flow from the very same vein.

In another setting, a year later, we found a scrimmage partner and agreed to do a double header. In our first game, I think I pitched our number 3 and 4 pitchers. The other team pitched a girl who was ostensibly their number one but she got hurt and was removed from the scrimmage. At this point, you might have expected to see the number 2 pitcher brought in but instead, the coach had found himself a guest player who was a lights out pitcher. Understand that this kid was not trying out for the team. She played for another travel team, one age group up, but she was still eligible for this age group and was looking for opportunities to play games beyond her regular team's 8 tournament schedule. She would pitch for our scrimmage partner during two or three regular tournaments later that season. But he brought this kid to the scrimmage just in case he saw an opportunity to win a game! And that he did. They beat us pretty easily, especially after the lights out pitcher was brought in. Then she had to leave in a rush so she could go play with her real team.

During the next game of our scrimmage, I pitched our number 2 and 1 pitchers. I still went 3 deep at positions while our opponent played his first choice at every position for the whole game. But he had to use his number two pitcher who we smashed around pretty good. The other team could not hit our 2 and 1 pitchers. I think we were up 10-0 aftert two or three innings. While our opponent had been very animated during the first game, they began to fade pretty quickly when it was apparent we were going to win the second one. After something like four innings, the other coach approached me and said, "let's call it a day. Our parents weren't told this was going to be a double header and the kids are done."

I have to admit that I was really pissed. I had wanted my kids to see what playing two long games in one day would be like. I was looking to season them. I did not care even a little whether we won both or one of these games. I wanted a four hour scrimmage. This guy was looking to book wins not losses. As soon as it was clear he couldn't book a win, he wanted to go home.

In yet another setting, several years later, a travel team one of my kids was on booked a scrimmage with a team from not too far away. We had four pitchers who needed work and we asked them to play 8 innings so each could get two. They agreed. The team had found its 12 roster members but no position in the field was yet set. We wanted to look at several kids behind the plate, three at SS, a couple in CF, etc. We intended to use this scrimmage as a sort of second tryout in which one or two girls would thereafter be considered primary at one or two positions. Winning was not on our priority list.

Early on, the game was tightly contested in terms of score. But that did not impact where we played which kid. We continued through a pre-set rotation. They pulled one pitcher after we scored and threw the kid who shut us down best longer than their other pitchers. The score was tied in the last inning. It was apparent they were out to win this thing. They threw their best pitcher and played all their best players at their primary positions. We had our fourth pitcher in for her second inning. She was throwing to our fourth catcher.

A girl walked. They bunted her over as the number 3 third baseman fumbled the play. The girl on second stole third and our catcher threw the ball into the outfield allowing the runner to score. Their players ran onto the field screaming and cheering, then ran off the field and packed their bags. We had expected to continue playing. We wanted our number four pitcher to finish her two innings. But they had won and were celebrating! We never scrimmaged them again but we did beat them in a real tournament.

Interestingly, at least to me, all of these teams I reference as bad scrimmage partners possess the same understanding of what a scrimmage is about and they also share something else in common. After we met those teams, we followed what they did in their regular seasons. They all tended to play dumbed down tournaments. They chose to compete in B play when A tournaments were available. They did not aspire to play against the best competition they could find. Instead, they were trophy hunters. They played any tournament they could find in which they had a realistic shot at winning. And they did not get better because they almost always played inferior teams.

When it came time to figure some bigger tournament to attend, these teams often eschewed the tougher ones and went someplace where they would never be beaten badly. We went to the tournaments where we knew we would find better teams including the final one at the end of the year. And our girls benefitted hugely from the experience. We got better.

I have previously spent some time discussing the different sorts of play a travel team gets involved with. I don't recall whether I covered the concept of scrimmage in those discussions but if I were to draw up a hierarchy of games one might play, at the bottom would be scrimmages, next up would be "friendlies, then regular run-of-the-mill tournaments in which no berth to some larger tournament is involved, then qualifiers, followed by a "nationals" or other large regional tournament as the final competition of the year. In my softball world view, all of these sorts of competition must revolve around a central axis of team goals. If you plan on attending some sort of larger, more important tournament, that must be the axis. For example, if you are travelling to ASA, NSA, PONY, FAST, or some such nationals, everything you do for that entire year must be geared towards that goal. All other play is about preparing for the goal.

Generally, most travel teams I have been involved with will play some scrimmages, enter a couple friendlies, play a few run-of-the-mill tournaments, and then play lots of qualifiers. For most of the years I have been involved, we plan to attend something big at the end of the year. I am often disappointed when parents or assistant coaches approach after a friendly and offer up "constructive criticism" regarding decisions during the game. They are disappointed that we didn't win this or that game. And when I explain the difference between a friendly and a qualifier, they mostly don't seem to get it. Why did I have our number three catcher in there in the last two innings when we could have won that game? Because she needed time to work on her skills. It is really that simple. Friendlies are essentially scrimmages but at a higher level. The team needs all these experiences to improve and sometimes winning is not part of it.

Similarly, high school teams know full well what the important parts of a season are. Depending on the level of the team, perhaps the conference tournament is the most important aspect of the season. Perhaps it is county or state competition. Regardless, everything a team does is about the one or several goals they have established for the year. This is critical because it instructs the coaches and players how to approach all the various parts of the season.

Early on, a high school coach may have a very good idea about who his ace pitcher and starting players at each spot are. Perhaps there are a couple slots involving two or more girls and the coach is trying to make up his or her mind about who will stay with varsity and who will be better served by moving down to JV and playing all the time. Scrimmages play a central part of making these decisions. Often the second pitching slot at varisty is hotly contested. So if a team plays a scrimmage, you never know who might find herself in the circle at key times. It may be the likely JV kid. It may even be the freshman who is fourth in the pecking order. That's what scrimmages are for!

Even in regular season games, coaches often do things that seem counter intuitive in order to accomplish some important goal in the larger scheme of things. Say a team has a record of 12-2 and they are already qualified to compete in the county or state tournament. If the season starts to get too compressed, if there are two games scheduled one Saturday, if the coach merely wants the opponent not to bat against their ace, he or she may pull the girl from JV to pitch a game against a rival which would ordinarily seem to be an important one to win. This sort of thing happens all the time.

I remember one year in which rival A played games against rival B two times during the regular season. Rival A pitched their ace in both regular season games. Rival B pitched their number 2. Rival A won both. Then, in the championship tournament games, the teams faced each other two more times, once in the county and once in state competition. In those games, Rival B pulled out their ace and beat Rival A both times. Rival B also hit rival A's ace because they had seen her just enough to catch up with a couple pitches. Rival A felt its season was a failure. Rival B felt her team had conquered the world by basically giving up two games during the regular season so as to hide the ace pitcher. She was very pleased with her decision!

I feel I am rambling too long again. I hope you are getting what I am trying to say. Scrimmages are a controlled, competitive P-R-A-C-T-I-C-E. They are not one of several equally important games. They are added to the schedule for a purpose, to assist a team in its preparation for the important games. Winning is most commonly not one of the objectives when one engages in a scrimmage. The same is true for other types of competition but, most importantly, if you don't get the concept of scrimmage, maybe you need to think a bit harder. If after serious contemplation, you see all games, scrimmages, tournaments, etc. as about equal, perhaps the world of competitive team sports is not for you. I'm not trying to talk down to anyone. But it is apparent that you just don't get it. Trophies are for for people who like to dust worthless articles. Scrimmages are for teams who want to get better. Goals drive our actions. Winning is not always everything. In the end it is but how do you get to that end?

Sticker Shock

2009-09-02T06:38:00.000-07:00

I am writing today to discuss a subject near and dear to all travel softball players and, more importantly, their parents during late summer, early fall. That subject is team costs. I have recently heard and read a number of discussions which propagate and perpetuate certain myths and misconceptions. The spectrum of possible costs is broad and confusing to the uninitiated. My goal is to dispel certain myths, boil down some of the considerations into a digestable summary, and help those new to the softball world understand better the types of costs associated with playing travel ball. I hope to make the muddy waters a bit more clear.

In order to discuss this subject, I need to establish certain parameters. First of all, what I am writing about is the world of travel ball which girls aged 8 to 15 or 16 play. That is, I am not writing about gold or showcase ball or any type of "travel ball" which involves extensive long-distance travel or showcasing in front of college coaches. I am also not talking about the run-of-the-mill travel program run out of a rec program with its rec all-stars which plays a handful of ASA-rule or other tournaments and perhaps the Babe Ruth or Little League championship tournaments. Instead, my focus is on the type of travel ball which might more accurately be called "club ball" in which girls join a privately organized group which may be a not-for-profit corporation (though often times not) and which is not necessarily affiliated with any quasi-governmental organization like the town recreation league.

These types of organizations generally play 8-16 tournaments and perhaps compete at a "national" or other large-scale tournament at year's end. They most likely get together after an open tryout in late summer, begin practicing shortly after organization, probably play a slate of fall games and a couple tournaments, break apart briefly in late fall, get back together for winter workouts, and then engage in a spring/summer schedule which includes a minimum of 6-8 tournaments. After the summer season is over, there is a brief break and then tryouts, after which the cycle begins anew.

In order to add up the costs associated with being on a club team, you need to take a couple steps. First off, you need to add up costs for each individual kid (uniforms, insurance and such), then calculate the amount of overall team fees, divided by roster members, and add this. Then subtract out expected fund raising or other means of funding and you arrive at an expected total which may be off a little here or there but which should give you a picture of what the total cost should be.

Individual costs can vary but generally consist of a few sheckles for insurance, a fair amount for uniform(s) and more money for ancillary items. Insurance to play softball is generally obtained via the ASA program and is very cheap. I don't have a current figure (because I choose to stay out of this end of the thing) but we're talking about ballpark $20.

Uniforms can, I suppose vary but typically a single one is $100-$150. Most teams have two uniforms and that will generally run you about $250, give or take $50. If your uniforms cost lots more than that, something is wrong. Some few teams overcharge their players for uniforms and some buy such garbage that you'll need to purchase a new set after the mid-season point. Some teams include such things as sliding pants and some require you to go out and buy your own. But make sure you get an exact color match if you have to buy your own.

Some teams leave the issue of batting helmet to the parents. Some teams include them. Some teams get decent helmets and some get garbage which won't protect your kid all that well or will give her headaches. Some teams charge you exactly what they paid for the helmet and some teams, again, overcharge. I had the misfortune once of being involved with a team which collected $50 and then handed out junk helmets which cost them no more than $25 and which we had to replace at our own cost because the kids didn't want to wear them and neither did we.

It is most interesting to me when we go out and watch teams play over several years, we see a certain phenomenon. A few teams do buy better helmets for their kids. We know this because those kids often have their helmets for many years after they have left the team. We can go out to watch Team X play and see one or two kids using their helmet from last year's Team Y. Somtimes we see the same kid with the same helmet for three years after they left the team. Sometimes we see a kid playing high school ball using her travel team helmet from five years earlier. We always note this and then make sure to check out the brand and model of helmet those kids have. You can usually buy one in the right color for your current team and then get decals for that team to place on it.

Some teams make a big deal about equipment bags and some teams ignore them. Equipment bags do not last. My kids tend to drag them after the first game of the day. They develop holes. Zippers jam up like the buttons on a cheap suit break apart. I've yet to have a bag last a season and retain mint condition. If they do happen to last, chances are decent you'll find yourself with a bag that has "Nowhere Nomads" embroidered on it when you try out for the "American Dream Crushers" the next year. And you'll be buying yet another new bag the year after that too. Sure, everyone on a team having the same bag looks great as the girls make their way through a tourney but they are a monumental waste of money. The only bag my kids have had for more than one year is one I bought myself. &n bsp; If you can buy your own decent quality bag and get your kid not to drag it, that's a better way to go than always buying the team bag.

While we are on the subject of uniforms and ancillary equipment, the issue of add-ons comes to mind. Get yourself extra socks and any other article you know your kid is going to wear out during a season. Socks are cheap and a sound investment. They get holes in them! If a kid has a propensity to rip pants or spill on their shirt, well you know what I mean. Caps or visors are almost a complete waste of time unless you know your kid is going to wear one. I have dozens of visors in the closet with all sorts of team names on them. My kids very seldom wear a visor.

Many teams "offer" to sell practice t-shirts, sweat suits, etc. A practice shirt can be very important if the girls wear them for scrimmages or when they go out as a team to watch a tournament they are not playing in. Most kids do not want to do without one. Sweat suits can be important too, especially if you play fall ball in a relatively cold place. But economic reality should dictate whether you spend a lot of money on such things. Unfortunately, many teams require certain of these items as part of the standard. I've seen teams which have multiple practice shirts required and which sometimes do a sort of fundraiser which again requires the purchase of another shirt. When you consider joining a team, you should request a semi-exact figure for standard uniform and related costs. If the team is telling you $500 or more, there is a problem.

There can be other individual costs, particularly for equipment such as batting gloves, catcher's gear with team colors, etc. But I'll not go into that because it varies too much. The bottom line is individual costs for insurance, uniforms, and ancillary items should be about $300 and not much more unless you are on one of those teams which overcharges or requires a bunch of ridiculous purchases.

In terms of overall team costs, there is again a fairly broad spectrum depending on how much indoor training the team does, whether professional instructors are brought in, the quality and cost of facilities; the number of tournaments, and whether it hosts tournament and/or travels anywhere requiring a plane or train ride and hotel stay.

The team cost does not often include travel or lodging for kids when the team goes out of state. You need to factor this into the equation for yourself. Sometimes a team will travel to a location which is very driveable but maybe you will need to take alternative transport. Be aware that if the team stays at a hotel costing more than $100 per night, it is usually not acceptable for you to arrange your own lodging at Bob's Roach Motel at $15 per night or to stay at your third cousin, twice removed's time share for free.

Some teams lodge the girls in separate rooms. While, at least to me, this is inadvisable on non-financial grounds, some teams demand it and the result is added costs to you if you plan on attending the event. It doesn't cost you any more to keep your kid in the room you pay for anyway. But adding one third of the cost for an additional room is, of course, more expensive.

In terms of the tournaments themselves, you can easily figure out how much money the team pays to participate by going to eteamz tournament search and get an approximate figure for per tournament costs. These can vary some depending on whether the thing is a one or two day event, you play a minimum number of games of 3, 4, 5 or whatever, it is a qualifier or not, it has one or two umps, etc. But a nice round figure for a two-day event is $500 or so. And for one dayers, say $300. If we are talking about a schedule involving 2 fall tourneys, 9 summer ones, plus a trip to some bigger event, we're looking at about $6,000 for the team. It will cost less if your team hosts one, two or three tournaments. Add in a little more for a bigger tournament plus maybe another $1,000 for assorted scrimmages and perhaps a league, and I think using $7,500-$8,000 as a guesstimation is probably fairly accurate. Let's use the higher figure of 8 large just to be prudent.

Indoor training is pretty expensive if you use the most expensive, commercially available, elaborate spaces, you run frequent sessions involving several professional instructors, or the team coach itself is paid (which we'll get to shortly). I've used personally or seen used a broad spectrum of facilities. I've been involved with teams which have used free space which is so bad I hesitate to tell you about it.

In one organization, we used a warehouse (free of charge) which was patrolled by cats that spat out hairballs everywhere and were not enamored with the litter box, probably because the litter wasn't changed regularly. Sometimes, in the dead of winter, we would be sweating our girls through speed and agility when a delivery would arrive and several of the garage doors would need to be opened in order to offload a truck. The temperature would vary over a 30 minute period between 70 and 20 degrees. Now there's a formula for not missing school and keeping the flu bug at bay! When practice was over, governmental agents arrived to decontaminate the girls and their clothing was burned right there on the spot. Then they were wisked into ventillation booths but we never had to use the defibrillators.

In another instance, I am familiar with a facility which sports a nearly full turf field. Right now, I think it costs $5,000 to play 8 indoor games and run two or three practices. Most commonly, what we have done is a mix of one day in space for which one or two hitting tunnels were rented for an hour and a half, and another in fairly reasonably priced space which allowed us to hit some grounders and run throwing drills. This middle road of training cost maybe $300-$500 per week for approximately 8-10 weeks. If you ask your prospective team approximately what their indoor training schedule looks like, you can figure about what it is going to cost you.

In terms of using professional trainers at these locations, again, there can be a broad spectrum. I've seen nationally recognized trainers be flown in for a couple hundred dollars per week per kid more than one time during winter workouts. I've also seen lesser known hitting instructors be used for not that much more than facility rental. If you figure a twice weekly schedule, one hitting and one fielding, and perhaps a range of $0 - $750 as your professional training fee, I think you get the picture.

There are a number of teams out there, probably most, which use purely volunteer coaches. Some teams hire ex-college players or persons who are teachers that know the game and are looking merely to supplement their incomes by coaching teams. In a few instances truly "professional coaches" are hired. I say truly "professional coaches" because these folks make a living coaching teams. If you read this blog, you know that from time to time I advocate hired coaches. But when I do so, I am rarely advocating a real "professional" coach as in one who makes a living coaching just this one or two teams. The type of coach I envision is the type who maybe coaches high school or is looking to gain experience that will qualify him or her for such or perhaps a college coaching position. I am skeptical of the truly "professional coach" except in certain circumstances, usually at a higher level of ball than we are contemplating.

Recently a team with a professional coach was discussed. The cost of joining this team ran quite a bit more than most would expect. I know many who know me are trying to figure out which team I am talking about but I won't give away any clues. The bottom line is the coach made quite a bit more than the type of circumstance I usually favor. And the team did not compete at high levels. Essentially the parents of kids on the team were paying some coach through their noses to produce, at best, mediocre results. That's a huge waste of money that could be spent in so many other ways, it simply blows my mind. You could get your kid into weekly private hitting lessons for about the same, play for a cheap team, and experience much greater success.

Like I said before, if you factor in about $750 for some level of professional instruction, unless the team pays a reasonable sum for coaches, you should be in the right place. I'm figuring $6000 for winter workouts

To sum up where we are so far, let's add up the totals for team costs, divide it by a given roster size, add in individual costs and then move forward to bring this to a conclusion. We figured about $8,000 for a good tournament schedule. I figure a good indoor training schedule at space you have to pay for with moderate use of professional will run a team about another $6,000. If your team pays a coach, add in another several thousand depending on the level of ability she or he possesses. But I'll skip that in my overall calculation. I've figured about $14,000 in team costs.

We need to divide this by roster size and there, I suppose we don't have an overly large spectrum. If you know me, you also know that I favor a roster size of 12-13. I don't like the number 11. It is merely one louder than 10 which is merely one louder than 9. 12 puts us in a whole different and better situation. 13 is OK, though perhaps unlucky. Anything more than that is virtually impossible to sustain. I will explain briefly.

