On the show How I Met Your Mother, at one point the characters of Marshall and Ted know they should do something, but don’t feel like doing it. I can’t quite remember what the thing was, but it had some long-term implications. They decide not to do it, saying “We’ll let future Marshall and future Ted worry about it.” The show then flashes foward six months, where Marshall and Ted are mad that they didn’t do what they should’ve earlier.

The reason I bring this up (other than I am horribly addicted to TV) is we are at the part of the year when it’s easy to blow off practicing. The real season seems a long way off, so what can it hurt to skip a few sessions, or put in half an effort if you do practice? When you do that, essentially you’re saying, “I’ll let future me worry about it.”

Well, try to flash forward about six months, to when future you is in a tight game with the pressure on. What is he/she going to think about the you of today? Will he/she be mad that present you didn’t put in the work when you could’ve? Will he/she wish that present you had gotten off the computer, quit texting, or woken up earlier and gotten a few extra reps in? It’s very possible.

Give future you the help he/she needs. Put in quality time now so you’re ready for the season. Future you will thank you profusely.

Just saw something in my e-mail spam folder that I had to share. I’m not sure if it was spam or legit, but it sure seemed like spam so I deleted it.

The subject line said the person was looking for lesson information. I was surprised it wound up in the spam folder at first, but that’s why I check instead of deleting blindly.

When I opened it up, though, I saw why it was there (I think). The message (which was not addressed to me in the To field, but to a David Dudley) said the person was looking for fastpitch lessons for a 15 year old boy coming in from the Netherlands. It didn’t say what kind — pitching, hitting, fielding, etc. — just generic “lessons.” It then asked for some information, including costs, location and contact info.

I dunno. Maybe it was legit, but it just didn’t feel right. It seems like if you were asking about lessons for someone coming in, you’d say the kid was coming to such-and-such town, is that anywhere close to where the instructor lives. The punctuation and grammar also had that spam-like feel to it, although that could be a function of writing in a language that is not your native tongue.

In any case, assuming it was spam (or phishing) I find it interesting that someone would go to those kinds of lengths to harvest names and e-mail addresses and put something like that together. I guess the usual standbys (cheap drugs, Nigerian princes, lottery winnings, etc.) aren’t working as well anymore.

On the other hand, if you are reading this and are the person who sent it (with a legit request for information) send it again with better info, and put the word fireant in the subject line! No special reason for fireant. I just like the word.

Saw an article today in the Jugs Co. newsletter that I thought was worth sharing. It was written by their regular softball columnist Celeste Knierim, who is also a college coach.

She was talking about the e-mail addresses players often use today — names like blondebombshell, QTpie, things like that. These names don’t make the player sound like a serious person — not exactly the impression someone looking for a college scholarship wants to give.

Check it out — it’s definitely worth a read.

Thanks to Frank Morelli to sparking this one. He was commenting on my Softball Magazine article “10 Things I Hate About Softball,” saying one of the things he hates is ASA’s instance on the on-deck hitter remaining in front of her dugout. That got me to thinking, and going hmmm.

ASA (and other sanctioning bodies) are fanatical about enforcing the no-jewelry rule. I have actually had a player tossed out of a game for forgetting to remove her Lance Armstrong rubber band, and other players have been admonished because they put their hair tie on their wrist so they wouldn’t lose it when they put their helmet on. I have been told it is a safety issue.

So if ASA is so concerned about safety, why will they insist that the on-deck hitter stand 10-15 feet away from and in front of the current hitter? I mean seriously. Which do YOU think will cause more injury — catching a rubber band or a hair tie on whatever they think it will catch on, or being hit point-blank in the stomach or chest with a line drive off a bat with the technology to allow an average hitter to send a ball flying over a 200 foot fence?

I know what I think. There are rumors that the rules will be changed in the next couple of years to require pitchers and corner infielders to wear safety masks. Maybe even the entire infield. Yet often in the parks we play in, the hitter is standing as close or than most of them. I know that Don Porter Field in Oklahoma City is a spacious park with lots of room up the sidelines, but the average softball diamond for youth play is not. It seems silly to insist that on-deck hitters stand on their own side when the easy solution is to allow them to stand behind the hitter, no matter which dugout that puts them in front of.

While I’m on the subject, I’ll bet more kids are injured sliding on cinder-based infields that would ever get hurt by wearing a rubber band or hair tie on their wrist. If you really want to help the players, require sand- or dirt-based skins.

It’s things like that that make me go hmmmm.

