Category Archives: General Thoughts
Softball Never Ever list
As at least some of you know, my day job is working for Amendola Communications, a PR agency that specializes in healthcare and health IT products and services. (How many thought softball was my day job?) Through that I have become familiar with many terms used in the healthcare industry. 
One of the most interesting is the concept of “never events,” which are things in healthcare that should never happen because the lead to adverse outcomes (healthcarespeak for death or serious injury/illness). From that comes the concept of the “never ever list.” This is a list of things doctors in particular should never, ever do in order to avoid never events.
Why am I talking about all this? Because the topic came up (in a way) at a catching clinic I was conducting today. I saw a catcher do something and told her she should never, ever do that.
That got me to thinking. Maybe it would be a good idea to create a “never ever” list for softball. So with that in mind I’d like to ask the larger softball community – those who read this blog, members of Discuss Fastpitch and anyone else who would like to participate – to help me put together a great list. It would be something coaches could copy, print out and hand to their players to ensure they’re playing to the best of their abilities.
If you’d like to play, please leave a comment, either below on Life in the Fastpitch Lane or on DFP. Just a few ground rules.
I’m not looking for things like “don’t take lessons (or listen to) so-and-so,” or stay at such-and-such a hotel or play at a particular tournament. That’s what apps like Yelp! are for.
Instead, I’m looking for things where a decision is involved, especially during a game but also around it. I am thinking about making this an upcoming Softball Magazine column too, so if you contribute and would like to be credited under your real or screen name, please include that with your contribution.
Ok, to help get the ball rolling here are some of the things I think should be on the “never ever” list. The first one, incidentally, is the one that kicked off this whole idea.
- Fielders, never ever pick up a ball on the ground with your glove.
- Fielders, never ever block the base without the ball. That is obstruction and it’s being called more and more. Get the ball and then get into the baseline.
- Fielders, never ever throw to a base when it’s obvious there is no play. Only bad things can happen. Instead, look for another play or eat the ball.
- Hitters, never ever swing at a pitch you’ve already decided to take (unless you already have two strikes).
- Hitters, never ever use more bat than you can swing quickly and well.
- Pitchers, never ever do wrist flips. They are a waste of time and make you worse, not better.
- Pitchers, never ever force a follow-through (hello elbow).
- Base runners, never ever slide directly into a tag. Do a slide by, turn and go back, do anything but let yourself get tagged out.
- Base runners, never ever take a lead off third in fair territory. If the ball hits you, you’re out. If you’re in foul territory it will still hurt, but you (or your replacement) will be able to return to third.
What would you add? Players, you are welcome to add to it too. Don’t let the coaches have all the fun!
Why it’s easier to destroy softball skills than build them
Sooner or later in your fastpitch softball coaching career you’re likely to run into this phenomenon: You spend months working with a player, helping her build her skills little by little, working through the kinks until it seems like the skills are locked in come easily to the player.
Then you hand her off to some other coach and in no time she’s struggling. All that hard work seemingly undone in just a few sessions. You wonder how could that possibly happen?
Actually, it’s easy to understand if you take it out of the coaching context and think about building something (a chair, a shed, a house, some crazy contraption to carry all the team equipment at tournaments) in the physical world.
Let’s take a chair. Not one of those slap-it-together Ikea chairs but one you build from raw wood. You carefully cut and/or carve the wood. You sand it, stain it, polish it. You put it together piece by piece, taking care that all the legs are level and every joint fits together tightly. It takes weeks, or even months, to get it all just so.
Then some knucklehead comes along, picks it up and smashes it against the wall because his favorite pro sports team choked in a big game and got eliminated from the playoffs. All that hard work destroyed in seconds.
The same thing happens to players. Complex skills such as pitching and hitting have a lot of moving parts, and they all need to work together in the proper sequence. Throw off just one part of – say insisting a hitter swing down on the ball and then standing there in an intimidating way until she does it – and the whole skill unravels. The player gets confused, loses confidence, and then she doesn’t perform at nearly the level she’s capable of.
Of course, once she’s not performing she gets benched so everyone loses. Especially the team that could’ve used the skills she walked in the door with.
This is something to keep in mind before messing with a player. Someone who has worked hard to get where she is right now is probably best off being left alone, especially if she is performing when it counts. It takes a long time to build those skills. But it just takes a few misguided ideas and a short amount of time to destroy them.