If you have ever seen this game played, you may have noticed there are 9 players on the field at one time. No, there is no fourth outfielder in the real game. That's only for rec. No, there is not a "shortfielder" in fastpitch. That's beer league. There are 9 defensive players who all bat unless you are using that crazy thing called DP/flex, in which case one player plays the field and does not bat while another, who usually does not play defense, takes up residence in the batting order. That makes 10 players in the game at any one time, assuming you use DP/flex. This leaves 2 players on the bench, assuming you have a roster of 12.

The two bench players can generally be used as courtesy runners for the pitcher and catcher. Some tournaments allow teams to bat their entire roster and/or to run for Ps and Cs with the last batted out. Some sanctioned tournaments / qualifiers do not. They require a player who has not been in the game in any capacity to run. If you don't have an available bench player, you must leave your catcher out on the bases even with two outs, even on 100 degree days, even when there is merely one minute between innings. Having a roster of 12 allows you to have courtesy runners. 10 or 11 often does not.

Further, it is often advisable to have the pitcher, catcher or both from game one ride the pine for game two, particularly when it is very hot out. They can be your courtesy runners without taxing them too much while still getting sufficient rest to take up their crafts in game three. And, you can still use a DP/flex, if you have figured the rules for that out yet.

OK, so that's why not less than 12. We all know 13 is unlucky but what about 14 or 15? OK, I'll bite. With just 12 kids on a roster, nobody should ever have to sit more than one game out of three. With more than that, I'm afraid the reality is that often kids sit two games. I have yet to see the team which carries 15 players and keeps everybody happy. Usually what happens is two kids quit for lack of playing time in which case you have 13, which is of course, unlucky. So, just divide team costs by 12 and we'll all be happier.

$14,000 divided by 12 yields almost $1,200. Add more for a hired coach, a lot more for a "professional" one. Add in about $300 for uniforms and ancillaries and you get to $1,500. But don't get sick to your stomach and run away mad at the ridiculous cost of youth sports. Now here is the kicker. How is that sum of $1,500 funded?! This is the key question! If it all comes out of your pocket, that's not necessarily a good thing!!!!

Some very few teams are "fully funded." I have heard of at least two teams which have "benefactors" aka rich guys or gals who pay the freight. As you might imagine, those teams are extremely competitive. They are hard to make as anyone with any common sense within a reasonable driving distance is likely to tryout. Because they have benefactors, they often hire expensive coaches and use the absolute best facilities. They bring in highly respected trainers, etc. But they do not always beat us poor schleps who wing it out of our own pocket and use our wits.

Many teams fundraise a good portion of the approximate $1,200 in fees we have calculated as a ballpark number for a year's worth of club ball costs. Some organizations do a very fine job of it. Others are pitifully bad.

There are teams which have "figured it all out" and which conduct a routine of fundraising which significantly defrays the cost to parents. These organizations have experimented with a bunch of fundraising techniques and developed practices which generate perhaps half, sometimes more, of the figures we are kicking around. Those organizations are usually run by people who care a lot about softball and want to make it affordable. They host tournaments and actually make money at it. They run other fundraisers that actually work the way they are supposed to. And, this is important, they channel the funds back to the teams which raised them.

Other organizations run some of the worst fundraisers you can imagine. Parents are left with the idea that it will cost, say, $600 only to learn that they are the proud owners of ten boxes of crummy chocolate bars, 35 St. Louis Cardinals "special" Christmas candles, or 15 of some item which will find its way into the garbage can shortly; frequent participators in a lottery or 50/50, or they must otherwise buy their way out of a "canning" session outside an infrequently trafficked organic, free range seafood market during the blizzard of 2010. They end up going into their pockets for another $500, $600, sometimes more when they thought they had paid everything required already.

Some organizations run fairly alaborate fundraisers, requiring endless hours of volunteer labor, and then grant just 25% of the profit back to the teams who did all the heavy lifting. Some organizations run fundraisers in which they give back none of the profits to teams. Yes, I know it is hard to believe but it does happen. We made the mistake of getting involved with such an organization once. And here, I don't particularly care if some of you guess the organization. This organization had (don't know if they still do) possession of a very nice, exclusively softball field complex, exclusively for their own use. The complex is used to host some tournaments including college showcases. But they have run their programs poorly and the money stream has begun to dry up as local kids decide to play elsewhere. They require parents to work the snack bar or groom fields during these tourneys. But not One Penny goes back to the teams. Further, they actually charged their own teams for using the fields. We had to pay a $150 "field usage fee!" And we weren't allowed to practice on the things many times for myriad absurd reasons. Worse still, they charged parents for all the team and individual costs well beyond what they expected the actual expenditures to be. So, at the end of the year, when parents demanded an accounting, they produced one which showed an overage of over $1,000 and told the parents that this money, according club rules or policy, would flow into the general fund. There was general unhappiness and mass exodus. Recently, they held a tryout for one age group and five kids showed up, including the coaches' daughters! At another age level not one single, solitary kid showed! Like I said, they are in trouble but you reap what you sow. And it is buyer beware.

OK, so let's wrap this up. There is a large spectrum of potential costs to play club travel softball. How much you should be willing to pay depends on the amount and quality of instruction as well as the indoor practice facility. The buyers (that's you, parents) should do what they can to understand how much money in total will be required and how much bang they get for their buck. Ask questions about the uniforms and ancillaries. Ask questions about the number and quality of tournaments. Find out if coaches are paid, if there are field usage fees, type of fundraisers, etc.

Don't get duped by that compulsively lying organization which overcharges you for everything, doesn't really care about the game or those who particpate in it, and view their organization as some sort of fiefdom. Expect to spend about a grand out of pocket. That's about $1,500 or more, including everything less all fundraisers (about $500) and totalling to a nice round $1,000. Some organizations can be less expensive. Some as low as $600. Most are there or slightly above that figure, extending out to $1,500 out of pocket. Don't pay $3-5,000 to play 6 B level tournaments in adjacent towns with a paid professional coach whose greatest dream for this team is to come in second or third place at one of them.

Hopes, Dreams, Goals and Such

2009-08-31T07:21:00.000-07:00

It is really important to have dreams. It is just as important to have goals. But what trumps both is differentiating between the two because doing so changes our actions and determines outcomes.

Dreams are wishes or desires which often exceed our realistic expectations. We hope they come true and we move in some ways to make them happen. But we don't necessarily expect them to come true. They are the upper limits of what we think we can attain.

Goals are things we believe we can achieve. We want them to come true and we act to make them reality. We expect to accomplish them. They are possible given our perceived abilities and ability to improve, and we expect that once they come to fruition, there will be new ones to replace them.

Differentiating between dreams and goals is important because, in the case of dreams, we do not take every possible step to achieve them immediately. I know a few folks whose dream it is to win the Mega-Millions lottery. But they do not mortgage the house or rob their savings in order to buy tickets. Whenever they happen to be near a lottery machine and have a spare dollar in their pocket, they buy a ticket. For a few hours, their dreams are filled with luxury automobiles, perhaps a new oversized house, or fantastic vacations. Then they go online and, if they are really lucky, they learn that they won two bucks to buy another two tickets for the next drawing. They dream about winning millions but they do not act constantly and consistently to turn dreams into reality.

In the case of goals, one does take many actions with the accomplishment in mind. A student sets a goal of achieving a B or B+ in some subject, as opposed to a C+ like they received last time, and they try a little harder every day to improve their understanding of the subject. Instead of devoting 10 minutes to the course's homework, they put in a half hour. Maybe more time is spent checking answers on tests. You know how that game goes.

With respect to fastpitch softball, the same principles hold true. Kids, parents, and coaches all have dreams and goals for themselves, their kids, and/or their teams. They may muse about making it to the final game of the world championship, dream about hitting the big homerun, or picture their child being recruited to play for the WCWS winning team. When we're talking about some Gatorade player of the year, some team which has already competed at the highest levels, or a kid, team or organization which has a realistic shot at achieving a truly noteworthy accomplishment, well, then we are talking about goals. But when we are watching our 11 year old daughter win the town rec championship, we need to temper or expectations and differentiate between dreams and goals.

This is all very rudimentary but I can tell you that often times kids, their parents and team coaches have unrealistic dreams and they act as if those are actually their goals. I would never suppose to take anyone's dreams away from them. I wouldn't even want to temper those, not even slightly.

When my daughter was four, she told me she wanted to be an astronaut. She had this little stuffed lion pocketbook which she cherished and carried around with her most of the time. So when she told me about her dream of flying off into space, I told her I was 99% sure that NASA would allow someone to bring their lion pocketbook with them into space provided that they had owned it a long time and kept it clean. She was very happy to learn this important detail and decided to wipe down her pocketbook.

When, years later, she told me she wanted to play basketball in college, well that was a different story. I thought about it for a minute and all that came to mind was, you are not going to be any taller than 5-6, you're not very quick, you can't dribble, and you only made two shots all of last rec season. So I said, "that's nice, and then we can come watch you play at a big stadium." She also liked the image that conjured up.

Early on in her softball career, my daughter began to play travel ball. She told me she wanted to be a softball player when she went to college. She was 11 at the time and playing on a 12U team of girls who were almost all 13 as of the beginning of the season. It was winter and the outlook for any playing time beyond a few innings on Saturday was not real good. There were four other pitchers on this team. The other girls had played more softball and were more in tune with the pace of the game than my kid was. As winter wore on, we worked very hard on her pitching. I had taken the focus off playing college ball (the dream) and placed it on pitching well enough to earn some innings (a realistic goal). She worked very hard and by the time we got to playing outside, she was pretty clearly the second best pitcher on the team. She had earned playing time through hard work and devotion to accomplishing a goal. She had not merely dreamed.

I tell you this story because very often at tryouts, I see kids who are decent pitchers or players but who could use more time in the laboratory. They make travel teams but do not practice real hard because they are not focused on goals. Their parents field the call from the team coach inviting them to join the team. After they get past the ancillary issues of cost, type of schedule, frequency of practices, etc., they get around to what matters most, "how much pitching time is Jillian going to get," "do you see her playing the infield or outfield," or "exactly where do you see her fitting into the roster right now?"

On numerous occassions, I have had kids play for me or seen kids on a team my kid plays for, who make a team, inquire about their status, and then never again work towards a goal because their dreams of playing for a winning team or of being the star pitcher, catcher or shortstop preclude them from making the realistic conclusion and sacrifice that they need to work and improve their game. On one occassion, I had a pitcher who I envisioned would develop over the winter, come out in spring and be primarily a Saturday pitcher who might also see some action for a couple innings in the field and then hopefully earn more Sunday time as she got her feet under her. Her parents were very proactive about my plans for their daughter, as you would expect. I explained about the need to work and earn playing and pitching time. Then when we got indoors for some live-pitched batting practice, it was immediately evident that she had not so much as picked up a ball since we ended our fall season a few months before. She couldn't pitch more than five minutes of batting practice without getting winded. She couldn't get a single pitch by our weakest hitters and we had a weak hitting team. They tee'd off on her and she got too tired to continue after the second batter.

At the time, I wrote this off and decided to put her in to pitch practice throughout the entire off-season to see what happened. One time she didn't have her mitt with her and could not pitch. Several times she couldn't make practice because she had rec basketball practice or games - her parents told me it was school ball because I had made an allowance for girls playing school sports to miss practice. I subsequently learned she was missing for rec basketball. I still wrote off the experience and hoped the kid would turn it around in the spring.

To be quite honest, that kid did not throw any better in April than she had in late December. When we played our first friendly, I could not, in good conscience, stick her into the circle. And they left my team precipitously. They blamed me, no doubt. I had broken a promise to pitch the kid. I had indeed but it was forced on me by her lack of work. She had unearned the right to pitch.

Another kid I had on my team was a pretty good hitter. She was moving up a class and an age group when she joined the team but she was a kid who I thought would find a decent amount of success. She was taking hitting instruction once a week and her swing was getting into a groove. We did some batting practices and everything looked pretty good. She was hitting the ball sharply. At some point, I noticed that there was the beginnings of a mechanical breakdown and she stopped hitting the ball. I didn't think much about it. Kids, even those in lessons, get into slumps where their coach is trying to correct something and they struggle for a while. Then her parent told me she was going to go "back to those lessons" as soon as the season started.

I couldn't understand what the parent was thinking when they halted this kid's hitting lessons. I knew money was not the issue. If it had been, it would have been a better idea to go once every two weeks or once every month. But this parent just plain stopped the lessons because we weren't in-season with the plan of jumping right back in whenever the weather turned warm. I'm not sure they ever started back to lessons. I do know the kid's swing never again looked right that year. She did not have the measure of success I expected from her when I put her on the team.

These are but two experiences I have had in which players acted as if making a team was the end goal of their lives. I can't count the number of apparently similar situations I have witnessed over the years. Some kid is the star shortstop for a team and she puts her glove away in late fall only to pick it up once a week during indoor training but never attends any clinic or gets out to field some grounders when the weather is agreeable. Another kid barely makes the cut, throws in the yard whenever the temperature rises above 33, goes to every clinic on the planet, makes her mom or dad get her out on the field to get grounders under threat of temper tantrum whenever they sit down for a millisecond. The team gets out for some tournament and the star can't make a play while the scrub acts like a human vacuum cleaner. Who do you think deserves to be SS? Who do you think the other 10 kids want at short?

Coaches are all too familiar with these kinds of happenings. We try out some kid in the fall and she forces us to buy new balls because the ones we were using are now coverless. Then we play real games and kid goes 0-fer-forever. We beg some tremendous athlete to join our team and she becomes the biggest liability on the field. I've heard pitching coaches who teach a large volume of kids talk about the freshman wunderkind who never got any better and was relegated to the bench in her sophomore year when the new promising freshman who played for some out-of-state travel team arrives.

A fellow I know had his daughter on some decent travel team. She was the youngest kid on that team, you might argue she was the twelfth addition to the roster. As tournament season proceeded, he began to notice that she played little on Sundays and not more than a game and a half on Saturdays. He began to get upset because he felt that much of her lack of improvement had to do with a lack of game playing time. Then, when another parent got very upset over her daughters perceived lack of playing time and voiced her disatisfaction directly to the coach, this fellow wondered if maybe he should do the same thing. He decided to think on it for 24 hours before saying anything.

This fellow, while thinking on the situation, placed a call to a relative who had several daughters that had played high level travel ball and then gone on to play in college. He explained the situation and asked for advice. The relative told him this was normal, a good experience for the kid, and not a circumstance which would be resolved by cajoling the coach into playing the kid more. He decided that the relative was right and while his kid's playing time did not improve during the remainder of the season, he learned a great deal and so did the kid.

The other parent, the one who had voiced her disatisfaction, got out of control. Her perceptions were off to begin with. At one tournament, her kid played about 3 innings in each of the team's three Sunday games. She complained to the coach that she was upset because her kid didn't play an inning, "not a single inning!" The coach informed her that she was way off the mark and he had the book to prove it. She threatened to remove her kid from the team. The kid's playing time ticked up a notch but when her mistakes started costing the team games, the situation went backwards and the kid did leave the team.

The parents of the kid most likely blame the coach but I can tell you that most travel coaches in the area know the full story. The kid is more or less marked. There are many teams and coaches who would be willing to give the kid a shot on their teams. But as soon as something similar happens, it is expected and the kid pays the price. That is, when the kid is not in a game for a couple innings and the parents complain about it, as they always do, coaches get their backs up and then start regularly removing the kid anytime she makes a mistake. The kid didn't learn anything. The parents didn't learn anything. The local softball community is wise to the games they play. The result benefits nobody.

As I said earlier, goals have a couple important facets. They need to be realistically attainable. Let's say you play a game and don't get a hit. Maybe your first goal in the next game should be getting a hit. If you've yet to make contact, grounding one back to the pitcher is a goal. I was watching a scrimmage recently involving one organization's kids. They put together two teams and the purpose of the scrimmage (as well as practicers and subsequent scrimmages) was to divide kids by ability and determine who would make which team. A kid from the prior year's B team was batting against the number two pitcher from last year's A team. The father of the B player yelled, "hit one out." The kid struck out! Now, I've never seen this kid hit one anywhere near any fence, let alone get an extra-base-hit off a very good pitcher. She should have been looking to make contact, perhaps get a single. But she began to tense up and swung way too hard because she needed to attain her father's apparent goal of going yard. She acted on the dream instead of accomplishing an attainable goal.

I remember one time my kid was called upon to bunt. She fouled the first one off. I cursed under my breath and yelled, "come on, get it down." She fouled the second one off. She took a pitch for a ball and then laced a lucky single. Another parent told me to chill out because "she got a hit and she's way too good of a hitter to be bunting in that situation." I cursed and told him that "my kid always gets her bunts down" and whether she is too good of a hitter to bunt there or not, that's what the coach asked her to do and as far as I'm concerned, she failed. I also told him, "as far as I'm concerned, if you can't get bunts down, you're not a softball player."

There are very few kids who can hit homeruns. There are very few kids who can be counted on to get hits in key situations. But every kid can get a bunt down. Just about every kid can hit a grounder up the middle when there is a runner on third and less than two outs. There are attainable goals in the shortrun which need to trump the dreams of achieving travel softball immortality. Players would be well advised to focus on something attainable and then set their sights a bit higher after the attainable has been achieved before shooting for the moon.

Tied directly into the issue of goals vs. dreams, of setting attainable goals rather than living and acting as if the loftiest dreams are the goals you should shoot for, is the concept of environmental factors. It is never a great idea in competitive situations to spend too much time and effort contemplating what others are doing. But on the other hand, one should not be oblivious to the competition. Players, parents, and coaches should take a look around themselves and see what others are doing.

I have had occassion to see teams play games in which one wipes out the other. The coaches of the victim team watch the other and comment about how well coached and trained they are. On a few of these occassions, I have tried to learn what sort of preparation the winning side does. Often I hear things like three, even four weekly practices year-round, or a large amount of fundraising which is then used to hire one or several professional coaches to come in a train the girls. I hear that this team has been trained together for three or more years under a particularly gifted coach. Perhaps this or that team is fully funded by some rich parent; they get over a hundred girls trying out because it is free; and all the best athletes from three states join this team because not only are they fully funded but they have the best training facilities available anywhere. You can't compete with that but what you can do is make the most out of what you can realistically do and what you have.

In these kids of circumstances, I never get the feeling that the coaches for the losing side appreciate the sort of preparation their opponent has done. They think if only they did X, got more committed athletes, or perhaps hired any old professional instructor for four weeks of lessons, the result would look like their opponent.

This breeds frustration more often than any measure of success. Coaches get wrapped up in this dream of coaching a team "like that one" and fail to recognize that the measure of their success is degree of improvement not beating the Olympic team. Their goals should be to improve their teams, not to have 9 batters come to the plate with swings that hold the potential of hitting one out every at-bat, or of having defenses that turn two every time there is a grounder and a runner on first. Coaches need to realistically assess the level of ability they have before them and work on devising practices which will improve their team and remove its deficiencies.