I really like Bobby Simpson at Higher Ground Softball. Not only is he knowledgeable and a very nice human being, he often provides some real food for thought in his regular Tuesday e-mail messages. Every coach should sign up for those e-mail missives.

This week’s was no exception. He told a story about how one of the features of Roman architecture was arches. Here is the full text:

I once read a very interesting item about Roman construction. I knew that one of the features of Roman architecture was the use of arches. I also knew that many of the structures that are over 2000 years old are still standing. What I did not know, until I read that item about fifteen years ago, was why their structures may still be standing. It seems that when the arches of a structure were finished, the engineer in charge was required to stand under the arches until the scaffolding was removed. If it was not built well, he would be the very first one to know and it could be a very painful lesson that would be learned. Talk about emphasizing personal responsibility. Ask yourself if you are willing to stand under your constructions. Are you willing to stand under the teams, businesses, families, friendships, or projects that you have built? Let some roads lead from Rome and stand under the arches of lives that you help to construct with excellence.

Isn’t that a great story? As I’ve said before, so many players (and their parents) seem unwilling to take personal responsibility for their own failings or failures. They’ll blame their teammates, their coaches, the umpires, and just about anyone else they can think of before they’ll think to say “Hey, maybe I should’ve worked a little harder in the off-season” or “I really didn’t bring my A game today.”

Great players evaluate themselves every game, always looking at what they could’ve done better this time and what they could do better the next time. They’re hungry for information and willing to work hard. And most of all, when it’s time to remove the scaffolding, they’re eager to stand under the arch and show the world how well they’ve done. It’s only the not so great players who would rather shove someone else under the arch, lest they themselves get hurt.

Over the past couple of days I have been trying to explain the effect of doing one thing right and one thing wrong on the drop ball to some of my students. These students have been seventh grade or above, and all seem intelligent, so I had a reasonable expectation that my explanation would work.

The issue, by the way, was body position v. release point. Like most pitching coaches, I like my students to get up and over the drop ball (forward posture), and start the release as they come toward the back of the leg. I would see that sometimes they’d start the release at the right time but not get over the top. Other times they would get over the top but would release too late. Essentially what you had was a correct movement being negated by an incorrect movement, and the pitch was flat.

So, to try to explain the effect I asked several “What do you get when you add -1 and +1 together?” Quick, before you read the answer, see if you can answer it yourself. Play “Are you smarter than a seventh grader?” Look below for the answer.

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Okay, the correct answer is zero. Believe me I was no math whiz, but integers in general were pretty simple.

I think perhaps one student got the answer correct. The rest did their best to guess, but usually came up with “two,” and a couple came up with some really wild answers.

That made me wonder what is going on in the education system. By the age of 12 I would think they would’ve been exposed to integers by now. The question isn’t a hard one — positive and negative of the same number cancel each other out — and I purposely chose the number one to keep it even simpler. Yet they struggled with it.

I dunno. Maybe it was the shock of having to do a math problem in a pitching lesson. But I was surprised it seemed so difficult. Really makes me wonder what that big chunk of my tax bill is going toward. Guess I’ll just have to leave the math example in the discard pile for teaching pitching too!

Normally I work in the suburbs, which is where I live. I drive to work each along the same route, violating the Mafia Don’s strategy for avoiding a hit, but what can you do? Because it’s the same route I’m usually pretty oblivious to the scenery.

Today, though, I took the train into downtown Chicago, and once I finished reading the Redeye (the local GenX newspaper from the once-proud Chicago Tribune) I sat back and started looking out the window. As the train wound its way through the suburbs into the city, we passed by a rather large soccer complex. Suddenly I found myself whisked down memory lane.

While both of my sons played the game, only one was serious — my son Eric. He played both house league and travel soccer for many years before finally just settling on travel. He did that through high school, but decided not to try to walk on in college due to the course load for his chosen major (athletic training).

Maybe I’m just tired, but as we passed those fields I suddenly had a tinge of sadness realizing how much I missed watching Eric play soccer. He was always passionate about it and gave 100% whenever he was on the field. His passion more than his talent made him a difference-maker on whatever team he was on.

I coached him for a couple of years when he was very young, but for most of his career I was just a parent on the sidelines in his camp chair, and I was very content with that.

Ok, here’s where it applies to fastpitch softball if you haven’t figured it out yet. As I thought back on his playing career, I wasn’t really focused on any particular game, or record, or even any year. I just remember how much he loved playing the game, and how much I loved watching him do it. I often drove him to and from the games, and I remember quietly listening to music in the car on the way there (A Hard Day’s Night was his favorite psych-up song) and animatedly dicussing the game afterwards. We’d talk about how the team did, how he did, what went right, what went wrong, and how he felt about the whole thing overall. It wasn’t me coaching from the driver’s seat either. Just a fun discussion that prolonged the experience of the game.

