Today (or in actual fact tonight) was definitely a good day. Worked with four pitchers. One is almost ready to learn a new pitch. Two started on and pretty much got the hang of screwballs. Another had a curveball come together.

Gosh, I love this job!

No, this post isn’t about winning the coin flip at the beginning of a fastpitch softball game. It’s about helping players to understand the concept of playing the game one pitch at a time.

One of the famous trick questions often used in statistics classes is the question about flipping a coin. You start by asking what the odds are of flipping a “head” or “tail.” Most players, even young ones, know the odds are 50-50.

So then you follow up with this question: If I flip a coin 50 times and it comes up heads all 50 times, what are the odds the coin will come up tails the next time? Often times the player will say 100%. But the fact is the odds are still 50-50. Over a long period of time — say thousands of flips — you’ll probably see heads 50% of the time and tails 50% of the time. But on any given flip the odds are always 50-50. What has happened up until now has no effect on what will happen next.

And that’s the point you’re trying to make to a player — especially a hitter but it works for any position. No matter what happened on the last pitch, or the last at bat, or the last game, it has no effect or influence whatsoever on the upcoming pitch. So there’s no sense worrying about those. Instead, you just have to worry about what’s coming up next.

I see it a lot with hitters who tend to get behind in the count. Tell me if you’ve seen this pattern too. First pitch, the hitter doesn’t swing, doesn’t even plan on swinging, and the ball comes in for a perfect strike. She realizes she should’ve swung at it, so she makes up her mind to swing at the next pitch no matter what. That pitch is high, or in the dirt, and now she’s sitting at 0-2 and feeling bad about swinging at a bad pitch. So now she decides to be careful, she gets all uptight, and with the next pitch she’s taking that short walk back to the bench.

A lot of that comes from worrying about what happened on the previous pitches. It gets in her head and she loses the aggressive focus she needs to be successful.

By showing the coin toss you can make the point each pitch is a separate event, and the only way to approach the at bat is to keep looking forward and stay focused in that direction. It gives a little more context to the concept of “it only takes one to hit it.”

Hitters have enough to worry about without trying to hit more than one pitch at a time. Pitchers have enough to worry about without letting what happened the last time affect this time. And so on. Show your players the coin toss and help them understand that every pitch is an independent event — and an opportunity to be great.

As most people know, coaching fastpitch softball is not my day job. It is something I do on the side.

Instead, I work for technology PR company Tech Image, which is one of the business units of a company called SmithBucklin, which is the world’s largest association management company. It was SmithBucklin  who introduced me to the term “boomerang,” which is the name they use for an employee who leaves the company then comes back.

This off-season I’ve had a couple of boomerangs. One was a short-term loss of a couple of months. A student had changed teams, the rest of the team was using a different pitching coach, they went along with it, the girl started to struggle and now she’s back. The other was actually two sisters whose family situation changed; their father contacted me during the summer and they’ve now started up again.

SmithBucklin always says the company loves boomerangs, and I can see why. While I always hate to lose a student, things happen from time to time. Circumstances change, sometimes the grass looks greener elsewhere, there can be all kinds of reasons. I find, though, that those who come back are often among the most enthusiastic students because they’ve had a taste of what else is out there and have made a conscious decision that being with me is the place they want to be.

That’s not to say I want every student to go away for awhile and come back. Far from it! I definitely appreciate those who stay from beginning to end. But where many instructors might feel funny about a student coming back after going away (probably because they take it personally) I welcome it.

What about you, whether you’re a private coach or a team coach? How do you feel when a player goes away then wants to come back? Do you welcome her back, or do you feel like once you’re gone you’re gone?

This may seem a little odd for a fastpitch softball blog, but I recently finished reading a book that I think is a must-read for every coach. It’s called The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership, by Bill Walsh with Steve Jamison.

Yes, it’s that Bill Walsh, the former San Francisco 49ers coach who was the brain behind the West Coast offense. While the book is ostensibly written as a guide on leadership for business leaders, there is a lot in there for any coach in any sport to learn. After all, coaching is a lot about leadership as well.

Now, you would think that a book like this would focus on his triumphs and how brilliant he is. Yet Walsh comes across as very humble, and is equally at home (maybe moreso) talking about his tribulations and failures.

I found the opening of the book particularly helpful. You see, this past summer was a rough one for me. I had a very good team with very good players, but somehow we just didn’t win as many games as we should have. I kept beating myself up, wondering why, when we’d do so many things right, we didn’t win more. Then I read this book.

It starts with Walsh talking about his first couple of seasons with the 49ers. He’d waited a long time to get a shot at being a head coach in the NFL, and finally got it with San Francisco.

The year before he joined them, he writes, they went 2-14. Then, in his first year as head coach, after instituting many changes and establishing his Standard of Performance, the 49ers went — wait for it — 2-14. The exact same record.

His second season they started off better, but then hit an eight-game losing streak. The 49ers were finally playing the Dolphins in a must-win game, and it came down to the last play. The Niners had three shots at a come from behind victory, but ultimately lost due to penalties on that final play.

Then came the part that really struck me. Walsh said on the plane ride home he broke down in tears and considered handing in his resignation. He just didn’t know whether he had what it took to be an NFL head coach. Fortunately he slept on it and by the time Monday came he’d decided to continue. His teams went on to win the Super Bowl the following year, and two more in 10 years while dominating the NFL.

For me, I figured if someone who had experienced so much success had also had so many difficulties, maybe I hadn’t done such a bad job after all. Maybe all we’d needed was a little more time for what I’d tried to do to take effect — time we didn’t have.

The book is full of anecdotes like that, along with plenty of practical, step-by-step advice on how to turn teams into classy champions. Yet Walsh is more than willing to share the things he did wrong as well as what he did well. He also spends a considerable amount of time on how to treat people — both players and people in the organization — that’s worth reading all on its own.

I know that for me, reading this book really helped me see my own coaching style and philosophy more clearly. I actually found myself thinking “yeah, I do that” at many points, and got many new ideas on how to improve on what I do.

This is a book I highly recommend every coach read. I think you’ll find it fascinating and inspiring. Walsh was always a class act, and in this day and age we can really use a lot more of that.

So what about you? What books have you read that have inspired or affected your coaching that way?

One of the interesting phenomena I have observed in my years of teaching lessons is how important context is in really understanding what you’re learning and putting it to use.

That’s kind of a long-winded way of saying it seems like students seem to “get” what we’re trying to do better after they’ve had a season of playing following an off-season of lessons.

You can try to put context around lessons all you want. I know I certainly do. But once students are in the game trying to execute against an opponent, I found most understand better the reasons why we’re doing what we’re doing, and why we’re focusing on certain aspects of their skills.

Take pitchers, for example. They can look like world-beaters in lessons or practice sessions. But once there’s something on the line, i.e. they’re facing live hitters, they seem to get why we focus so much on repeatable mechanics versus the immediate results.

That can be discouraging for some — they’ve worked hard all off-season, but then in the games they’re not see the payoff right away. But for most, it seems they remember us talking about certain things, they remember themselves not putting the effort into it, and they understand that was a mistake.

Has that been your experience? Has your daughter, your students or your players struggled to put lessons into practice the first year but then come back ready to learn more and at a fast pace?