Similarly, players need to be aware of what others they play with and against are doing. I can't count the number of times I have heard a kid or their parent exclaim that so and so just "isn't much of a runner. She'll never be fast." I don't know if you all have been watching or not but fastpitch softball happens to be a sport! Running happens to be one of the primary skills. If you can hit a ball 300 feet 50% of the time, maybe you can get away with not running 50% of the time. Otherwise, you're out of luck. If you find yourself on a team which believes it can cover your lack of speed by positioning super-fast girls around you, great, but otherwise you sort of, kind of have to work on your foot speed.

It does not take very much for a kid who cannot run to get out in the yard or at some field and run 10-20 sprints a couple times a week. If you've got a few sheckles, it isn't all that expensive to enroll in an agility clinic once or twice a week. It does not so much matter that you'll never get to first in 2.7. If your current time is 4.0, I guarantee you that you can get that down to 3.5 with just a little effort and not too much time away from text messaging, IMing, or gaming. Think of it this way, when your friends say "what have you been doing," you'll actually have something to say other than "nothin." If you keep it up beyond a couple months, I'd be willing to bet you'll get down to 3.4, then 3.3, maybe even 3.2. Then all that embarrassed talk of "I can't (my kid can't) run" will disappear.

Pitchers in particular need to assess what the competition is doing. If all the other girls are throwing 4 times per week, 10 months of the year, you may be a big shot at 12U but the other girls are going to gain ground on you before high school if you make a habit of really working hard two days a week, only during real season, and only if it doesn't rain on your designated throwing day. I remember having a rough go of it in Little League all-stars. For whatever reason, the manager had designated some kid to be one of just two pitchers. I talked to her about practicing. She cheerfully came to me before one of her starts and told me she practiced every day that week. Well, she said, "not Thursday and Friday because it was raining but every other day." I asked her how much she had thrown and she boastfully told me "about twenty pitches." As you would expect, she got whalloped. She no longer pitches.

But that's an extreme situation and that's low level ball. I have seen similar situations at higher levels. One kid I can think of throws 5-6 days per week for hour and a half sessions. She perfects her pitches and can kill a nat on her catcher's shin guards with a curveball. Another kid has good stuff but throws only when she feels like it (like after she gets beat or when some other kid on her team throws better than she does). Eventually the kid who really works is going to consistently do better than the one who acts only when the spirit moves her. I have seen high school pitchers who are complete maniacs about practicing even though nobody, and I do mean nobody, ever hits them. I know of one girl who is in actual lessons four days per week. She is a throwing machine!

Not everybody can throw as long or as often as the two girls I'm referencing but everyone can plan and execute a program to improve their pitching. It takes a lot to be that good. You're not going to compete with these two girls unless you can realistically say that you've worked nearly as hard no matter how much talent you actually have.

In the middle of the pack, I cannot tell you how many times I have seen young promising pitchers who for one reason or another become satisfied and stop trying to get better. The typical scenario involves a girl who was lights out at 10U, 12U or maybe as late as 14U. She forgets what it took to get to that point and becomes enamored with her "talent." She doesn't work. She doesn't perfect her pitches and learn new ones. Then the hitters start catching up to her. She reacts with a spurt of hard work and then fizzles again. Then her competition begins to pass her and its too late.

We often see youngish pitchers who were once very good but who do not develop real command. Sometimes even their rudimentary control leaves them for extended periods. To be clear, I speak about control when I am referecing issues of throwing strikes and walking batters. I reference command when I mean actually hitting spots to get batters out. Pitchers without control sometimes hit spots. Pitchers with command sometimes walk batters, sometimes lots of them. But pitchers generally first get control and then look to develop command. Pitchers without command get pummeled at higher levels. Pitchers without control walk even number 9 batters on poor hitting teams.

I have watched pitchers who lose their command or fail to develop it. When the existing stock of batters gets better, they often get hit hard and then lose their confidence rapidly. They either go back to B ball and last a few more years or they give up pitching.

When younger pitcher lose control, they usually blame it on the umps or claim they have injuries which are never discovered by medical people. They walk too many batters and before long they find themselves not inside the circle. They seem to be better than that other kid but the coach just won't pitch them. They get invited to join teams but not as pitchers. Eventually the dream diminishes and they learn to play other positions or quit the game altogether.

All these little stories of failure obviously share a common theme. They are about kids who do not practice their craft. I believe much of this is caused by a focus on unachievable dreams rather than attainable goals. I would never try to shoot down your dreams. I would never even suggest that you cannot achieve them. But you've got to get there by working on goals and then stepping up those goals when you achieve your first ones. Before you hit the game winning homerun in the D-1 WCWS, you must hit the ball to begin with. Try that first. Then perfect your swing at the tee in your garage. Then be the star rec player. Then test travel and learn to be a good hitter there. By the way, don't frown when you get the bunt sign, instead lay one down.

You may not ever get to the D-1 WCWS. You may have to settle for the D-2 or 3, maybe even the junior college version. You may have to settle for just making some college team. Perhaps that college scholarship your dreaming of will only cover 10% of your school costs. Maybe you'll just barely make a D-3 school team but get academic money that covers the whole thing while attending a great academic institution which propels you to a wonderful career.

Maybe your dreams only extend out as far as pitching for the high school team in the conference tournament. Maybe they only go so far as 14u or 16U B tournament ball. You still need to focus on attainable goals and then make them happen. Before you do that, you need to determine which of those thoughts in your head are dreams and which really ought to be goals. You need to differentiate and then get to work.

I hope this discussion is helpful to players, parents and coaches. I could say lots more on goals. But I'll leave it at this because this thing has gotten way longer than I thought it would. And besides, I'll need something for another day.

Ownership

2009-08-04T05:51:00.000-07:00

Ownership is an important concept in all human endeavors. With ownership comes all sorts of duties and responsibilities, and of course benefits. If I wanted to enter a political fight or business discussion, I could get into issues of ownership of the means of production - I have plenty to say about that - but this is not the right forum for such discussions. There are many cross-over concepts I'll have to explore to discuss the topic. But this is a a softball blog and today I am interested in exploring ownership as it impacts club travel fastpitch softball. So lets throw away the politics and business, and look at fastpitch in a test tube to answer some questions. Who owns a team - is it the players, parents, coaches, or the fastpitch organization under whose name the team plays? Why is this important and what are the ramifications of ownership?

Many fastpitch organizations proceed under the assumption that any of its teams is playing as a representative of the organization. Win or compete very well and the organization's stature rises. Comport yourselves badly, in terms of team results or coach/parent/player conduct and this reflects badly on the organization. This is certainly a valid approach to running an organization. No organization wants its players/partents/coaches behaving badly. And if teams within an organization can't compete reasonably well, eventually the organization will fail to draw suifficient talent to tryouts in order to put together teams.

We've heard all sorts of stories this year and in years past of conduct which reflects badly on entire organizations. One team at a tournament was disqualified because its players were caught consuming alcoholic beverages in a parking lot between games. That's beyond ridiculous to me but demonstrative of something which can happen that reflects badly on an entire organization. Still, it is probably not a very common occurence and at the far extreme of the conduct spectrum.

A far less extreme example involves coaches berating players in a manner which should not be tolerated. During an elimination round of a large, important tournament, a team coach delved into dark side behavior which reflects poorly on his organization. The game was in the last inning. His team was facing elimination with two outs and the batter down to her last strike. She watched strike three go by without flinching. The coach flipped out and began a tirade. He bellowed, "what were you thinking? What were you thinking? I want to know what you were thinking up there. How could you let that pitch go by? You just let your whole team down."

The girl headed for the dugout to drop off her bat and helmet while the rest of the girls came out for the obligatory congratulationory fist bump to their opponent. The coach came in behind her, still bellowing. The girl cowered. He continued, "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING ABOUT? I WANT TO KNOW. : I WANT AN ANSWER. TELL ME WHAT YOU WERE THINKING. TELL ME! I WANT AN ANSWER! TELL ME WHAT YOU WERE THINKING."

Do I have to explain this any further? I suppose I could tell you that the team did not have many baserunners that game. Strikeouts were in double digits. One batter in a single at-bat can never lose a game for a team. This particular batter had not done any better or worse than any of the other 8 or so girls on the team.

One person who witnessed the coach's conduct noted that he had no idea whether the guy was the girl's father but if he wasn't and this fellow had been her father, he said he would have punched the guy in the nose right then and there. He also said, if the guy was the kid's father, he wouldn't blame the kid for quitting sofdtb all altogether right there and then. He also noted that in the not too distant future, this kid will undoubtedly quit the sport regardless of who her parents are.

In another instance, involving a different team and organization, we witnessed a particular coach use a vulgar expression, spoken so that all in attendance could hear, in reference to an umpire with whom he was having a heated discussion over a call. He was completely out of control, if but for the moment. He allowed his competitive nature to overshadow his dignity during a meaningless softball game. I've got more to say about this individual a little further on in the discussion but suffice it to say that no organization should tolerate coaches using foul language out on the field regardless of how bad an umpire's call might be.

In yet another example of poor coach conduct, recently at a 10U B tournament, one coach was accused of using an illegal aged player. I get this about fourth hand so I cannot be sure of the facts in this case but this is a morality tale so I'll risk inaccuracy for the sake of making a point. It is my understanding that the player in question was used with the full knowledge of the coach that she was ineligible for 10U. When someone pointed out to others that the girl was too old, an opposing coach questioned her eligibility whereupon the coach agreed to remove her from the game and all succeeding games. Rather than permit this, the host of the tournament summarilly tossed the team right out of the tournament. Discussions ensued on a public forum wherein members of the accused organization thought there was nothing wrong with the coach's conduct and other bashed the organization for cheating. They suggested the coach be removed permanently from the organization. Many parents from within the organization came to the guy's defense. We spoke directly to one such parent who fluffed off the charges and noted that the coach merely wanted to win.

Merely wanted to win? Win by using an over-aged player? In 10U? At a B tournament? You have just got to be kidding me! Anybody who wants to win that badly at 10U of any level has ... never mind. I don't need to get insulting here. 99% of everyone involved with youth sports understands what I am getting at. The other 1% is ... well ... never mind.

I am appalled by the coach's conduct in this case. It calls into question whether he is supervised at all by the organization. I would never even consider my kid playing for them because I would be concerned that the same thing might be repeated on her team. I'm not sure what the organization's parents are thinking when they defend the guy. Actually, I wonder about the parent of the over-aged kid. I can't see myself ever considering having my kid play down in any circumstance. One of my kids once had her age questioned, informally, after a Little League tournament game, because she hit the ball too hard. But she wasn't even close to the cutoff and she never played ball at that levekl again after that. I wouldn't consider my kid playing down in terms of competition level, let alone age eligibility. I can;t say I understand anyone who feels differently, least of all a coach who sanctions it.

So that's a little about the conduct of people within an organization with an emphasis on coaches. When you are out and about, you are a representative of the organization under whose umbrella you play. But this does not nearly address the issue of ownership.

Many coaches feel as if their team is their team, that they own the team they coach. That has both positive and negative ramifications. A coach should approach his/her team's preparation as if the final work is representative of his or her efforts. A coach is responsible for structuring a season's practices so as to put the best team possible on the field. Winning, paerticularly at higher level tournaments, is in fact representative of a team's preparation. But this has its limits and therein lies the problem. There are a number of coaches who see team results, however achieved, as the measure of their personal success. Obviously, the coach who used the over-aged kid might fall into this category. The foul-mouthed coach I mentioned above offers up an even better example.

This guy has a tendency to compile a rather unwieldy roster. He starts out with the typical number, let's say 12, in the fall. He brings the girls together and they play some tournaments, scrimmages, and games. But if the team falters, he starts to bring in guests to fill perceived holes. He might bring in a new catc her if he thinks the team's opponents are running too much. he often brings in one or more guest pitchers if his existing staff is not quite doing the job. He has had as many as 15 kids on his roster during the middle of a season as kids come to guest, get the job done for him, and are asked to stay with the team. Of course, this results in kids who were playing a lot in the fall being relegated to the bench by May or June. Often players leave the team mid-season and who can blame them when they see little or no action and have zero chance of earning additional playing time as the parade of "guests" continues to expand. It is an extremely unfair situation and this guy's habits will eventually catch up to him because word is rapidly spreading.

Coaches can take ownership of their teams but that ownership must be reflected in preparation of the team as it exists when it is formed. If a team is shgort on players or talent, the coach must either fill empty slots early or do more to prepare the team as it is comprised. Bringin in any player in mid or late season is going to cause at least one person's discontent. Bringing in many players in order to win is going to alienate most of the people who did the heavy lifting and fund-raising rthrough most of the year. A continual habit of bringing in guests can only backfire over the longer term. No coach owns a team.

Parents are often somewhat proprietary regarding a youth travel team. This manifests itself in several different ways. The archetypical Bad News Bears commentary of "that kid has no business being on the field" is perhaps the most common example. The question is, who stands in judgment of the relative talents of any kid on a tournament team. Parents of better players find it easy to criticize players other than their own kids. They loook out at the opposition and note that the other team has good outfielders or a better second baseman than we do. We have to improve our roster, get somebody in here who is more athletic, can hit, can make those plays. This is very dangerous ground.

It is relatively easy to stand in judgment of other kids when your daughter is one of the top five kids on a team. Yet very frequently, the most effective thing a coach might do to supplement his roster is to bring in a better shortstop, pitcher, catcher, CF, or some such and move your kid to fill the weak spot in the field or batting order. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that your kid is the ace pitcher who, when she isn't pitching is the team's best SS. She hits number four in the order. She is one of the team's best players, if not the best. The roster compiling coach reaches out to girls he or she knows to bring in someone with more talent. That's going to relegate the team's ninth, tenth and so on best player to bench time. But if the new superstar is a better ace pitcher than your daughter, well, she may find herself outside the circle far more than she would otherwise, perhaps playing 3B instead of short, or otherwise unhappy sue to the "roster improvements" and guest players. It is not just the least who are impacted by roster supplementation. And there is indeed always somebody better than your kid at her chosen and earned positions.

When parents believe they own a team, they often can try to bring in girls they know who are good athletes to join their daughter's team. Other parents often resent such practices. I've experienced this sort of behavior in a couple different venues. I almost never blame the incoming kid. I would say I always blame the team parent who, dissatisfied with the existing team, dissatisfied with one or more other players, attempts to bring in the "real player" to make his or her kid's team worthy of her participation. These same parents are the first ones to freak out if some other parent brings in a kid who is better at their daughter's position. Parents don;t own any team. They make their kids' beds when they agree to join the team as comprised. If they dare to try to remake the team, they deserve all the animosity they get. And they deserve someone else bringing in a replacement for their own kid.

So, if the organization, the coaches, and the paren ts don't own the team, who does? That is, of course, where I am trying to take this conversation. the answer is pretty clearly, the players, numbered one through twelve (or whatever size the roster is) own the team. It is ultimately their venture. The organization, the coaches, the parents are all mere facilitators of it.

Before you call me a Communist - for I have just described a fastpitch softball team as a workers' cooperative - let me say that ownership of relatively small ventures must always be in the hands of those directly responsible for its success. If your kids ran a lemonade stand in front of your house, mom and dad most likely hold title to the table, chairs, pitcher, cups, and lemonade itself. But the thing will only make money if the kids working it entice passers by to purchase lemonade. They must be motivated with a high degree of the potential rewards, the nickels, dimes and quarters their patrons will tender in exchange. So it is with fastpitch softball.

When a pitcher strikes out a batter, works a one-two-three-inning, or completes an outstanding whole game performance, the parents and pitching coach along the sidelines rightly feel a degree of joy. When the catcher throws out stealing runners, doesn't allow a single passed ball for a game or an entire tournament, or builds a reputation for being one of the best catchers around, dad or mom can sit and contemplate with glee all those hours of hard work in the basement, garage, backyard or out at the fields and clinics when the catcher's skills were honed. When the outfielder runs all out, dives, makes a great catch in the air and holds onto thhe ball as her body meets terra firma, the person who hit hour after hour of flyball and linedrive can take a little credit for the accomplishment. When the team wins a game, competes or wins a championship or merely competes very well at a high level, the coaches who brought it together and trained the kids can take a degree of elation away. But ultimately, it is the kids who risk failure, who endure countless hours of hard labor, who hone their skills with a goal in mind, who really deserve all the credit.

It is the individuals and the team (as in players) who earn the victory. The parents, the coaches, the organization are the facilitators. They bring the means of production together on behalf of the kids. But it is the kids who must play. It is the kids who must stand in and lay down a bunt against the 60 mph lightning bolt thrower. It is the kids who must keep their heads down on some freakish 100 mile per hour grounder. It is the kids who must gain the next base without being put out. They do the real work. They take the real risks. They get the credit regardless of what we, the parents, the coaches, the organization do for them.

This is so because it needs to be so. Kids will do for their teammates what they will never do for their parents and coaches, never mind the organization, about which they care little, if at all. The kids on a team need their peers' approval. They should like most if not all the girls on their roster. They want to perform for each other. years from now, they may remember how they made a play or got a big hit which impressed so and so, a teammate. They aren't gointg to give a hoot about how they showed Mr or Mrs. so and so. They aren't really going to care how they showed the coach what they could do. They care about what they have done for their friends. They care about how they performed well enough for the team (as in their teammates) to win that trophy. And any smart coach or parent is going to use that.

We had an interesting experience this year with a 14U team. They came together with not many kids knowing each other. Most had no experience playing A level travel ball at 14U. 3 kids had been bit players on prior competitive 14U ball. Many had played B ball. One had only played baseball - with boys. Some came up from 12U. All in all, we had a group with some athleticism and talent, but very little experience.

A funny thing happened along the way. The girls became very good friends. Early on, while they were proving their bona fides to each other, they won a couple tournaments. They had very good spirit. This probably facilitated the growth of their collective friendship. But still, they were not a team which had been through much together. They lacked that certain somthing, despite the early wins. As time wore on, they began to falter. Games against easy teams were played with easy errors and silent bats. They p;layed poorly one Saturday and set an impossible task for Sunday - though one they almost pulled off. They got smoked a couple times by good teams. They lacked energy on the field though the girls remained good friends. They had forgotten how to win. They lacked the magic they though they had.

The team went to a very big tournament and played first level games with a few reflecting decent performances and a few some of the worst ball the team had ever played. Then they went into a complex elimination round and lost again, once quite badly. At this point, the girls were exhausted and had no idea how to win again. Someone suggested that they were taking the wrong approach, not so much on the field but in their own minds. The person told the girls that they were playing for their parents and the coaches, though not doing a very good job of that. They told them they needed to play for themselves.

The person went on to say that "you Becky should be playing for Sarah; you Jenny, you should be playing for Mary, Joan, Steph; you all are in this together; you play as a team; you win as a team; you lose as a team." The person continued, "you need to play for each other. You all like each other. You all want to play softball together. You ned to play for each other and forget about the parents and coaches. We're all here merely to help you guys play together for your own reasons."

later the same evening, after a couple dreadful losses, after the suggestion by an adult, the girls got together, calling a team meeting with no adults invited. By all acounts, the meeting was a very emotional one. Most of the girls cried. Some said things they never thought they would. The girls decuided that their goal was to stay together as a team. That was the most important goal they shared. They all liked each other and they would play for each other. They wanted to win and keep themselves alive in the tournament.