Private softball instructors level the playing field
As someone who has a broad interest in the state of youth sports in general as well as fastpitch softball specifically, I’m always interested to read articles on the topic. There’s no doubt that the U.S. (along with more and more other countries) has become sports-crazy, to the point where it is having a negative effect on young players. 
There is one aspect that always strikes me as missing the mark, however, which is their description of instructors. Maybe it’s because I’m a private softball instructor myself, but I don’t think it’s just me taking it personally.
When they talk about how crazy parents have gotten, sooner or later the articles will refer to how on top of everything else parents “then drag their kids to an instructor to spend even more time on their sport, usually in the hopes of acquiring that D1 scholarship.” Or something to that effect. It’s not an actual quote, just a sort of paraphrase of what I’ve seen.
That may be true in some cases. But for the most part I see the role as being somewhat different.
In the good old days these pundits like to talk about, they say kids just showed up at the field and learned to play there. They didn’t need all these adults around.
Well, the reality is that was wonderful for the kids with great athletic ability. You know the ones I’m talking about – you give them a ball, or a stick or some other piece of athletic equipment and they’ll instinctively know what to do with it. But maybe not so much for the kids for whom it didn’t come naturally, or who hadn’t grown into their bodies yet, or who were a little slower in developing their motor skills.
Basically what happened was they got left behind quickly and never had the opportunities to advance in a sport they may have loved but weren’t particularly good at yet. They got weeded out early.
That’s why I say a good instructor can level the playing field. He or she can take a player who may not be the greatest athlete and teach him or her to be competitive and find success on the field, court, rink or whatever. Success being defined by the player and his or her family.
I’ve worked with a lot of kids who had no ambition of playing in college – not just at the D1 level but at any level. Some just wanted to be successful in high school, or on their travel team, or in their rec league. They wanted to get off the bench and become important to their teams.
Is there something wrong with that? I don’t think so, and if I can help them achieve that goal where they might not have otherwise it’s terrific.
Not everyone was blessed with great DNA or grew up in a family that played sports all the time. A good instructor can help make up for those “disadvantages” and level the playing field, giving them opportunities they may not have had otherwise and helping them to achieve all they can achieve.
Of course, even the best athletes can use a little help along the way to shortcut their learning curve, and they’re fun to work with too. My point is that most of the parents who take their kids somewhere for instruction aren’t the ones you see in TV documentaries and NY Times ads, relentlessly trying to drive their kids to sports success they themselves never achieved. They’re just trying to help their kids feel good about themselves and build some great sports memories.
St. Bonaventure softball player donates bone marrow
This seems to be a week for feelgood stories about fastpitch softball players. Here’s another, passed along to me by my friend (and former player) Hillary Klutts.
Katie Sinclair has been a three-year starter for St. Bonaventure University in New York. She was looking forward to her senior season but then fate intervened. 
As a community service project her entire team received a cheek swab and had the results entered into a national database for bone marrow donors. Darned if she didn’t match up with someone badly in need of a donation.
Bone marrow donations are used for patients battling blood cancers. It’s an arduous process with a long recovery time, so she had to make a decision. She could either donate now, help someone she’s never met out, and potentially have a less-than-stellar senior season. Or she could wait until after the season to ensure she was at full strength for the season, but at the same time deny someone who needs it the life-saving bone marrow.
Well, as you might expect by the fact there’s an article about it, Katie went for the donation. Pretty cool when you think about it.
We talk a lot about sports teaching life lessons, such as putting others before yourself. Clearly, Katie Sinclair is a great example of that mindset. While I’m sure there are some out there who can’t believe she’d do that to her team it’s a class act and shows she has her priorities straight. Hopefully the whole St. Bonaventure community is proud of her. Certainly the softball community should be.
Heartwarming story about Missouri player
Saw this story in an NFCA mailer today and I just had to share it. It’s about Missouri’s Raime Cohen, a pinch runner on the softball team and her journey to get there.
The quick version is she was living in an orphanage in Bulgaria when her American parents adopted her. She had a dream of playing college softball, and after heading to Mizzou took a chance by contacting the coach to ask for a tryout.
What I really like about the story, though, is the perspective she brings. Raime is clearly grateful for all the opportunities in her life, and her good fortune in being adopted by the Cohens. She realizes how different her life would have been without that event, and keeps that in mind every day.
Growing up here in America we sometimes forget how much privilege and how many opportunities we have. Athletes may complain about having to go to practice, or going to a tournament instead of going to a party their friends are throwing. Raime’s story is a great reminder of just how good we all have it.