The results are pretty much what I would expect. They played all out. They played well. They played for each other. They won a couple games against teams which had previously beaten them. Eventually they lost and were eliminated from the tournament. That was a sad moment but not nearly as sad as it would have been had they lost badly or not played well in the game which caused them to exit. More importantly, afterwards, they still had their team. Actually, they had more of a team than they had entered the tournament with. They were al;l better friends than they had started the thing as. They had forged a team. T9ime will tell whether they will continue to grow or eventuallty falter. But I'll be interested to watch their progress. They have crossed over into some very positive territory. They have learned the important lesson of this very difficult game.

It is the players who own the team. The parents, coaches, organization can lay claim to their hard won victories. But those entities will never feel what these girls feel about their team, about each other, about themselves. They have learned that when 12 kids work together for a common goal, they can accomplish what 12 individuals never can. They have learned that taking responsibility for one's contribution to a group effort can make their good friends feel good about themselves. They have learned that taking ownership has onerous duties and responsibilities, but, of course, immeasurable benefits.

Legal Batter's Box

2009-07-22T08:10:00.000-07:00

A reader recently wrote in with a complaint. The issue involved a team of travel players beating up on his rec team. The travel girls stood at the plate, 3 feet in front of the dish, and hit with their high performance composite bats just 35 feet, after taking a stride, from the pitcher's plate. His concern was the safety of his players. He noted that his purposes in coaching recreational ball are to emphasize team work, skill fundamentals, and general enjoyment of the game. He expressed disdain for travel players beating up rec players for the purpose of "practice" and general dislike for the aggressive tactics employed by the travel girls against his recreational team. The girls themselves, not any coach, argued with the umpire over the dimensions of the batter's box and cajoled him into allowing their stances out to three feet in front of the plate. He believed they should be called out due to hitting outside the box.

There are two reasons I am posting this issue to the blog. First of all, I don't really have much patience for travel players infilitrating a rec league. But the reality is many do because they want to participate in the all-star program in Little League, Babe Ruth or some such. And many leagues encourage or tolerate travel players in their rec leagues because they want them on the all-star team, because they will be playing with some of the rec-only kids on the high school team, and for other reasons. Both arguments (for and against travel players in a rec league) have merit. And the reality is that when we see our local rec all-star teams reach far into national playoffs, we often know the girls on the team from travel circles. There's no getting around travel players in rec leagues unless the league decides this is what they want to do.

Secondly, the batter's box rules issue is an interesting one. We seldom see a box drawn to regulation whether the competition is rec league, travel tournament, or high school. Very often some guy who is completely clueless, like me, gets a liner and proceeds to guestimate the approximate boundaries. I know I have drawn some pretty bad batter's boxes in my time. &n bsp; Even when a template is available, most boxes are drawn wrong.

Without going into chapter and verse, a softball batter's box is supposed to extend four feet from a line drawn through the center of a 17 inch homeplate. That means, the front of the batter's box should extend slightly more than 3 feet in front of the front edge of the dish. In other words, these travel players in the rec league were standing legally within the dimensions of the batter's box as expressed in the rulebook, at least before contacting the ball.

There have been many times I have seen discussion at homeplate about the box. Most often, a coach complains because they believe somebody was or was not outside the box when contact with the ball was made. Sometimes the issue is a batter being struck by a hit ball in front of the box. These discussions are often protracted and very often do not result in any change to the original ruling. Umpires very often know the dimensions of the box and that the one drawn in front of them is incorrect. Most rule on the actual batter's box as opposed to the drawn one. I have seen umps go so far as to first explain the issue to a coach and then step off the actual dimensions with their feet. Most of the time, the coach leaves the discussion with a perplexed look, as if to say, "I didn't know that." I dare say, most folks, be they players, coaches or fans, have never looked inside a rulebook to see the dimensions of the batter's box.

To go a step further, batters are required to stand with both feet inside the box before the pitch is thrown. Also, they cannot make contact with the ball while one whole foot is completely outside the box. So, perhaps the coach who wrote to me has a valid argument. He seemed to be saying that the travel girls made contact when one of their feet was about 2 feet outside the batter's box. That's not legal and it should be called.

Just to wrap up this brief discussion of an important rule point, the softball batter's box does indeed extend slightly more than 3 feet beyond the plate. The typical drawn box is usually wrong. Umpires enforce the rules, not the whims of the field crew. They usually apply the rule on the batter's box the same way they usually apply the rule on the pitcher's circle regardless of how the thing is drawn. Batter's must have both feet inside the batter's box before the pitch and cannot have one foot completelyu outside of it at the time they make contact with the ball.

Prepare Your First Baseman

2009-07-17T03:34:00.000-07:00

At times, I've been accused of paying too little attention to certain positions including first base. The criticisms are fair. I do not believe I have ever written anything particularly specific about the 1B position. Recently, I have paid close attention to the position because I have watched a girl play the position quite a bit. She doesn't have the skill set needed to be good at her spot. And the coaches have not done anything to rectify her deficiencies. The subpar first baseman is my daughter. And as I watch her play the position, perhaps misplay the position, it has set my mind to work. Numerous questions pop into my head as I sit along the sidelines. Who usually plays first, what are their qualifications, and what do we need to do in order improve the play of the infield's anchor?

In baseball, the 1B is often a big hitter who can't play another position. Lefties frequently get the nod because, in baseball, lefties are relegated to either the outfield or first, unless they can pitch. A slow running, weak armed lefty who can hit is generally called a first baseman in a baseball context. But in girls fastpitch softball where it is not all that uncommon to find a lefty catcher or infielder, we also cannot afford a first baseman who is not athletic, who has bad footwork, or who has a poor arm. In fastpitch softball, a first baseman who is not quick, cannot field very well, or has a weak arm is called a target by the opposition.

So what are the various tasks a 1B must perform well in a softball context? And what can we do to improve those skills?

I suppose the first, most obvious thing a 1B does is take throws from infielders on grounders. She also must cover bunts. She takes pickoff throws from the catcher. She may be the cutoff on certain balls hit to the outfield though very often the pitcher is used to perform this role. She likely takes throws from RF on line drive hits to that field. She has to guard the line on slaps unless you use a modified defense for slappers. She has to field all manner of hit balls just like the 3B does. And she must make throws to all the bases, particularly home after recording put-outs. Am I missing anything?

Taking throws from infielders would seem to be simple enough, yet it is perhaps one of the most complicated jobs on the field. In baseball, where the 1B plays back behind the bag on most situations, the 1B has the benefit of having most plays happen in front of him. That is, on a grounder to short of third, he runs forward with the infielder within his peripheral view. That is quite a contrast to a fastpitch 1B playing at 40-50 feet from the plate who must often turn her back on the play and race for the bag blind to the girl making the throw. She has to run to her spot, find the bag with her throwing hand foot, pick up the ball, and then make the stretch and catch.

I have seen numerous firstbasemen, especially at the lower levels, struggle with this primary, fundamental task. Very often coaches have chosen her for her role for the same reasons one would pick a baseball 1B, height, slow footedness, big hitter-no glove, etc. And they give her little training or advice on how best to accomplish the task. Very often, they feel that normal infield drills in which grounders are repeatedly hit at various infielders who then make the throw to first is enough. It isn't.

If you've ever observed this sort of infield workout, you know this isn't enough as quite often, the 1B knows exactly who is getting a ball hit to them and she hangs around the bag in expectation of that. She isn't standing at her normal position when the ball is struck. She doesn't have to race back to cover the bag. She is practically there before the ball ever touches the dirt. When we run infield practices, we should take the time and attention to make sure players, especially the 1B, are positioned where they would be in a game. We should not permit our 1Bs to drift closer and closer to the bag. We can hit a bunch of grounders at fielders in a sequence but then we ought to randomly hit to all fielders to immitate game situation.

Still, making sure the 1B is properly positioned during routine infielding practice is probably not enough. We can easily do more. We can create a drill just for the 1B in which a coach stands at various places around the infield, position the 1B at her normal spot, 20 to 30 feet from the bag, have her race to cover, and then make throws to her at various angles. At first she can be allowed to reach the bag, find her feet and get ready for the catch before the ball is thrown but as she masters the most basic footwork, we want to put the ball in the air before she reaches her coverage position. We want her to gain experience in quickly finding the bag with her throwing hand foot, look up and locate the incoming throw, stretch and catch.

In addition to the normal skill set which any ballplayer gets work on, the 1B needs to be able to catch the ball with one hand. We school girls in using two hands all the time. If we are good at coaching, all our players field everything with two hands except in very limited cases to get to balls otherwise outside our reach. If you take a girl from almost any other position and put her out at first, her initial instincts are going to be to catch every ball she can move to with two hands. Obviously, a 1B can't do this. She needs to keep her foot nailed to the base and reach. That is a specific skill required to play the position and it needs to be practiced.

As an added layer, we also want to make sure the 1B has practice catching all manner of slightly offline and truly horrendous throws. When I think of this, I think about the high school hockey goalie I have told you about before. He was not at a skill level some of the other players on his team were. But they wanted to have a state championship team that year and they needed the goalie to step up his game. So, during practices, they took wicked shots at him until he became a better player. That practice strategy worked for the goalie and the team but in baseball and softball, the aspect of the game we are discussing is kind of exactly opposite that of a goalie. Also, I don't want my infielders repeatedly practicing to make bad throws just to work out their 1B. I'd no more want my SS to practice making bad throws than I would want pitchers practicing making pitches down the center of the plate. Someone else has to do this, preferably a coach.

Coaches should make their throws right at the 1B's head and also to her left and right. Catching throws to the center, left and right are decidedly different skills. In each case, the 1B must stride toward the throw, after finding the bag, but on the back hand side, her vision is different than center or on the forehand side and the hand eye coordination is also rather different. A well prepared 1B must have loads of experience doing all three.

Going a bit further, taking throws in the dirt on the short hop or otherwise is also very different when accomplished on each side. It takes almost as much repeated experience as hitting does. We give batters 50 swings each at soft-toss, the batting tee and with live or machine pitched balls. The 1B should be no different. She needs reps.

I have often seen relatively inexperienced 1Bs at all levels make a fundamental mistake on base coverage. They get back to the bag in plenty of time, find the base, and then stretch before they know the trajectory of the ball. This sometimes manifests itself in a second stride which is difficult to perform after a first. It also manifests itself in either a missed throw or one in which their back foot comes off the bag. Another common mistake is too short of stride or one accomplished in a lackadaisical, perfunctory manner. I'm supposed to stretch. Coach tells me so. So, here you go, here's my step, uh stretch. 1Bs need to be schooled to make a quick, athletic stride to the ball when and only when they know the trajectory.

Bunt coverage is a primary role for the 1B. She needs to be able to rush forward, pick up the ball and complete the throw to first quickly. The footwork is kind of complicated because she has her back to the bag. 1Bs should have plenty of opportunity to field bunts in front of them and make the throw to the 2B covering. She needs to charge on the pitch when the batter breaks her hands, get to where the ball is, step slightly beyond it while turning sideways to the first baseline, and then pick and throw in a single fluid motion. We just do not have time to bend down, get the ball, stand up, stride and throw. Essentially, the 1B must be in a good body position to make a throw, as she is picking up the ball. She should also be taught to throw without a stride towards the target. This task can be more complicated than it looks. It should be broken down into steps and practiced as much as a catcher practices her throws to the various bases.

In general, I like to use a rule or guide for balls on the ground. If it is stopped and not spinning, which is somewhat rare. A fielder can pick it up with her bare, throwing hand. If there is any movement at all, she needs to field it with two hands. But in this case, where we aren't talking about a grounder, the glove hand should be closed - the glove should be closed. She grips the glove like she has a ball in it, puts the glove to the first base side of the ball, scoops throwing and glove hands together, and picks up the ball with the throwing hand, pulls slightly back and throws while taking no forward step. Again, this needs to be one fluid motion.

The 1b often takes pickoff throws from the catcher unless the defense is running a play where the 2B sneaks in behind her at first. She also, obviously, must take throws on some dropped third strikes. This should be pretty easy. She races back to the bag, places her left foot on or next to it, and makes a target for the catcher that is inside the foul line, out of way of the running lane.

Taking pickoff throws are more difficult. On these, the right handed 1B need to turn her back on the pitcher and be sideways to the catcher. She should take the throw on the bag side but in fair ground, assumming an accurate throw. She has her back to the runner but should be able to barely perceive her out of her left eye. As she catches the ball, she should allow it to pull her towards the bag, while stepping slightly back with the left foot and reaching to make the tag low to the ground. The reason she cannot turn towards the field/pitcher is because it takes too much time to apply a tag. The obvious objection to this is, what if the runner instead of returning to base, breaks for second. Well, first of all, I would hope my other infielders are watching and instructing her in that case. And secondly, she should have enough time to make a throw to second unless the runner is very, very quick. And if she has a big enough lead to make second, probably the throw should not have been made.

If the first baseman is a lefty, she probably has an advantage over her right handed counterpart since she should be open to the infield when receiving pickoff throws. The idea is to have the glove handed side towards the bag, whether lefty or righty, in order to allow the flight of the ball to do most of the work on a pickoff attempt. If the 1B has to reach with the glove, she is going to be slow and probably not get the runner very often.

Aside from taking throws and fielding bunts, obviously a 1B is also one of the four infielders. She, like the 3B, must have experience and practice reps at fielding balls smashed to her left and right. The difference between the 1B and 3B is, obviously, the line is on the opposite side of the fielder and there is a middle infielder with whom she must cooperate also on the opposite side.

In terms of balls hit to the right, we tell 3Bs that they should try to handle any ball they can get to. The same is true for 1Bs. If she can get to balls to her right, she should attempt to field every one of them. She should not find herself worried that nobody is going to be at the bag if she moves to her right. The 2B is in probably the best position to know if she needs to cover first. She should be able to judge whether the 1B can get to the grounder or not. The two girls should talk to each other but the 2B should expect the 1B to cover any grounder she should reach. The only way to work this out is to have lots of experience with each other. The relationship between 1B and 2B should be almost as close as that between pitcher and catcher.

Balls hit to the left of the 1B are generally more difficult than those hit to the right. That's as true for lefties as it is for righties primarily because most balls hit right down the line are hit pretty hard and have some air underneath them. But just as the 3B must knock down everything hit down her base line, the 1B must also. If smashes are allowed to get past the corner infielders, these frequently turn into doubles.

It seems almost com9ical to mme that when infielders do short distance grounder drills in practice, coaches almost always conduct these drills on the third base line. It's almost as if subconsciously they have forgotten about the 1B's role on defense. Sure all the 1Bs join up with the 3Bs in these sdrills but coaches' bias is to run these drills over near 3B. The reason we run this drill near any line at all is because the 3B needs to have an innate sense of where the line is in relation to where she positions herself normally. The same is true of 1Bs. So when you do this drill, please consider alternating between first and third rather than always doing it at third.

Lest I forget, the play after a dive and a stop is as important as the dive itself. One of the most beautiful plays in the game involves the diving third baseman who gets up and makes a good throw to first nailing the runner. One of the ugliest involves the first baseman lumbering to her feet and then throwing the ball into right, past the covering 2B. Along the same lines is a play on which the 1B makes a good play on a ball to her right and then tries to underhand flip the ball to the covering 2B and gets too much air underneath it. The balls floats in the air, defying gravity as the slapper runs right through the bag before the ball touches leather. 1Bs need to practice this underhand toss about as much as a 2B or SS needs to practice their close-range throws to second, perhaps more. They should have a brief conversation with some of the pitchers and then practice the pitcher's fastball snap.

There is a play unique to fastpitch softball which frustrates the offense to no end. When I introduce it to young girls, I tell them that this is possibly their best opportunity to make the opposition cry. The play is a smash to RF which results in an out at 1B. Recently, one team I watched cried and for good reason. They were down by a run in the bottom of the 7th with runner on third and two outs in an elimination game. A pitch caught too much of the plate and the batter drilled it on a line to right. If it had been more in the gap, even just a few feet more, it would have reached the fence on two hops. But after the first hop, the RF grabbed it, wheeled and threw to first, just barely nailing the batter-baserunner and negating the tying run. Ballgame over. Turn on the faucets!

The play a 1B makes on a shot to RF is not particularly difficult but throws from outfielders can sometimes be difficult to handle, especially when they are to the foul line side of the bag. We don't want the 1B to get blind-sided by the baserunner so reaching across needs to be avoided unless the 1B knows the batter-baserunner is extremely slow and the play happens fast.

This brings me back to generally handling throws at first. I forgot to mention this and I can't see a good place to slot it in so I'll deal with it in this spot. When a 1B is handling throws from infielders or outfielders, we have to be careful about instructing them not to reach across the baseline. In fastpitch softball, we are lucky to most often use the "safety base" which at least keeps the runner a bit away from collision with the 1B. But if the 1B reachea across the line, all bets are off. And these injuries can be among the most severe in the game.

If a 1B reaches across the line and a runner strikes her, the result can be a borken wrist or damage done to the elbow or shoulder. It also can end in a concussion. While I certainly can see games of sufficient importance to cause a 1B to be willing to risk this result, I think most of us will never play a game of that kind of importance. We should not risk the potential end of a softball career just to record an out or two. 1Bs need to be able to judge whether they can make a clean catch or not without reaching across the line. If they cannot, they need to be able to come off the bag to catch the ball. Thereafter, a second judgment should be made which is whether they can still get an out by tagging the runner (assumming the ball is on the plate side of the bag).

Proper tagging technique must be taught. The tag should not be like it might be at third where the fielder grips the ball, places her glove between the bag and runner and waits for the two to come into contact. The 1B should grip the ball with two hands and hopefully either get in front of the slow runner if there is time for her to slow down or just wait for her and make a quick stabbing and pullback motion as she goes by. The idea would be for her to perform a movement like she was trying to knock a runner offbalance from the side. This should avoid broken wrists, etc.

In baseball, with its 90 foot basepaths, sometimes the 1B is called upon to make certain throws. There are some slick-fielding, strong-armed 1Bs on the baseball diamond but somewhat often, the 1Bs have weaker arms than other players. This is hidden by the longer distance between bases. But in softball we don't have that luxury. In softball, the 1B must be able to follow a putout with a throw.

In baseball, you often see the 1B stretch like a gymnast, catch the ball, and then slowly come out of the stretch like an old man (like myself) getting out of a chair. In baseball, it is infrequent for even a runner stealing third at the time the ball is struck to attempt to score. if he does, usually he is thrown out by a good margin. In fastpitch softball, if a 1B does that stretch and slow recovery, a runner from second is likely to round the bag and then, if she is fast, reach home before the 1B knows what is going on. If softball, the 1B needs to be acutely aware of baserunners and she must be capable of making good quick throws. This must be practiced.

We have talked about bunt defense and my preference is for the covering 2B to wheel and throw behind the runner, either at second or third. Likewise in situations in which a runner is allowed to advance a base for whatever reason and the out is recorded via a throw to the covering 1B, I would like her to follow up with a throw behind the runner, particularly at second. The reason I say this is because runners advancing safely from first to second have a tendency to either relax after reaching the base or to round it, looking for an opportunity to go to third. In either case, she may not be on the bag. A throw behind her can sometimes record a free out - a free out which can compleyely take the oppposition out of the game.

Well, that's what I have to say about first basemen. I think I'v e covered at least the most important aspects of the position. As always, my motto is practice, practice, practice. I know you are all busy practicing. And as you put together your drills, please don;t forget about the 1B. She needs a unique skill set. She has as many special needs as any other player. You've got to give her specific reps.

Humpty Dumpty

2009-07-15T06:48:00.000-07:00

When we teach complex skills like fielding the grounder and making a throw afterwards, we break it into little tiny, easily digestable pieces, especially when working with the very young. I have seen coaches from 8U through high school have their kids perform drills to emphasize the tiny pieces so as to either teach the inexperienced younger kids or attempt to cure mechanical flaws in older girls. These techniques are important and they do work. But, in a speed game, at some point, you've got to bring everything together in a fluid, quick motion.

When I teach throwing to 8 and 9 year olds, I often have them stand with their front shoulders pointing in my directions and their hands together at their waists. They then move up into the "scarecrow" position with the ball exposed to the sky, then step slightly towards the target while bring the throwing hand forward, etc. This is a multi-part action with all sorts of stopping points so a coach can judge whether each piece is done properly. But that process of stage one, two, etc. can have some serious detrimental results if we don't at some point unteach the stopping and lack of fluidity.

There is a high school coach nearby who at some point got sick of watching otherwise decent fielders blow grounders because they didn't watch the ball into their gloves. His resolution for this was to run a drill in which one girl rolled a grounder to another and the girl fielding the grounder would watch the ball into her glove to the point that her pony tail would flip over to the front side of her head. the ball was pulled to the waist and then the girl would pop into the throwing position. It should come as no surprise to anyone that if a girl were to do this and then follow it up with my throwing technique with all its pause points, that if a slapper were to hit a ball into play, she would make second base before the throw arrived at first trying to get her out!

I do think girls need to watch balls into their gloves, pay attention to their body posture while fielding grounders, and make good four seam throws to bases with their bodies properly aligned. But I'm just not willing to have girls continue in their softball careers while not getting anyone out! So, at some point, we must emphasize speed and quickness over technique.

I often tell the story of attending a clinic run by Howard Kobata in which two girls were participating in a catch and throw drill. One girl had a weaker arm. The other had an absolute canon. I would guess that the difference between the two girls' throwing speed was ten miles per hour or more. Kobata fired two balls simultaneously to the two girls standing pretty much side by side. Both balls were caught simultaneously. Both girls threw the ball accurately to their target. The girl with the weaker arm threw a weak throw. The girl with the strong arm fired a laser which was barely perceptible to the human eye. But you know what? The weak throw arrived a measurable time before the laser.

These girls ran through this drill several times. The laser thrower never beat the weak armed girl. Sometimes, the weak throw arrived quite a bit faster. It is difficult to judge time in such a setting but I would hazard a guess that on a few reps, the slower throw arrived at its target a full two tenths of a second, perhaps more, sooner than the hard chuck. Are you understanding? The canon-armed girl was going to get fewer kids out at first than the weak armed girl.

To drive home the fact even a little further, I attended one of those professional softball clinics at which Natasha Watley and Andrea Duran were playing the field. I had obviously seen both on TV but you don't really get much of a sense of the abilities of these two ladies on the tube. You really have to see them in person to appreciate their skills. One of the things which struck me was the speed of their throws. Both are very quick with their footwork and get rid of the ball extremely quickly. But in the throws I saw them make, neither had a particularly strong arm. I've certainly seen harder throws made at the college, Gold and high school levels. I may have seen harder throws at 16U and, in rare cases, perhaps even 14U. But in terms of infielder pop times - the time from the ball touching one glove to another, nothing I have ever seen came even close. When these girls field a grounder, you can blink and before your eyes are completely open, the ball is pounding the first baseman's glove.

The point is, what matters in softball is not so much the strength of one's arm but rather the total elapsed time from glove to glove. Having a good arm and sound mechanics matters. But nothing matters when the ball arrives too late and the kid who can get it to its target faster is better regardless of strength of arm. So that begs the question, how do we learn to be quicker?

The first stage of fixing anything, I suppose is awareness. We have instilled all these pause points in girls which cause these tiny hesitations and it is our job to fix them. When you're doing a skill like fielding a grounder and making a throw, you probably are not really aware of your minor hesitations. You do the skill as you were taughter and as you age up and become more athletic, the pause points become less perciptible. But they are still there. You don't necessarily feel your slowness. I think you have to see them first before you believe they are there.

If you can take a video which shows a girl herself while fielding an ordinary grounders and making a throw, that should help. &n bsp; In lieu of having video equipment handy, running a group drill which shows several girls being slower than they ought to be can also help. But sometimes that can be uncomfortable for all the girls in the drill.

You have to be careful to prepare the girls for what they are about to witness and make sure each and everyone gets about equal measure of criticism. Howard Kobata doesn't precisely practice this technique and I'm not about to criticize his methods. Just suffice it to say that people pay for Kobata's criticism and he gets to go home afterwards. You, as a coach or parent, have a more complicated environment in which you must continue to work with these players in other settings. So perhaps harsh criticism is not the technique you'll use. Still, your objective must be to demonstrate that they are not as fast as they could be.

Once a kid understands that she is slower than she can be, she is in the right mindset to fix some of the problems. Now it is time to conduct some drills to target speed. The first one I like to do involves three girls with five balls. So I call it the five ball drill. You could use three balls or you could use ten. But my experience is five quick reps is the right amount.

One girl feeds balls to the fielder. Another is positioned about 40-60 feet away. The feeder tosses balls to the fielder at about her waist who catches the ball and makes a throw in one fluid motion. The filder should take no steps before releasing the ball. She gets into a good ready position with her glove and throwing hand in front of her. The feeder tosses a ball, she catches and fires towards the target - but accuracy of the throw is not the objective early on. As soon as she makes the throw, the fielder gets back into ready position. As soon as the feeder sees the ball hit the receiver's glove, she tosses another. This should be a fairly hectic pace. And it continues for the five balls. After that, the three girls rotate positions and repeat the drill.

With only three girl needs to run the drill, you can split the team up into say four groups of three. if you have odd persons out, that's OK too. But the person who is not in the drill should pay close attention to what the filder is doing so she can become even more aware of pause points of others and hopefully herself. You can also modify this drill into a race among your various groups of players while awarding points to the winners and perhaps a reward or something along those lines.

I would add some variation on the basic drill of taking a ball at one's waist in order to make the drill more realistic. Have the second round of it involve a throw to the left or right and then switch to the other side. Balls could be rolled or bounced like grounders. They could be thrown over the head of the fielder to mimick a pop-up. You get the idea. This drill is a good start but their are plenty of others.

Another drill I do, this time for ordinary catching and throwing is to place two girls apart, facing each other, behind a line made by cones, about 60 feet apart. I put two sets of these girls alongside each other and make the rest of the team spread out along the outer edges so as to get a good view while not at risk of being struck by errant throws. The two girls in each team throw the ball back and forth a total of ten times. The winning team stays on the field while the losers join their teammates on the sidelines. A new team is brought out to compete. This drill can be a lot of fun and breaks up the monotony of ordinary practices.

One element you want to make sure you address whuile running this drill is sometimes a couple girls, maybe the best girls, will team up and stay out on the field a long time. Also, other girls will choose to stay with one particular person when their turn comes up. You really want to mix and match the girls so they get used to throwing with their entire team. So don;t leave one team out there for more than five iterations and make sure you pick the teams so you can mix it up more than would happen naturally. Also make sure you emphasize accuracy and quickness technique in this drill.

Two of the common plays which require quickness, aside from fielding a hit ball, are those in which 1) an infielder might be taking a cutoff throw, turning and firing to a base which is in back of her; 2) any fielder grabs a ball while facing in one direction and then must turn in a new direction to make the throw. For instance, a fielder might take a throw at first and then need to fire to second. Perhaps someone might get a throw in from the outfield for a tag play at third and then need to make another throw to another base afterwards.

In the case of repeated cutoff throws, what I like to do is line up the team in two or more lines extending from one baseline out to near the outfield fence, spaced about 50-60 feet apart. That means lines of about four people. The balls start at one end and are thrown to each succeeding player down the line and then back to the starting point. In this drill, coaches need to show proper technique for taking and making cutoff throws. The target for each throw should be at the head of to just past the glove side of the target fielder. The receiving fielder tries to make the catch in front of her face on her glove side while simultaneously turning and throwing to the next fielder. I don't suppose you need me to explain how to take a cutoff and make the follow-up throw. My point rather is to emphasize that this needs to be done as quickly as possible and proper technique, along with quickness, is the key to winning the race.

In terms of speeding up ordinary infield catching and throwing, there are several drills I like to run. The first involves placing a fielder at each of the bases. Balls are thrown in one of two direction around the bases. The easiest is to throw from home to third, then second, then first and back to home. This involves standing in a ready position next to the bag facing the direction from which the throw will be received with hands extended in front of each fielder. the throw is received and with no footwork at all, the fielder makes the throw to the next base. if a throw is offline, the fielder must move to the ball and catch it in front of her, then follow up with a throw involving no step. The ball goes around like that as many times as you like or for a set number of times and repeated reps. Then you switch in four new girls who do the same.

Next you change the direction of the ball on your next set of reps to go from home to first, second, third and back to home. This involves catching the ball and then making a pop (very slight leap) to the throwing direction. This is an important technique but I don't want to spend time on it since most know it anyways. The point is to make the pop and throw quickly and accurately, not necessarily as strongly as possible. After each of these, I add a couple of reps in which say the ball goes around one way once or twice and then back the other way.

After each type of these (one way, the other, both), I like to break out the stopwatch and time each rep. I might tell one "team" to go around twice or three times and clock it. Then the next "team" goes and we compare times. A couple iterations of this and I think the girls get competitive about their team's times. That usually shows up in improved times the second and third clocking.

In addition to this and the other drills, I also like to do something during ordinary infield practice. Most teams do something long these lines but I have suffered through enough practices in which no complex throwing takes place that I'll explain what I do. You set your infield out there with players at each position and run through your ordinary grounders, pop-ups, etc. and have the girls make their throws. I believe in fielders fielding as many balls as possible to improve technique. But after everyone has done their necessary reps, you begin calling out follow-up throws after the initial one.

Grounder to third, throw to first, back to home, then down to third (or second). You can instruct the girls to field a ball, throw to first, then to home and then back to where the fielder is covering before you hit a ball into play. As an alternative, if you have your wits about you, you can call the next base to throw to as the first or second throw is in the air. Say there is an ordinary grounder to third and she's going to first, you might start yelling "home, home, home" as the original throw is coming out of the third baseman's hand. Then as the fielder covering first releases the ball to home, you call out "two, two two." You can continue with this indefinitely or perhaps have them make three or four throws after each ball is hit into play. A variation on this is to have each grounder followed by around the horn in one direction or the other. variation is the key. You want the girls to make as many varied throws as possible.

Another good catch and throw drill involv es four players, each starting at one of the bases. The ball is thrown in one of the two directions around the bases. The girl at home runs to first after throwing the ball to first. The girl at first runs to cover home after throwing the ball to second. The girl at second runs to cover third after throwing the ball there. The girl at third runs to cover second after throwing the ball to home. That's one iteration. Then each girl continues catching and throwing to the next base while running back and forth from either first to home and back again, or second to third and back again. You can have the ball go the other direction if you like. You can switch the bases from and to each girl runs.

What generally happens in this drill when it is run right is girls have to make catches on the run, turn and throw, then run hard to get back to the base to cover. They get exhausted and compete to get into good position to make the catch and throw quickly.

As a final drill, I admit to stealing this one from Kobata as well as many good teams I have observed practicing. The drill is one I have heard called alternately "four corners" or "the star." It involves placing a fielder at each of the three bases and two at home. The first person at home gets the ball. She throws down to secxond and then runs towards that base. The girl at second throws to first and then runs there. The girl at first throws to third and follows her throw. The girl at third throws the ball back to home where the second girl is waiting and then runs there. The ball continues around the diamond indefinitely and as girls get tired - they do quickly - I replace one with somebody on the sidelines. Eventually the whole team gets involved in the drill with girls stepping out when they are winded and new ones taking their places. i try to not allow the girls to go into the drill in a particular order since, again, I want everyone to take and make throws from and to everyone else.

You can get a lot of complex throwing in with this drill in very little time. We have actually seen entire teams get winded and exhausted inside of ten minutes. If you are motivated to do so, you can use this drill as a sort of last game of the day preparation and have the girls continue as long as 20 minbutes to half an hour. But I've never gone quite that long.

I believe I have mentioned many of these drills before in writings. The difference is today I offer them within the context of a discussionb on speed and quickness. In this game, success and failure on defense are often measured by elapsed time from one glove to another, infield "pop time" if you will. We break Humpty Dumpty into a million little pieces to perfect techniques. But we must put Humpty Dumpty back together again in order to give girls the tool they need to succeed, quickness.

Just For Fun

2009-07-08T09:57:00.000-07:00

Recently, at a softball game, a girl suffered an injury while pitching. She was struck in the hand by a line drive. She could not continue pitching. The hand was swollen, black and blue, and looked as if it might be broken, possibly in several places. The girl had to come out of defensive line-up but due to the rules under which this game was played, the team was forced to either bat her or take an out when her position came around. They chose to send her up to bat while holding the bat in one hand. What do you think about that?

Before you answer, consider that this was not some sort of big time college or professional game. This was not a national competition. This was a USSSA sanctioned 10U game. It was for a state title and probably a bid to nationals. But we're talking 10U here. Really! I mean it!!

To round out your understanding of this event, the pitcher and other players on the opposing team were upset to the point of tears with the prospect of having to pitch and play against a girl bandaged and obviously hurt. The opposing team objected to the umpires. They consulted with the UIC and tournament director. Ultimately the conclusion arrived at was there was no relevant rule and the decision was entirely up to the coaches of the team with the hurt girl. She batted against a pitcher wiping tears out of her eyes. The outcome is unimportant.

That's what I thought you'd say!

My reactions are as follows:

1) As a parent, I would never allow my child to suffer through that. I'd probably never again allow the team's coaches the privilege of working with my kid. I might consider legal or other action to make sure the coaches never worked with children again.

2) As a coach, I'd never ask a kid to do something like that. Instead, I would feel it my duty to have the parent take the kid for immediate medical attention. I don't have the expertise to have an opinion on what sort of damage might be done but it does occur to me that perhaps permanent nerve damage could result from severe swelling. While we provide legal protections to volunteer coaches acting within a degree of normal, prudent person, (I believe this transcends that and I know how I would vote on a jury if a case like this ever came before me. The coach would lose his house!

3) As a person who has coached softball and been involved with a few organizations, I wonder how this could possibly enhance the particular team's, coach's, and org's reputation. If this, in and of itself, does not reduce the number and quality of kids who show up at tryouts, there is something seriously wrong with our community.

4) As an outsider of the teams and the tournament - I wasn't there and am going only by witness accounts - I am ashamed that anyone in the youth softball world would have a kid bat under these circumstances. I'd like 5 minutes with the guy who made this decision. But, while I feel strongly about promoting the sport, I think this event provides the impetus for certain rule changes which I'm going to get to shortly.

5) Finally, as a person interested in the game and its rules, I believe umpires should be given "reasonable man/woman" rights to determine whether they believe a player should or should not be allowed to continue in a game. At the very least, there ought to be some reasonable guidelines beyond mere "blood" rules. Tournament directors ought to be able to say, "no, this kid cannot continue."

It does not matter to me that the kids on the opposing team did not want to play against this girl. It does not matter to me that the pitcher was crying at the prospect of having to pitch against her. It matters some but is not dispositive that these were 10s. They could just as easily been 12s, 14s, 16s. I am still against the girl being put up to bat. At some age and level of competition, I suppose my opinion changes - it has to.

Had this been the NPF championship game, I think you have to let the batter bat. Ditto for the WCWS. Between say 16U and the WCWS, I'm less certain. I suppose a kid should be allowed to continue at the state high school champiopnship game under these circumstances. I expect that most professional, college and high school teams would never find themselves in this circumtsance. Their rosters are larger. But I am clear that this shouldn't be allowed to happen at USSSA 10U games, even the national championship.

Our society has certain norms of behavior which are applicable under legal applications. For instance, if a child is allowed to eat such a horrendous diet that they attain a level of obesity which is abhorent to most of us, that child can be removed from the custody of his or her parents. Similarly, severe manutrition is considered parental child abuse. There are norms of behaviors in terms of punitive acts which may be applied. Exceed those and you'll have to answer to a judge.

Within the sports world, there are similar norms of behavior which, if exceeded, could result in criminal prosecution. These are generally reflective of societal norms. If a parent refused to get a child medical attention for an injury like this, I suspect they could be brought up on child abuse charges absent certain over-riding and extreme conditions. This case does not qualify for the types of conditions. This case is clearly abusive. It must result in some sort of action by USSSA and other sanctioning bodies because, al0ong with being an embarrassment to the coach, the team, and the org, it has to be an embarrassment to USSSA because it cewrtainly is an embarrassment to the softball community at large.

USSSA and all the other bodies must give some sort of authority to tournament directors, UICs, and/or the umps themselves to say, "no, that kid cannot play under these circumstances."

At Long Last ... 43

2009-07-08T07:30:00.000-07:00

At long last, the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) has voted to implement a 43 feet pitching distance for high school varsity games. This rule is effective for the 2010-11 school year but states can switch the distance this upcoming year, if they choose to. Here is the press release.

Over the years, I have come out in favor of this change on a couple of different levels. For one thing, if the college girls pitch at this distance, so should girls at 14U and above, including high school. The boys game has always been that way. Why should girls, who mature earlier relative to their older counterparts, as compared to boys, be any different?

Another reason I have been in favor of the change is high school softball games within and between the best 10-25% of teams is almost always a very low scoring affair. To the extent the pitching distance change results in more balance between offense and defense, I think it has to be good for the game. The reaction of coaches in the two states which tested 43 feet suggests the desired results have been achieved.

Along these lines, if you compare reaction time for batters between baseball and softball, the reality is girls must react far more quickly than boys. A very fast 12U or 14U pitcher gives batters no more time to see and react to a pitch than a relatively fast high school varsity baseball pitcher. I'd do the math for you but it bores me to do that again. The announcers at the WCWS did, I'm sure, understate the case quite a bit. They suggested that pitchers throwing at 67 during the WCWS were comparable to 90+ mph baseball fastballs. If you account for the distance from which the ball is released in both games and accurately calculate the time from hand to plate, I think you come out with a more drastic result. As I said, I won't calculate it for you, but I suggest the actual time is more like a 100 mph baseball fastball.