Incredible pitching clinic happening March 18-19
What are you doing Friday, March 18 and Saturday, March 19, 2016? Whatever it is, if you’re a pitcher, parent of a pitcher or a pitching coach you’re going to want to change your plans and head to Richmond, Indiana. 
The reason? You’ll have the rare opportunity to learn from one of the best instructors in the game – Rick Pauly of Pauly Girl Fastpitch. He is also a former men’s fastpitch pitcher, former pitching coach at the University of Georgia and of course is the father of Sarah Pauly, a standout college pitcher as well as being the career wins leader in the National Professional Fastpitch league.
Friday night is a PowerPoint presentation on the basics of pitching for parents and coaches. Then Saturday there are two sessions – a fundamentals of pitching in the morning and an advanced clinic on movement pitches in the afternoon. (Each session is separate.)
Bill Hillhouse of House of Pitching will be there as well, along with several other great coaches as seen in the flyer image. Sounds like it will be the fastpitch pitching equivalent of The Summit!
Slots are limited, so you’ll want to act now if you want to take advantage of this rare opportunity to learn from some of the best. For more information, download the flyer below.
Edited to add image, updates.
Some resolutions for 2016
It’s that time of year again. The time when we all get a little reflective and start thinking about how we can become better versions of ourselves in the coming year.
Perhaps we’re thinking it’s time to get serious about losing weight, which is always a popular theme. As a meme going around Facebook right now says, I’ve started on my plan by getting rid of all the bad-for-you food in my house, and it was delicious.
Or it could be to stop smoking or some other unhealthy habit, or to exercise more, get a new job or clean the house once a week instead of letting everything pile up until family is coming over. There are lots of things you can resolve.
That applies to softball as well. To help you get started, here are a few suggestions for resolutions you can make to help you become a better coach or player:
- Resolve to learn something new. Take a skill you’re sure you already have down and seek out new information about it. Or look for things you weren’t aware of before. If you’re a coach, learn new offensive or defensive strategies.You’re either moving forward or falling behind. Get out there and learn.
- Resolve to stay more in the present. The current buzzword for this is “mindfulness.” Google is offering classes on it on its campus, and other schools are teaching it as well. It’s a form of meditation that helps you block out distractions and worries so you can focus on the present, reduce stress and keep control of your feelings. In softball, you can only hit, pitch, throw, catch, etc. one ball at a time. Play the game one pitch at a time and it becomes far easier. This book can help you learn to do it more effectively.
- Resolve to enjoy the game more. Most people get involved in fastpitch softball because they love to compete. But sometimes in the desire to compete we forget that at the end of the day it’s a game, and games are supposed to be fun. (I know I definitely fall into this category.) Remind yourself from time to time to just enjoy the beautiful day, and the opportunity to spend time with so many great people. Smile more, especially in tense situations, and be glad your biggest worry at the moment is whether you’ll get on base instead of whether you’ll be able to find food or clean water. The days, weekends and even the seasons may seem long, but believe me the career is short.
- Resolve to put people first. If you’re a player, try to help those players who may be struggling. We’re not all given the same athletic gifts, or the same opportunities to learn, so it may seem like some players are dragging the team down due to lack of ability. If that’s the case, and they’re willing to get better, help them out instead of complaining. If you’re a coach, remember that kids don’t sign up to play ball so they can get a closer seat. They sign up to play. Be willing to sacrifice a few Ws to ensure all your players have a great experience. Besides, you never know who might develop. Pro sports are filled with undrafted players who outshine the top prospects once someone lets them on the field.
- Resolve to follow the rules – even if you don’t like them. This is part of respecting the game. If you are a pitcher who leaps (or coach one who does), work on stopping it. Don’t block the baseline (obstruction) just because you think the umpire won’t call it. Don’t throw a hard tag on a baserunner with the intent to injure them because you don’t think you’ll get caught. Know the rules and follow them. They’re there to make the game safe and fair for everyone.
- Resolve to respect the umpires. Again, you may not always agree with them, but it is a tough job. There will always be a few bad apples, but 99% of umpires are doing the best they can, and are out there game after game because they love the sport. Here’s another hint: just about every umpire could care less about the outcome of the game, i.e., who wins. So they’re not making calls to screw you over, no matter what you may think.