One of the reasons stated for making the change over the years is to give pitchers more time in which to react to balls hit back at them. The amount of time provided is pretty much negligible, hundreths of a second. It is also countered by the fact that batters will hit the ball more solidly given their longer time in which to react. I think this reason for moving to 43 feet is perhaps the weakest one.

In terms of the impact on girls themselves, there are any number of girls, beginning at sophomore year of high school, who are stuck in this cycle of having to perfect their pitches at 43 feet for fall showcases and higher level winter competitive ball, then move back to 40 feet to prepare for the spring high school season, then move back to 43 feet in time for summer ball. Very often pitchers have a matter of two weeks, sometimes even less, to make the transition. This is, I believe, too much to ask of the best competitors in our game. And the girls who are already pitching at 43 feet in high school have the advantage.

Perhaps the largest percentage of folks who have written reactions to my opinions on the subject have been against the change. Their reasons are varied. But I think mostly they have expressed concern for their pitcher-daughters.

They complain that if the purpose is to protect the pitcher, this change will not accomplish that. I agree. The difference in reaction time is minimal. But without scientific studies, I also suppose that none of us really knows if the change will matter or not.

They also worry about slower pitchers who will give batters way too much time to see and hit the ball. That's probably true too but it is almost as true at 40 as it is at 43. Speed is a relative concept. Speed gets adjusted to. If you took someone who hits well against 50 mph speed, and put them up against 50, they would struggle. Keep them in the 60 for an extended period of time and I suspect they'll learn to do well. High school pitching is a fairly broad spectrum but at the better levels, I think it tends to be around 55-60 with some faster than 60 and most at or above 55. Girls seem to do reasonably well against 60 mph pitching if they face it routinely. But play them against a very slow pitcher one day, a fast one the next, then a slow one the next, and they will struggle against each - not just against the fast pitcher.

To go a bit further, it seems like most softball hitters have greater difficulty adjusting to slower stuff than they do faster. That's not always true but many times I have seen teams use a very slow pitcher for 3 or more innings to slow down a strong offensive team. The best teams almost never seem to struggle against a fast pitcher unless she also has great command and movement too.

I realize this can get rather circular. It also offers the opportunity to contradict oneself. Do I think hitters will do better against pitching from 43 feet? Yes. Do I think pitchers will be protected? Probably not, but maybe I'm wrong. Ultimately, I think I have to make my decision to be in favor or against a change to 43 feet based upon whether I think it is better for the game or not. I think it will produce more offense in a game which needs more offense. I think it will give the pitchers a hair more time in which to react and at the same time diminish the benefit of that as hitters get better looks. I think pitchers should practice at one distance rather than shift back and forth. I think it is time the almost fully developed girls at all ages pitch at the same distance the same way the boys have done for decades on end.

Do you have an opinion? If so, send it to me and I may decide to include it in this piece.

Scholarship Opportunity

2009-06-25T11:05:00.000-07:00

Just got this from a friend:

"I still have scholarship $ for a pitcher if you know anyone who hasn't signed yet.

I still have a rather large scholarship available for a pitcher who is a 2009 grad or transfer with release or juco/CC player if anyone is still looking for a school. Depending upon academics (gpa/test scores), I may be able to cover a significant portion of our tuition, which is $33,000. Our health sciences program is extremely strong -- nursing, nuclear med, respiratory therapy, physical therapy, athletic training. We are a D2 school in WV, located 1 mile from Ohio, and 10 miles from PA. I am looking for solid prospect who can come in and compete for a spot in the rotation. Here is our our web address: www.wju.edu

If interested, please email bvasko@wju.edu

For Love Of The Game

2009-06-23T07:17:00.001-07:00

There's a bunch of girls heading to recruiting combines and showcase tournaments, or otherwise stressing out over their college softball prospects right this very moment. They'll be poked and prodded, measured and remeasured. They'll get great hits, strikeout, look good, look really bad, make great plays and throws, and completely fall apart on routine flys and grounders. Some few will impress coaches from great programs. Some will have lines drawn through their names. And you know what? None of this matters! Why? Because they'll still be just playing softball.

That's right. My message to all the girls with high aspirations on the diamond this week, next, and the one after that is to remember what you are doing. You're just playing softball. I know it is stressful to think that if you botch this pop-up coming at you right now, the coach for whom you really, really want to play might form some very bad opinions about you. I know that you feel you really must get at least one hit against this pitcher. I know you want to get a great jump as you attempt to steal this base. I think we all know all about the stress you are about to go through. But if it is meant to be, it will be.

Instead of staying awake late tonight because that coach you have been e-mailing is going to be watching your game tomorrow against the Shamrocks or whomever, try thinking about what it was like to play this game when you were 8, 10, 12 years old. There was no big deal about who was watching you then. All that mattered was you were going to pitch or catch and get some at bats. You were going to feel the wind whip through your batting helmet as you raced around the bases. You were gonna make some great plays in the field. You were gonna throw out some runners. You were gonna strike out some batters. You were gonna spend time with your friends. You were gonna have fun. That's why you play this game to begin with, to have fun. It is fun. It is great fun.

So as you get into bed tonight, as you climb into the car tomorrow, as you work your way towards the fields, as you stand there waiting for your turn to get up and impress, what I want you to think about is how much fun this game is and how much fun it has been for years. Don't focus on anything mechanical. Don't worry or stress out over anything you have been working on for the past 6 months or 6 years. Don't gfet into any heavy visualization exercises. Instead, think of this as just another game day. Think of this as yet another in a long line of experiences.

The truth is you play better when you are relaxed. You play better when you are having fun. When you get up to bat and you are focused on the fun of hitting the ball, you hit better. When you just love the feel of running around the bases, you run better. When you go all out to catch a line drive simply because going all out and catching a line drive happens to be about the most fun thing in the world, you make great plays. When you just love the way making a great throw feels, you make great throws.

You have been working just about your whole life to be a really great player.
You have fielded tens of thousands of grounders and flys. You have taken more swings of the bat than a human has capacity to count. You've done speed and agility to the point that it takes you months to improve your times on courses by even a hundredth of a second. You have built muscle memory to the point that your brain cannot remember anymore. You've done what you can and there is no more time for study. Now it is time to put a cap on all that work by letting it hang out.

If you weren't good, you wouldn't be going to these events. There are a ton of girls who you have passed by over the years. Still, there are a ton of girls who may be better than you for whatever reason. It doesn't matter. All that matters is you do what you can and do what you want to do, play ball. Prep time is over and now all there is to do is play the game you have been playing since you were allowed to play it. Just play ball. It is only just softball and you do know how to play it.

Bottom line is, this is all about love of the game. If you didn't love it, you wouldn't play it. If you didn't love it, you wouldn't want to continue playing it into college. If you didn't love playing this game, you wouldn't be stressed right now about your college prospects. You would just go and relax because nothing you did would ever matter. Your love of the game is the reason you are stressed but stress has nothing to do with playing the way you know how to play. So go out there, get dirty, dive around a little, drive the ball, run cause its fun to run, throw cause its fun to throw, and just have a blast.

Thor, The Viking Bandit - index page

2009-06-22T08:01:00.000-07:00

I was contacted by the Chicago Bandits of National Pro Fastpitch (NPF) and handed the unique opportunity to conduct an interview with Kristina Thorson ("Thor"), their star pitcher. In addition to leading the Bandits to the NPF championship last year, Kristina pitched in the WCWS three times for Cal, finishing runner-up twice, and was Gatorade player of the year in the state of Washington her senior year of high school.

As you will see from her answers, she is a very intelligent, thoughtful person whose wisdom is very informative for those of us who are just starting our kids out in the game, those who have played and/or coached for years, and those players who are considering college prospects or more. I had high hopes for this interview but those hopes were easily surpassed, mostly thanks to Kristina's thoughtful responses to my questions. I worked pretty hard to develop questions which would provide affirmations or denials of many of the preconceptions I know I had and assume others have as well. I hope I asked a lot of the questions you would ask.

It is always instructive for parents to get the real thoughts of their children. But most of us struggle to get answers to questions like "what happened today at school" or "how did you play at your game?" We cannot ever hope to learn their real thoughts on a host of issues like "do you want to continue playing softball, travel softball," "what do you want to do when you go to college," or "do you want to continue pitching, catching, playing center?" Seeing the world through the eyes of someone who has played youth, high school, college, and professional ball while excelling academically and pursuing other related and unrelated activities, gives us all a little insight into the world our children occupy or will occupy and lets us know what it takes to make it on a bigger stage.

What's more, my entire reason for getting my kids involved with any sport at all had to do with the real world lessons learned by being an athlete, a member of a team, a person who has to make choices about how to allocate their time. Kristina affirmed that for me. But while I understand that sports need to be fun for kids, I think that sometimes I can fall victim to the "if you want to play at this level, then it has to be more than just fun" mentality which pervades youth sports even at the 8U level. Kristina's perspective reminded me that the reason I wanted to be a major league ballplayer at the age of 9 had to do with the fun of the game more than the "rewards of accomplishing something difficult via hard work and dedication."

As I crafted my questions, I realized I had written 5 pages before I even scratched the surface. As a result, this work is rather large. I have published it in 4 parts which I hope are logical. I provide this index page mostly because the order of postings on a blog format essentially puts everything backwards. Questions are in italics and responses beneath in normal type, indented. Without any further ado, here are links to the four parts of the interview:

Part 1 - rec play through high school.
Part 2 - experiences as a college player
Part 3 - experiences as a professional pitcher
Part 4 - future including high school coach, private pitching instructor, and some longer-term possibilities

In conclusion, I wish to extend my thanks to the Chicago Bandits organization, Andrew Phillips, Director of Media Relations, and most especially to Thor, herself.

Thor, The Viking Bandit - part 4

2009-06-22T07:32:00.000-07:00

This is part four, the final piece, of our multi-part special interview with Chicago Bandits pitcher extraordinaire, Kristina Thorson. In part 1, we discussed rec play through high school. In part 2, we discussed her experience as a college player. In part 3, we discussed her experience as a professional pitcher. In this section, we focus on Thor's future including the short-run, during which she will be coaching a high school team and continue her work as a private pitching coach, as well as the longer term which is still up in the air a bit but could include work in public health. We also ask a question or two regarding the possibility that one day she might be a Little League parent!

Q: I see that you are going to be a high school coach during the next season. I know how I would feel about making the switch from player to coach. What are your thoughts about this? What are your expectations?

I couldn't be more excited! I can't wait to share my knowledge and love of the game to a new group of girls. It's a new challenge for me, which I love, and I'm going to learn a lot. I know we're going to have a solid and deep pitching staff, but my only real expecations are that the girls learn a lot, that they have fun, and that they are in every game and play to win.

Q: The high school game is very competitive and a nice level of play. But let's face it, whether coaching boys or girls, the situation is complicated by, well, having to deal with high schoolers, with teenage girls and boys and all that this entails! In my HS driver's education class, we were told to never get behind the wheel after fighting with boy or girl friends. Yet with all the drama that goes on in high school, it is very possible to watch your clean-up hitter stroll to the plate after wiping tears out of her eyes because her boyfriend split up with her last night, then strike out with bases loaded against the 61 mph all-state riseball pitcher. I watched our high school almost get knocked out of the state championships, which they eventually won, by a significantly inferior team when the first baseman dropped an easy toss from the pitcher on a routine play. She had attended the senior prom the night before and hadn't slept very well - our proms always seem to coincide with state playoff games. Do you look forward to such HS drama or is it something you hope to avoid?

I actually kind of look forward to it, because I think I can help the girls learn a lot. I've learned so many life lessons through softball, I want to pass those on to my team next year. It's not going to be easy, but great things rarely are. And yes, high school girls are drama no matter how you slice it, but these girls are going to get a big head start on other girls their age. I don't put up with drama, so they are going to learn to keep that off the field, and hopefully learn how to cope with things better while at the same time becoming more accountable for their actions.

Q:Of all the levels one could start coaching at, youth, high school, junior college, you have chosen to jump into the coaching arena with high school. I know some NPF players have jumped in at the junior college head coaching level or decided to become assistants under established D-1 coaches. For example, your teammate, Samantha Findlay is an assistant with Depaul. Is there any particular reason you chose the high school level?

Coaching college has never really been something I've wanted to do. I don't want to say it will never happen, but it's not a big dream of mine. This coaching job kind of found me. I have 5 pitchers I work with that will be at Cal High next year. There was some drama with the coaching staff this year, and they ended up losing both their coaches just after tryouts. So for a week, their team didn't have a coach. So the players I work with were trying to get me to coach them this year. I tried, but I couldn't free up my schedule enough to be able to do so. However, the man who agreed to coach the team this year said he wasn't going to do it next year. My girls got the idea in my head, and it grew and grew on me, so I finally applied and got the job.

Q: What are your ultimate goals coaching a high school team? Do you think you will coach for a long time? Do you have any aspirations of one day becoming a college coach?

I don't know how long I will coach at Cal High for, but I'd like to say a few years. I really want to try to build a program there, because there are a lot of softball players in that area. I really want to give the girls there a glimpse of what college life will be like, but more importantly, I want to teach them to work hard, be accountable, and teach them life lessons that will help them later on no matter what path they choose. Like I said before, I don't have any real dream of being a college coach, but never say never.

Q: Some high school coaches forbid their roster from playing any ball outside high school for the duration of the HS season. This makes sense to me as they practice a lot and play when not practicing. The wear and tear on the body can be significant. But some HS coaches go beyond this common sense approach, encouraging parents of players to form summer and fall teams (we don't play formal HS ball in the fall where I live). Kids on the high school team might be encouraged, perhaps a little stronger than merely encouraged, to play for these teams rather than local travel clubs. Some kids might argue that their participation with their old travel club actually cost them playing or preferred position time when high school season rolled around. How do you feel about this?

I think that high school coaches should stick to high school ball and let their players play for whoever they want for fall/summer teams. I will encourage my players to find summer teams to play for, but it's obviously not mandatory, and it's really not meant for everyone either. I feel like if you're a high school coach, you should stick to high school and the things you can control, which is your high school team. Let the kids do as they please, they need to be happy.

Q: Your bio includes much discussion about your educational and clinical involvement with infectious diseases as well as your interest in Physiology and Kinesiology. You have expressed an interest in one day conducting research into the "effect exercise has in preventing illness from infectious diseases." Do you see your life's goal as relating more to public health, to athletics, or do you feel strongly that the two are so related that you aim to make that more apparent to others?

At this point in my life, it's really hard for me to say. I am very passionate about both areas of study, and can see myself pursuing both. My plan right now is to apply to different schools, once I have money to pay for school, and see where I get accepted, then go from there. There are many, many things I'd love to study. We'll see which doors open up for me.

Q: I see that you already do some private pitching lessons. From a purely economic point of view, that can be at least as lucrative as many other pursuits. I have no idea what you charge for lessons but, at least in my area, it can be seen that a pitching coach with the reputation that comes from being a Gatorade player, a PAC-10 star and WCWS participant, All-American, and a bona fide professional ace, would all seem to point to long lines of girls standing outside your stable doors begging to come in. What I mean is, given your credentials, you could move just about anywhere in this country, set up a tunnel and fill every waking moment with pitching students at $50 a half hour. If you wanted to conduct group lessons at say $20 a head as some coaches do, you would spend most of your spare time explaining to people why you couldn't fit them into classes. Some people would wonder why pursue high school coaching, which does not pay particularly well, or many of the other jobs you would consider, when just hanging up your shingle and net would provide not only economic well being but also a lot of satisfaction. Any thoughts on that?

I love doing private lessons, and I have been lucky enough to be financially comfortable. I wouldn't say that I have a lucrative job or anything like that, but I can pay the bills and still save up a decent amount of money. I know that by coach high school I will lose money, but that's not the most important thing to me. I love being a part of a team, and it's a new challenge, so it's totally worth it to me. Plus, I can reschedule my lessons so I don't lose too much income either. I think I'll be fine. I try to live life by experiences, not by necessarily doing what is going to bring in the most money.

Q: Do you hope to one day raise a family and if so, would you prefer to have boys, girls, or a mix of each? If you had girls would you try to push them, ever so slightly, towards softball?

I go back and forth between wanting a family. I love kids, I love watching the girls I work with succeed, and I think being a parent would be an amazing thing. But, there's also the part of me that wants to travel the world, help people in all sorts of different situations, and that's not a good environment to raise kids in. If I do end up having kids, I want them to be active, but it'll be their choice what sports and activities they do. I would love it if I have a daughter that played softball, but I don't expect her to share my passion. She's a different person, I want her to decide her passion.

Q: If you had boys, would you look to get them involved with baseball?

Pretty much the same thing, I'd want them to play whatever sport or activity they are passionate about.

Q: If your children were to play several sports as they began high school, do you think you would encourage them to focus on one or two rather than play something different in each season?

That would depend on a lot of things. What are their long term goals? How are their grades? What other activities are they involved in? Are they successful and having fun in their sports? I think that as long as their grades are good, they are free to make their decisions on how they want to approach sports. I made my choices, I want my kids to have the same opportunity.

Thor, The Viking Bandit - index page

Part 1 - rec play through high school.
Part 2 - experiences as a college player
Part 3 - experiences as a professional pitcher
Part 4 - future including high school coach, private pitching instructor, and some longer-term possibilities

Thor, The Viking Bandit - part 3

2009-06-22T07:31:00.000-07:00

This is part three of our multi-part special interview with Chicago Bandits pitcher extraordinaire, Kristina Thorson. In part 1, we discussed rec play through high school. In part 2, we discussed experience as a college player. In this section, we focus on Thor's experience as a professional pitcher, her thoughts on being a female athlete in general, and a few thoughts about the NPF and the future of women's professional softball.

Q: You are known as "Thor," a name which obviously derives from Thorson but which also conjures up mythological images from early Viking and Germanic warriors. What is your family heritage? Is there Viking in your roots? How long have you been known as Thor?

A: "People have been calling me Thor since high school. I am 3/4 Norwegian, so I definitely have Viking roots, just don't know a lot about them. I know tons about the mythology, though."

Q: From a mental preparation point of view, what kind of thoughts run through your head as the adrenaline begins to flow before a game? Do you find that you have to get your adrenaline going or slow it down as you walk to the circle for the first inning?

A: "My adrenaline always starts pumping as a game starts, or as I enter a game. I usually go out there and just try to turn my mind off, so I sing along to the music playing (usually one of my pitching songs) and just let my body work the way I've trained it. I settle right into my routine, and things just fall into place for me now, which allows me to stay relaxed and aggressive as I'm throwing during a game."

Q: Some pitchers do not like to talk to anyone before a game. Others get motor-mouth. Some pitchers have to spend hours visualizing pitches to be made in the coming game. Others like to keep their minds empty and as soon as they step on the rubber, everything begins to flow like hot lava. How would you characterize yourself in terms of what goes through your head hours before a game, right at the beginning, and as the later innings approach?

A: "During pre-game, I just like to have fun. Having fun and goofing off has become more and more important to me as I get older. I used to be very serious and kept to myself, but I'm not like that now. When I'm on the field, I'm in my warrior mode - very serious, very aggressive, kind of anti-social. And I used to not be able to turn that off. But I've learned to turn it off before games, and when I'm in the dugout. Having fun, laughing, and goofing around helps my mental game by letting my mind relax, just like my body gets to relax between innings. I try to treat every inning the same, but the three most important innings in my eyes are the first, last, and any inning after my team scores runs and gets a huge momentum shift. But even still, I just approach it as one pitch at a time, one batter at a time, one out at a time. You can't live in the past or the future, just the present."

Q: I have two daughters who pitch. One hears virtually nothing during games. If the other team cheers against her, she hears them cheering for her. If someone tells her something - as softball parents and fans tend to do a lot - she lets it fly over her head and completely ignores it. She is focused on getting hitters out and closes off almost everything else. My other daughter fits more neatly into the Roger Clemens approach. She pretty much froths, fumes and pitches angry. I no longer coach her but when I did, there were times when I tried to speak to her between innings and I wasn't even sure she saw me, let alone heard me. If another team cheers beyond what she thinks is appropriate, sometimes she'll pick the most obnoxious cheerer or the biggest kid on the other team and drill her with a pitch, or at least breeze one by her. She attempts to make eye contact with the next hitter as she approaches the batter's box. She pitches to beat the other kid, to make her look silly. Both like to win and are pretty successful in their completely unrelated styles. How would you characterize your personality when you pitch? How does it differ from your personality off the field?

A: "I am a totally different person off the field than who I am on the field. On the field I am a warrior and much like your daughter who you compared to Clemens. I'm not necessarily angry, but I have no problem drilling a player, and I love to stare down batters after I strike them out. I am out there to beat them at their game, to make them look bad. I'm not going to pitch to their weakness, I will throw my best pitch and dare them to hit it.

Off the field, I'm easy going, aloof, and goofy. Still driven, but it's not outwardly noticeable. Total opposite as when I'm on the field."

Q: Are you in any way jealous of those who play in the men's game in terms of their ability to earn a living from the sport? What I mean is, right now MLB has just gone through its amateur draft. More than a thousand boys and men from high school to college have been formally asked to play ball professionally. There are a few high school kids who are being handed million dollar signing bonuses and some of these may never rise above double-A baseball, they'll never play a game in the major leagues, perhaps not even in triple-A. Yet they receive enough money to really get started in life merely for agreeing to tryout for the big leagues. Do you wish girls had the same or even half or a quarter of that opportunity?

A: "Of course I wish girls and women had the same opportunity! That's why I love playing in the pro league right now. Our goal is to create that situation so that future generations of softball players can make a living playing this game. I know I'll never be able to, but I want to help create that opportunity for girls later on, and I'm happy that I still get to play. I don't think girls will ever make the same, or even close to, what MLB players make, but I'd love to see a situation where women could just be professional athletes, and not have to coach or have another job on the side."

Q: If you could snap your fingers and make women's professional fastpitch the equal of MLB in terms of financial success and attention from the media and public, would you? Why or why not?

A: "I don't know if I would want the NPF to have the same financial success as MLB. I think the MLB is completely out of control, but it would be so nice for our league to be able to make money at the end of the year, for the players and coaches to make a decent living. There's nothing more that I could ask for than to play in a park with 30,000+ people watching. That's got to be such an amazing feeling. Our game is amazing - it's totally different than baseball. The women in this league are amazing athletes and people, and we all deserve the same attention from the media and the public as the men do. I try to do everything in my power to help equalize things for this league, but there's only so much one person can do. If I could snap my fingers to achieve that, you better believe I would."

Q: Winning the 2008 NPF championship must have been a thrill. But the manner in which the Bandits accomplished that was even more thrilling. The team was swept in a double header late in July and might have missed being in the playoffs, had they gone on a prolonged losing streak afterwards. Instead, they went on a hot streak, winning every game, ending the season with a 12 game winning streak. To what do you attribute that team's resilience? Do you think team chemistry plays an important role in how a team and the individuals on it perform?

A: "I attribute pretty much all of our success last year to our team chemistry. It was unbelievable. We all got along, but even better was at the end of the season, during our hot streak, we never questioned whether or not we would win. We just knew. We just didn't know when we'd push the winning run across. And much of the time, we had late come-from-behind victories. The dugout was calm, there was never any panic or added pressure, we just knew. Everyday, someone new would step up with the big hit. The whole experience is really hard to describe to someone who wasn't a part of it, because it was so unique."

Q: I don't wish to get you in any trouble with the league or team officials but is there anything you think the league could do to experience greater success? If you were calling all the shots, how would you change the way it conducts business and promotes itself?

A: "There are two things that I would really focus on. First, we need national TV coverage. Plain and simple. If fishing and poker can make ESPN, the NPF should be able to make ESPN. Secondly, we need to market ALL the players in the NPF. Not just Jennie, Cat, and Monica, who are all busy with the national team. We need to market other players - non-Team USA members who are at every game for their team, who are big players on their team. We need more known faces in the league, because people, fans don't usually associate with a team, they associate and connect with players. That's why we need to market players more."

Q: Are there any particular experiences which made you into the player you are today? Aside from the experience with your pitching coach, was there any one event, a win, loss, personal good or bad game, which you look back at and think that was a turning point? Do you generally think losing is an important learning tool?

A: "Losing is definitely an important training tool. It teaches you how to be stronger mentally, but shows you your own weaknesses and what you need to do to be successful. There have been hundreds of experiences that have made me the player I am today. Everyday I try to learn something new, try to make myself better. Jim's comment (see part 1) might have been the biggest turning point for me, but it sure hasn't been the only one."

Q: What about the youth and/or high school game do you like most? What do you dislike?

A: "I love that girls can just go out and play. With youth and high school, it's not about recruiting, it's about going out there and just playing your heart out for your team/school. I love that. However, I hate all the safety standards. I cannot stand face masks, especially for fielders, but I don't like them on batting helmets either. They teach girls to be scared of the ball, rather than teaching them to have better reactions and to not be scared of the ball. There's absolutely no way a boy of ANY age would ever show up to baseball practice with a mask. What's the difference? It's ok for a boy to get hurt, but not a girl? No. There's no difference. When you play the sport, you're an athlete. Treat girls like athletes, not like dolls that can't get hurt. If you don't want to get hurt, don't play sports."

Q: If you could go back and relive one particular point in your career, actually play the game(s) over again, exactly as they were originally played, without changing anything, what would that moment, tournament, or game be? What is it that makes this choice the one period you would want to experience again?

A: "Oh man, I'd probably say my senior year at Cal. I was just in a zone all year, and I had a blast. I would choose this time because I was really successful, but it was the first year I really felt like I was a complete pitcher, I wasn't just a rise/curve pitcher. I had a drop and a change up, and I have never felt so comfortable on the mound."

Thor, The Viking Bandit - index page

Part 1 - rec play through high school.
Part 2 - experiences as a college player
Part 3 - experiences as a professional pitcher
Part 4 - future including high school coach, private pitching instructor, and some longer-term possibilities

Thor, The Viking Bandit - part 2

2009-06-21T13:51:00.000-07:00

This is part two of our multi-part interview with Chicago Bandits pitcher extraordinaire, Kristina Thorson. In part 1, we discussed rec play through high school. In this section, we focus on Thor's experience as a college pitcher from recruitment to WCWS participant and runner-up, with a little thrown in about general college softball life.

Q:It is my understanding that the recruiting game has changed quite a bit from what it once was. You would have been playing HS ball and being recruited by colleges at about the point things were changing. How did you approach the recruiting process - did you play showcases or were your travel teams just involved in national ASA competitions and the coaches found you without you looking for them?

A: "I actually got recruited before things really started to change. I didn't start getting recruited until my senior year in high school. I got on a great summer team that went to all the big recruiting tournaments and we managed to get on good fields at those tournaments which helped. But the only reason coaches came to watch me, a scrawny nobody from Seattle (aka softball Siberia at the time), was because my dad and I sent out hundreds of emails to dozens of coaches around the country. We sent out email after email, not letting coaches forget my name, so that they would put me on their list of players to watch. And from there, everything just fell into place."

Q:One would expect a Gatorade Player of the Year to garner a lot of attention. Did college coaches charge hard for you? At what point did it become obvious to you that numerous coaches wanted you to come to their institutions? Was that a positive experience or did it wear you out?

A: "Recruiting is a very stressful and tiring process, but definitely worth every second once you sign with a school. Being from Seattle, no one ever really recruited up there. So it wasn't until after my junior year, with my summer teams that coaches started to notice me and pay attention. The height of it was definitely in the fall of my senior year in high school, during all the showcase tournaments. For being from Seattle, I actually got a lot of attention from colleges, especially schools back east. But I was set on the PAC10, and I'll be the first to admit that I got really lucky to be able to play for Cal."

Q:What were the qualities of the school and/or softball program which made you choose Cal over other Pac-10 schools? Did schools outside the Pac-10 and/or outside your area try to coax you into choosing them? What made you stick to Cal?

A: "Growing up as a kid, my dream was to always play for a PAC10 school. Specifically, I wanted to play for Stanford. I actually went on a trip to Stanford, and then found out afterwards that the school wasn't going to admit me. When I was looking at colleges, I wanted to go to a school that had great academics, as well as a top 25 caliber softball team. That's what was so attractive about Cal - they are the #1 public institution in America, and their softball was a perennial top 25 program.

There were definitely schools other than Cal that wanted me, that offered me 100% full rides and all the bells and whistles, but their softball programs were up and coming. I wanted to come into an established program where I would have to earn a spot as a starter, rather than just be handed the ball. Plus, softball doesn't get any better than the PAC10, and nothing was going to get in my way of playing in that conference."

Q:You played in the Division I Women's College World Series (WCWS) which, to many, is the most well recognized level in the game. That must have been a huge thrill. Was it a whirlwind experience? Did everything happen very fast and you found yourself heading home wondering what hit you? Or were you able to enjoy and covet the experience?

A: "The WCWS was an amazing experience each time I was there. The first two times I made it to the series, Cal made it to the championship game, and lost both times to UCLA. It stung like crazy to lose in the championship. The experience was a whirlwind, but not so much that I couldn't sit back and enjoy it. The last time I went, my junior year, we lost our first two games (to UCLA and Arizona), and were out of there really quick. That was a hard trip to enjoy because it went by so fast. Even still, it was amazing. The atmosphere there and the fan support is out of this world."

Q:When I think of the various stages of my life, high school seemed to drag on forever but college was over in a flash. What are your observations of college life? Did it fly by more quickly than you would have liked? Did playing softball at such a high level put demands on you which diminished the overall college experience?

A: "College definitely flew by. When it was done, it felt like it had flown by in the blink of an eye. But while I was there, there were times where it seemed to drag on forever. I would have loved another couple of years playing for Cal, but at the same time, I'm glad that I've been able to play in Europe and play in the NPF for as long as I have.

Playing ball didn't dimish the college experience in the least - if anything, it made my experience! Without my team, I wouldn't have had a family away from home, I would have missed out on awesome camaraderie, wouldn't have learned tons of life lessons, and I wouldn't be the person I am today. No I didn't have a typical social life, but I loved the life that I lived in college. I had great friends that I had to see every day, and we created bonds that non-athletes can't create."

Q:Many younger girls believe they would like to play college ball because they have difficulty ever seeing themselves putting their gloves and bats away in the closet, permanently. Yet they have no idea of the commitment level required to play college ball. They have no idea about the time constraints under which a D-1 college athlete lives. They've never had to get up at 6 AM to go run or lift weights. They don't know what exam studying pressure is when you have a game to play, a roadtrip to conference championships, or some other softball activity which limits your ability to prepare for a subject in which perhaps you are having a little trouble. They don't know what it feels like to know all your friends are heading off to some frat/sorority party or college mixer while you make sure you get to bed early so you can pitch or play well in an important game tomorrow.

What advice can you give to girls who aspire to play college ball?

A: "It's basically the same as in high school. Softball was always a commitment in high school, and it's the same in college. When you're used to balancing school and athletics in high school, I don't think it's a bigger adjustment for athletes to go to college than it is for a regular student. Both parties need to learn how to be accountable, learn how to study, and most importantly learn how to manage their time. If you can keep up grades and play ball, and still have a little bit of extra time for a social life in high school, you can do it in college. Just remember that level of commitment and accountability go up, and more is expected out of you. If you do that, you'll succeed and love every minute of your college experience, and you'll never look back with regrets."

Thor, The Viking Bandit - index page

Part 1 - rec play through high school.
Part 2 - experiences as a college player
Part 3 - experiences as a professional pitcher
Part 4 - future including high school coach, private pitching instructor, and some longer-term possibilities

Thor, The Viking Bandit - part 1

2009-06-21T10:07:00.000-07:00

This is part one of our multi-part interview with Chicago Bandits pitcher extraordinaire, Kristina Thorson. In this part, we focus on Kristina's experience as a youth player, rec and club, through the formative high school years. In the parts which follow, we will examine her experiences as a college and NPF professional player as well as private pitching coach and future high school coach, and then conclude with thoughts about career opportunities and general thoughts about the game.

Q: While reading your bio on your web site (http://www.kthorson.com/), I got the impression that fastpitch softball was not overly important to you as a youth. You played Little League ball in the early days, progressed to summer ball and took pitching lessons during your middle school years. Yet it was not until high school that you got serious because, as you say, your pitching coach told you that you "stunk like skunk poop."

Were you a dominant player in Little League or summer ball? Did you experience any rivalries with friends or girls you met while playing either Little League or summer ball? What drove you to become a better player in those early years?

A: "In Little League I was considered a top player/pitcher from the time I started until I quite LL after 8th grade. But on my summer ball teams, I was never really considered a dominant player, let alone pitcher, until I was much older. I think probably during my sophomore year in high school my summer teams started realizing that I was one of their better outfielders, but I only got a few innings to pitch here and there. Really it wasn't until my senior year in summer ball that I was considered a top pitcher for my team. I'd always been on teams where the pitchers were coaches' daughters. But it just fed my fire that much more to go out and prove to everyone that I could pitch with the best of them. The best thing that ever happened to me was that I was told I'd never be good enough to accomplish my dream of pitching and dominating in the PAC10. "

When I think of my experiences as a youth, high school and college athlete, there are certain periods which come back to me now, decades later, as having been my best experiences. Those periods are not necessarily my last years as a competitor. Those periods are not necessarily the years in which I had the most success or was most dominant. Is there any period which sticks out to you as having been your best or most fun years in softball? What made them special?

A: "I think, so far, the most memorable years I've had in softball were my junior season with my high school team, senior (HS) season with my summer team, senior year at Cal, and last year with the Bandits. It's funny, because those were hands down the best team years we've had, judging by win loss standards, but I think that's due to the same reason those are my most memorable seasons. Each team I mentioned had that chemistry that coaches always talk about achieving, and that players/teams dream about achieving, especially my summer team the WA Ladyhawks - that was a really special team. We were small, but had great talent and love for the game, but you couldn't separate us from each other. We never got in tiffs, no one ever talked bad about someone else, and we all loved being around everyone on the team. We always played for each other, and we always played for the love of the game. That's what made those years so memorable and so successful."

Are there any words of advice you might give to an 11 year old girl or her parents about how to make the most out of her softball experience?

A: "First off, the most important thing is that their daughter is having fun. I see a lot of girls playing because their parents want them to, and they end up resenting the game which is a really sad sight to see. Having fun is the most important aspect of the game, regardless of what level they're playing at.

Secondly, when someone tells you that you can't achieve something, or that you'll never be good enough, don't use that as an excuse to settle. Use that as a reason to work harder, to show everyone that you can be good enough, that you can succeed. It's so easy to take the easy path and just give up - but it's SO much more rewarding to work harder than everyone else and to reap the benefits in the end. Even if you don't reach your goals, you know you outworked everyone, and you know you gave it your best shot. You'll never have any regrets that way."

If you were going to coach a youth team and you had limited time to prepare them before their very first tournament or game, what are some of the skills you would focus on?

A: "Throwing and catching. Hitting wins games, but defense wins championships. Close games always come down to who has a better defense, who doesn't make the error that cost the game. Proper throwing and catching techniques make up most of the game. With hitting, it's great to have a nice swing with a lot of power, but even if you don't have that swing, you can find a way to get on base. With throwing and catching, if you don't have the right mechanics, it makes it really difficult to get outs, which is what you need to win."

You played several sports (volleyball and soccer) in addition to softball during your early years of high school. You gave up those sports when your pitching coach criticized you. If you had it to do over again, would you have focused on softball earlier? Why or why not?

A: "I think if I could do it over again, I would have tried to keep playing at least one other sport. But when I look back, I don't regret my decision. I enjoyed volleyball and soccer, but I wasn't passionate. Not only that, I was in band, marching band, national honor society, and I was helping coach the middle school softball team as well as doing weekly pitching clinics. So I had a lot going on, and school was always really important to me, so I couldn't let my grades slip. I would have loved to been able to keep playing another sport, but I wasn't willing to give anything else up, and something had to give. And besides, I have many years left to get back into volleyball and soccer, and all the other sports I want to try."

Did you pitch or play varsity softball your freshman year of high school? What about the other sports, did you play varsity, freshman, JV level?

A: "I didn't really play varsity my freshman year. I was a swinger, and I got the minimum amount of innings to letter at varsity, but most of my freshman year I pitched JV. I was SO mad when I didn't make varsity, but looking back, I'm glad I didn't because I got a lot more pitching time in JV than I would have at varsity, which made me better in the long run. The only other sport I played for Shorecrest was volleyball my freshman year, which I played on the frosh team."

It is difficult for most to imagine a pitcher going from "skunk poop" to state Gatorade player of the year. When you look back, do you think you really stunk or do you think your coach saw talent and he wanted you to be the best you could be in softball? What I mean is, how bad do you really think you were and how does one progress from that low point all the way up to the best high school player in your state? How hard did you work? How many hours per day, week, etc.? What did you do to improve?

A: "I fully believe my coach when he said I stunk worse than skunk poop. It's hard for me to remember how bad I came back, but I know that I was REALLY disappointed in myself. I'm sure Jim, my coach, also said what he said to try and light a fire under me. From that point, and not making varsity 2 months later, I never wanted to be that person again. I finally just had enough of people telling me that I wasn't going to be good enough, that I couldn't make the cut and my focus just shifted. From then on, I threw a minimum of 4 days/week, usually 5-6 days, and most workouts were an hour and a half long. It wasn't enough for me to just workout. I spent the first half hour of my workouts on basic mechanics, but after that the majority of my workouts focused on spins and getting my pitches to move. I was a perfectionist, and expected perfect spin on all my pitches. I knew I would never throw very hard, so that was never a focus. I wanted to have three different speeds between all my pitches, but more than that, I wanted/needed all my pitches to spin and move. With pitching practices and team practices, I probably averaged about about 10 hours of practice/week. But more than the time I put in, which was really important, I credit my growth as a pitcher more to my focus on details, spins, and the small things that got me the success I ended up with. I lived and breathed by the quote, 'Champions do uncommon things, things that are boring and tedious to others.'"