- Resolve to practice better. Notice I didn’t say “more.” That may be a part of it. But practicing better means being focused and productive for whatever time you dedicate to it. As a player, instead of just knocking balls off a tee to fulfill a time requirement, use that time to improve your swing. If you’re a catcher, use the time you’re spending catching for the team’s pitchers as an opportunity to work on your framing, blocking and other skills too. Be present, know what you’re working on and why. If you’re a coach, work to increase the number of touches each player gets while eliminating downtime or standing around time for each. Small groups doing multiple things often work better than one big group doing the same thing.
- Resolve to say “thank you.” Those may be the two most powerful words in the English language. Players, thank your coaches after a practice session, game or tournament. Coaches, thank your players and parents for their dedication, help, support, etc. Everyone thank the umpires. If a tournament director does a great job, thank him/her and the staff, and let others know what a great tournament they ran.
- Resolve to take better care of your equipment. Clean helmets, bats and catcher’s gear. Throw a little conditioner on gloves/mitts, and keep a ball in them. Avoid throwing your equipment when you get angry. Take care of your equipment and it will take care of you.
Those are some good starting points. What did I miss? What are you resolving to do for 2016? And oh, have a Happy New Year!
An inspirational story – one-armed softball player
We often talk about how difficult the sport of softball is to learn and play. It can take years for players to get the hang of the game, and coaches and parents frequently get frustrated when their players don’t “get it” right away.
And few positions demand more of a player than being a catcher – especially since one of the key ways to measure the effectiveness of a catcher is their ability to throw runners out when they’re trying to steal. It takes quick reactions, a strong arm, and a quick transfer of the ball from the glove to the free hand.
That’s what makes this video so inspirational. It’s about Jaide Bucher, a high school catcher from Denver, who does all of this while only having one hand – her left hand.
The good folks from Gatorade recently made one of her dreams come true when they arranged for her to fly to LA to meet her idol, former MLB pitcher Jim Abbott. Abbott played at the highest level of baseball (even pitching a no-hitter) while also only having one hand.
Give this inspirational video a look. It’ll give you a great idea of what determination and love for the sport can accomplish.
Seeing beyond the sport
Apparently I’m not the only one thinking about big picture issues right now. I came across this blog post through a friend (an actual friend, not a “Friend”) on Facebook. KJ, thanks for posting it.
The post talks about one of the most important things a coach can bring to players – the ability to see beyond that game, that season or even the sport itself to understand the influence he or she can have. Here’s an excerpt:
If all coaches could see into the future, to that very day when a kid puts away the cleats or the hi-tops for the last time and walks away from a game………would they choose to coach individual kids differently than they presently do?
That’s a great thought, and very well stated. Wish I’d said it, in fact.
The post is written from the perspective of a parent/coach watching his daughter play her last soccer game ever. It’s well worth a read – not just by parents, but by coaches. Especially coaches who don’t have kids and may not realize the impact they can have.
Give it a look. I think you’ll find it worthwhile. And I add my thanks to all of you who do get this point, and go out there every day not just trying to win championships but help kids grow into the best versions of themselves they can be.
Make that last season count
I was thinking about this today as I was thinking about my daughters and a couple of other players who used to play with us.
If you are a current player, there are no doubt times when you find the whole training/practicing thing to be a pain. In fact, you may sometimes look at yet another game or tournament and think “Much as I love the game it sure will be nice when it’s all over and my time is my own.”
Take it from those players I was talking about at the beginning. I have yet to run into a former player who doesn’t wish she could get back out on the field just one more time to play a game or tournament that matters.
Yes, you can still play slow pitch, or maybe if you’re lucky you can find a fastpitch league somewhere. But it’s not the same. There just isn’t the level of intensity you find when you’re playing competitive ball on a regular basis, whether that’s travel, rec, high school or college.
You may not miss it right away. But one day you’ll realize just how much fun it was, and how cool, and you’ll wish you could go back and do it all again, just one more time. So…
If you’re currently a player in her last season, keep that in mind as you’re lifting, or going to lessons, or practicing. It does have an expiration date.
Also keep in mind that this final year you will be as good as you’re ever going to be, because once you’re done practicing and playing regularly all those skills you worked so hard to gain will start to deteriorate. Maybe not much at first, but they will go, and things that once came easily will now be more difficult. Or they may not be there at all anymore.
Use that as your special motivation to get past the grind of preparation. Make sure when you leave the game you feel there’s nothing more you could have done to make yourself better. Because if you don’t, once that last out is recorded you’ll have the rest of your life ahead of you. And you won’t want to spend it wishing you’d done a little more, or appreciated it a little more.
Take it from those who have come and gone before you.