Thor, The Viking Bandit - index page

Part 1 - rec play through high school.
Part 2 - experiences as a college player
Part 3 - experiences as a professional pitcher
Part 4 - future including high school coach, private pitching instructor, and some longer-term possibilities

Psychological Obstruction!

2009-06-17T05:27:00.000-07:00

A reader writes in to ask:

"I was wondering if you might share your thoughts/understanding on interference and obstruction. I am a coach and league official for 8U softball. I am trying to figure out how to deal with what is a minor problem, girls standing in the base path when not involved in a play.

For example, a runner is on second, another one on first, and SS is directly between the bases. The ball is hit to 2B who tries to make a play at third to force out the runner from second. SS never moves and runner has to go around her. Does that constitute obstruction?

Another example happens when runner is on second, SS in the baseline again, and ball is hit to 2B who makes a play at first. Even though there is no play at third, the runner has to run around SS get to the base. Is that obstruction?"

There are any number of scenarios we could draw up where a fielder stands in the basepaths and, thereby, theoretically forces the baserunner to go around her. The particular circumstances don't really matter. There are only three items that matter: whether the fielder does, in fact, obstruct the runner; whether the umpire calls it; and what we want to teach 8s, 10s, etc.

First of all, there is no such thing as an obstruction where the fielder's position causes a runner not to run because she wants to avoid confrontation. There is no such thing as psychological obstruction! Obstruction, the act (or inaction) by a defensive player which hinders, impedes, or prevents the opffensively player from doing hitting the pitvched ball or advancing between bases, must actually occur. This is probably a more important differentiation at 8U where a girl at second might not even go towards third because the SS is in the way. But if she goes, is forced to go around the SS and is put out before reaching third, at least theoretically, the umpire should call obstruction and award her the base.

The scenarios which the reader presented do constitute obstruction. Anytime a defensive player impedes an offensive one without making a tag on her (having posession of the ball), that would constitute obstruction. -; But just because something constitutes obstruction does not mean it will result in a call and even when it is called, there can be no need of enforcing it.

In order for an obstruction to be called, the baserunner must, in the opinion of the umpire, have been able to make it to the next base but for the obstruction. The umpire sees the obstruction; judges that if the runner were not obstructed, she would have been safe at the next base; calls delayed dead ball by holding out his fist; and, if the runner is put out before reaching that base, awards it to her, negates the putout.

If the runner is not put out, if she gets to the base where the umpire thought she would and is safe there, the call is not enforced since there is no need. In fact, the umpire will most likely not say another word about it. Say he/she puts out his hand in a fist and says "obstruction" but the girl gets to the base safely. He/she will put there hand down and never explain to anyone what it was he called.

More importantly, an obstruction call depends on the umpire seeing the obstruction to begin with. I don't think I have to tell you that obstructions sometimes occur without umpires witnessing them and go uncalled. Just like anythihng else in life, if it ain't called, it ain't an infraction.

Further, umpires cannot see what doesn't happen. So, if a runner is at second when a grounder is hit to 2B and she doesn't go because the SS is in the way, most likely no call will result. I think it is important to make young girls understand that a fielder standing in their way should never cause them to not run to the next base. That can be a difficult hurdle, particularly in rec ball. But we need to make them understand what obstruction is. They should be taught not to stand in basepaths and, if they are running the bases, to not stop merely because someone is in the way.

Very often at 10U, 12U and, yes, even at 14U we see players unintentionally blocking basepaths. Say a ball is drilled past the outfielders. Many times I have seen a third baseman carelessly watching the outfielders retrieving the ball while she is standing right near the bag. She isn't focused on her position yet because she is not in the play until the ball gets back closer to the infield. Runners trying to round third sometimes are forced to alter their paths. Actually, I've seen that at all age levels. That fairly frequently gets called but often yields no change to the play as the runner easily makes it to third and then home.

Another scenario which can frequently result in obstruction occurs when there is a runner on first, the 2B has positioned herself in the baseline and the runner attempts a steal of second without the 2B noticing. I see that all the time in 12U. In 14U, generally girls are more aware of the base stealer. And this almost never gets called.

I have also seen numerous kids intentionally obstruct baserunners. There is a local 14 year old travel first baseman who must have been schooled in how to be an aggressive defensive player. She frequently gets in the way of base runners when she does not have possession of the ball. She commits other deliberate aggressive acts too but we haven't got time for those today. In any event, girls mostly shy away from her blocking of the base and umpires seldom call her for obstruction. This has encouraged her to increase her tendency to obstruct.

I have seen other infielders, particularly 2Bs who appear to intentionally get in the way of baserunners. They too give off the appearance of having been schooled to play aggressively. And umpires also seldom call them for their deliberate actions either because they don't see them or because they don't feel the fielder is actually impeding the runner.

It is important to note that deliberate/intentional is not any part of the definition of obstruction. So it doesn't matter if a fielder is performing a deliberate act or not. But I mention deliberate obstruction, whether called or not because what this little piece is really about is what we teach players. And while, for example, whomever taught the first baseman to block the bag without the ball is probably pretty satisfied with the results, my sense is one day they may be forced to rethink that.

Almost every 8 will play 10U ball at some level. Almost every 10 will play 12U ball at some level. Almost every 12U travel player will play 14U and a good portion of those will play ball in high school, 16U travel, and perhaps beyond that. One of my main themes, in case you haven't noticed, is we should always give kids the tools they'll need at the next level. We don't really want to teach 10s only how to thrive in 10U ball. And teaching kids to do things like intentionally obstruct or failing to teach kids to get out of the way when they should can have some drastic consequences down the road.

Teach kids not to play 2B in the baseline. They should be behind it or in front of it. There's no real reason to be in it. We're talking about a couple feet either side of the direct line. The same is true for SS. For players who cover bags including all the infielders but probably outfielders as well, teach them where to stand, not where not to stand, with respect to the bag so as to not ever be called for obstruction. And let's drop this notion of teaching "hard nosed defensive play" to youngsters by having them deliberately block bags. That stuff might yield an extra out or a few outs at 10U or 12U but as soon as girls start playing this game for real, the kid is going to lose some teeth, break a leg, get severly spiked or receive a concussion.

For example, the first baseman I discussed is certainly going to get away with blocking the bag for a few years. She's a big strong kid. But soon she is going to find herself playing varsity high school ball in a league which has many Gold players. Those girls are going to get to know her tendency. They're going to talk about it and decide they need to teach her a lesson. Hard nosed defense is going to meet "sophisticated" offense from girls who can play this game at a high level and have seen these kinds of bush plays before. And whomever taught her this is going to realize it was a bad idea.

Similarly girls who unintentionally or intentionally get in the way of baserunners are going to meet kids who know how to deal with that. Players talk about this kind of thing all the time. And many recognize an opportunity to draw an obstruction call when they see it. The problem is, when girls who can run a 2.9 or 2.7 decide they want to hit that girl because she's in the way, real harm can be done.

As an additional thought, interference, the act of impeding or confusing a defensive player attempting to make a play should also be taught and understood. The most common scenario in which this is called happens when a middle infielder is making an initial play on a batted ball and the baserunner runs into her. I watched a game recently in which this happened and none of the players seemed to understand what was being called. I looked at the coaches for the offensive team and they too appeared to not understand the call. The coaches actually gave off the impression of being happy when their runner ran into the SS. I have to think they believed this to be obstruction. It isn't. It is interference, the runner is out and the batter-baserunner is awarded first base.

Too many of us think the baserunner is required to stay in the basepath when running the bases. The only time this is actually an issue is when a defensive player is trying to make a tag. That is, if a player is attempting to tag you and you leave the basepath to avoid the tag, you are out. But leaving the basepaths when nobody is trying to tag you is never an out. So if you are on second and a grounder is hit to the SS, you should go behind her so as to avoid interference. If she is deep and you cannot possibly run behind her, go in front but do not run over the grounder or otherwise do anything that can cause an umpire to think you caused her to be confused or otherwise impeded her making a play. That sounds complicated but it is not. If you do anything that causes her to have trouble making a play, you can be called out for interference.

I don't know if I have ever watched 8s play where the fielders don't get in the way of runners. I don't recall an obstruction ever being called at such games. Less frequently the same sort of thing happens in 10U and, again, it is seldom called. But I have seen as many as ten obstruction calls in a single 12U game. I have seen fewer in 14U because the girls are more experienced but I think I have seen more injuries due to an obstruction there as well. In 18U and high school ball, I see lots more injuries from offensive and defensive players colliding. And girls who deliberately or unintentionally get in the way are often not only the victim, but also get the worse end of the bargain. So teach your 8s and 10s to avoid obstructing runners. Don't teach them where not to stand. Teach them where to stand. And don't forget to teach your baserunners not to shy away from fielders in their way. Yes, we all should avoid contact of all kinds whenever possible. But bumping into the 2B when stealing is sometimes the only way you'll get the call. In teaching this, d0on't forget to go over interference. A runner who does not shy away from a fielder standing in the basepaths should be equally cognizant of the fact that if she is making a play on a batted ball, it is you who must stay out of the way.

Put The Rules Online, Now!!

2009-06-15T13:14:00.000-07:00

There are a couple rule changes which have come to my attention. Here they are with the reasons I was interested in them.

I) Pitching Arm Rotations

A reader wrote in to ask about a pitching rule change which effected a girl she saw pitching in a Pony qualifier. The rule at issue involves limiting a pitcher to, as she said, "a maximum of one and a half clockwise revolutions." She noted that the motion was picked up by the umps who explained it to the pitcher and coach but allowed her to finish the inning.

I had not read or otherwise heard about this change so I went online to look. I was able to find reference to the new one and a half circle rule with respect to the National Federation of High Schools (NFHS) but, while Pony publishes its rule changes online, I do not have a current Pony rulebook so I cannot verify what the rule is. My understanding is the Pony rule prohibits "two revolutions."

I have to tell you that I find it annoying that all the large sanctioning bodies do not simply publish their rulebooks online. I've said it before and I know I will say it again but this is absurd. The year is 2009. Almost anything important can be found online. But Pony and most other organizations still do not publish their rules on their web sites.

Someone once suggested that perhaps sales of rulebooks are a money raiser for some organizations. OK. Pony charges $1.50 for a copy of its rules. Just how much could they possibly raise after costs of printing, packaging, etc.? They could hold a one day bake sale at one of their national tournaments and make the same amount. Some organizations charge more but I cannot imagine anyone is getting rich off the rulebook business.

Maybe it would cost too much to convert the book to an online version and then to keep it on a server. Anyone who tells you that does not know how modern books are published. They also do not understand how little web server space actually costs. The fact is there is no reason any organization would keep its rulebook offline unless it affirmateively wanted to keep the rulebook out of the hands of others. That's not a very good reason since anyone could have, for example, Pony's rulebook for a buck fifty. There is no good reason why all these organizations, Little League, Babe Ruth, Pony, FAST, USSSA, NSA, ASA don't all have their rulebooks available online. Lest I confuse anyone, of course, some groups, like NSA, actually do put their rulebook online.

In any event, I was not able to locate any Pony rule change for 2009 which referred to the NFHS change language. I don't recall such a change for 2008. So I have to assume the older rules are still valid. My 2007 Pony rulebook contains a prohibition against "two revolutions."

The high school rule change is here. It reads in relevant part:

"Change the pitching windup requirement to a maximum of one and a half clockwise
revolutions.

ART. 4 The pitcher may use any windup desired provided:

d. the pitcher does not make more than one and a half clockwise revolutions of the arm in the windmill pitch.

...

The ball does not have to be released the first time past the hip.

...

Rationale: More and more pitchers are pushing the rule to the limit in an attempt to gain an advantage by deceiving the batter. The change will make an illegal pitch easier to identify and enforcement more consistent."

Making enforcement consistent is a nice objective. Yet it almost never happens. We have seen some blatant sorts of illegalities committed by pitchers in high school for several years. Possibly the most common one occurs when the pitcher takes a little teeny-tiny step forward with her pivot foot, off the rubber, just like you-know-who does in international play. Another common prohibited pitching motion involves the archetypical crow-hop where a leap is followed by obtaining a new point of impetus. Leaps are less frequently seen but do happen. The leap, where the pivot foot becomes airborn before ball release rather than dragging away from the rubber is not my favorite call. The reason I don't like it is it is often precipitated by poor pitching area conditions. It's not the pitcher's fault.

This brings me to a story I want to tell but wasn't sure where or how to bring it up. This year a coach was awarded conference coach of the year by a local newspaper. That paper, of course, published an article explaining its choice. The sited a game in the earlier rounds of the conference tournament. I have a problem with that because I saw the game.

Due to rainy weather, the game had to be played at night. The host team, the higher seed, had it moved to a local recreational complex. The field on which it was played was a LL baseball field, complete with grass infield and a smallish mound. The pitching rubber was up on a hill and the conditions around it were poor. To me the game should not have been played on a baseball field. To me, the pitching circle conditions were illegal and unacceptable. yet I suspect that the coach of the year picked the field not merely because it had lights, if you know what I mean.

During the course of the game, the coach of the year twisted up the umps and complained about illegal pitches. The opposing pitcher was obviously struggling with the subpar pitching area. Finally the umps called an illegal pitch on her. That was with the first runner to reach third base. That as all the offensive "production" the coach of the year's team needed. The winning run scored on an illegal pitch called with a runner on third, such pitch being caused by the winning coach's choice of illegal pitching area on a baseball diamond, a field unsuitable for softball play, not to mention his badgering of the umps for the pitcher's difficulty acclimating to the illegal pitching area. ABSURD!

To go a little further, it is interesting to me that the person who wrote to me also included photographs of the motion which was called illegal. After reviewing the rule change as well as the motivation behind it, it is clear to me that this girl's motion offended neither the spirit nor the letter of the rule. The umps were quite wrong. Further, they were enforcing an NFHS rule in a Pony game. I understand that this can happen but it is a bit ridiculous.

But that's enough of that.

II) Pitcher's glove

My daughter got a little annoyed because her coach took a permanet marker and colored in the insignia on her glove. The coach told me he had done this because the ump had complained to him and I pretty much ignored it. The problem was the insignia, a very small item, was "optical" yellow in color.

I understand that umps can sometimes make up rules and require them to be adhered to. I've seen this done many times before. I figured that's what happened and who cares anyway. I'm not big on things like this. My daughter would just have to learn to live with it.

I was a little annoyed since this glove was purchased fairly recently and I had no idea why the ump had complained. But in researching other potentially bigger changes, I discovered something on Pony's site. For 2009, they made one rule change which would necessitate the umpire's action. That change reads:

"Page 24 Gloves/Mitts

Rule 3 Add: Optic yellow to the circle colors not allowed on gloves"

Another change I noted was:

"Rule 3 Added: A pitcher shall not wear any item on the pitching hand,

Sec 11 wrist, arm or thigh, which may be distracting to the batter."

I get both of these but had heard nothing of them just as I had not heard of the NFHS pitching revolutions change. I am most likely to blame for not keeping abreast. I'm usually pretty good about these sorts of things. But it does strike me that these organizations are not doing a great job of getting the word out to the softball public.

One of the leading principles of our system of government in this coountry is a concept which has been with us since the beginning. It says ignorance of the law is no excuse. That's rich! In this day and age, almost everyone is ignorant of some laws.

Recently I heard someone talking about a change to the booster seat requirement in my state. I went hunting for it but found nothing. I did find one interesting item however. A police department had this to say about the state's existing law:

Boosters are required for "passengers who are younger than 8 and weigh less than 80 pounds." The only problem is, that's not how the law reads!

The law says "passengers who are younger than 8 or weigh less than 80 pounds." (emphasis my own) There's quite a difference between the two. In one case, the actual laws tells you that if your child is very small for his or her age, say 75 pounds at age 16, she has to be seated in a booster seat! Try to enforce that one with your 16U slap hitting speedster!! But no worries mate, the cops won't enforce it either since they apparently have it wrong!!!

Ignorance of the law is no excuse!

We are coming perilously close to anarchy in this society. It matters not how many laws there are, nor how specific those laws are, when the body of knowledge is too large for anyone to possibly retain, let alone understand, let alone keep up with changes to. We all need a little help and the news outlets, well the news outlets do a poor job of reporting actual facts. They are far too interested in pushing their own agendas. But enough of reality, let's get back to softball.

Softball rules are not all that difficult to understand, I guess. But you really need to study them to have a full understanding. For instance, a few weeks ago, I pointed out that a batter-baserunner who stops while running to first in order to prevent or delay a tag can be called out if she takes a step backwards to slow or impede the fielder from tagging her. This is very impotant since, the ball is dead and runners must return to the last base occupied before the pitch. If you hit a ball to the 1B while your baserunner races home from third, the last thing you want to see is the batter-baserunner stop and take a step backwards. If that happens, all runners return to their previous base, before the pitch.

That's simple enough. I checked out the rule, digested it, let you know what's going on and went on my merry way. I haven't seen that play since, nor any discussion of it except the next night in the WCWS when it was briefly mentioned. But in my kids' games we had a somewhat similar play develop with a runner who was already at first and a grounder hit to the 2B.

I told the team coaches about the rule but I had not thought the whole thing through. I got it wrong. It only applies to a batter-baserunner and the commentary speficially talks about running towards first. The same is not true of a runner at first heading for second, and for good cause. If the fielder were to throw to first, the baserunner would no longer be forced and could return to first (with liability to be put out along the way). The same is not true of a batter baserunner who, quite obviously, cannot return to home.

This just goes to show you that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. I misinterpreted the rule to include a prohibition of backward steop by any forced runner. That is, of course, not the case. You have to be careful in understanding the rules of the game.

My point is really only that in a world as filled with rules as ours is, it becomes more imperative for organizations such as NFHS, Pony, ASA, Little League, etc. to make a greater effort to let us all know what the rules and rule changes are. We shouldn't find out via casual conversations with umpires or in pregame meetings. It should be patently obvious to anyone who plays the game that "optic" insignia are no longer allowed, that pitchers cannot make two and a half circles, that smallish 17 year old sons do not have to be placed in car seats on the way to be dropped off at the Marine Corps recruiting station.

We nbeed the rules online now. We need to have all rule changes distributed out to the playing public as well as umpires. Umpires should know that they must apply the rules for the type of game they are calling, not cross apply rules from one body to another's game. Cops should double check their written work, particularly interpretations of laws, before they send it out to the public or put something online!

To all you softball sanctioning bodies, put the darn rules, the actual darn rules, online!