I didn’t think about it much then. One game just sort of blended into the next. Often we were hard-pressed to get to the games due to the many activities of all my children, and when they were done we were on to something else. There was always another game to concern ourselves with.

Now there aren’t anymore. He plays on a team with his fraternity, but it’s not the same. And I don’t get to see it in any case. This morning I was thinking about what I would give to be able to relive one of those days, when my young son was out working his butt off to try and win a game that ultimately mattered to no one.

Winning and trophies and being 63-4 seems very important at the time. I get caught up in it too, especially when I coach. But when it’s all said and done, it’s doubtful you’re going to remember a whole lot about all that stuff, or savor it the way you think you might.

The important thing is the playing. What you’ll remember for the most part (most likely) is one sort of big, blurry game that spans years, not the individual games. And that’s why I believe it’s better to play on a team that’s not quite as good as to sit the bench on a great team. You don’t want your memories of your child to be primarily sitting on the bench watching her teammates win trophies.

And for those who are in a good situation, savor it. Take a little time before or after the game to look around, take in the sights, the sounds, even the smells of the ballfield. Because before you know it you may find yourself sitting on a train, looking wistfully at ballfields going by and wishing you’d worried about scholarships and trophies a little less, and enjoyed it a little more.

There are any number of reasons players leave one team and move on to another. Sometimes the old team just isn’t a very good fit — the player who’s leaving is experienced and the players who remain are not. Sometimes it’s a personality issue — either the player isn’t a good fit with the others, or the coach and the player just don’t mesh. Sometimes the issue is physical — the player is big and strong but slow, and the team’s philosophy is to be a quick, running team. Sometimes you have a player who is committed to her game, working all through the off-season to get better, on a team where most of the others can barely be bothered to show up for practice. Sometimes the player will simply get a better opportunity to play somewhere else.

Then there’s the issue of winning. This one tends to be more of a problem for parents than for the players, but it’s certainly an issue that causes players to leave one team and move to another.

Let’s face it. Everybody likes to win. No one goes out to the field hoping that they will lose a close one, or worse yet get blown out. I think most coaches do their best to teach their teams the things they need to know to win. But it doesn’t always work out that way. Some teams simply lack the experience or talent to win a lot of games, at least in the short term.

So parents who think their daughter is better than the team get frustrated, and start looking around for a team that wins more often. They want their kids to know the thrill of winning a tournament, or better yet tournament after tournament.

Unfortunately, one of the things they don’t consider is why those teams are winning all those tournaments. Simply put, they have the players to do it. Here’s why this might not be so good for the new player coming in.

Unless that new player is good enough to knock a starter out of the starting lineup, and good enough by a significant margin, she is going to be a sub. After all, the team has been winning tournaments, so the coach would be crazy to all of a sudden make a change without a good reason. He/she may be looking at the new player as an insurance policy — someone he/she can put into the game without “losing too much.”

What does that mean to the new player? It means she may not get to play as much as her parents are used to. She’ll play during the week in practice games, and she’ll get some time during pool play in tournaments. But if this team is as good as they were thinking, she may never do much more than warm up on Sunday unless there’s a blowout, an injury or an illness. Again, the coach is there to win the tournament, and thus will put the best nine players on the field. If the new player isn’t one of them, her parents will have no reason to pull out the video camera when the games really count.

That’s a factor both parents and players need to consider. Which is most important to them — being on a winning team, or getting the opportunity to play regularly?

In my mind winning is nice, but the reason you sign up for a team and pay all that money is to play. While you can certainly learn things watching from the bench, there is no substitute for actually playing the game.

So if you’re thinking how nice it would be to join that team that’s always winning, be careful what you wish for. They were winning without your daughter on the team. They may decide the best way to win is without your daughter on the field.

There is an interesting phenomenon going on generally in the Western world, and one that we’re seeing more of in fastpitch softball as well — a lack of personal accountability. By that I mean players standing up and saying “Hey it was my fault we lost/things didn’t go the way we wanted.” Instead, more and more are willing to blame someone else for their woes.

A good example is pitchers. They throw a ball in the dirt, well away from the plate, it goes to the backstop and the runner on third scores. Then later the pitcher blames the catcher for either not stopping the ball, not recovering it fast enough, or both. Never mind that had that “rise ball” not gone into the dirt in the first place it wouldn’t have been a problem.

The same thing with shortstop and third basemen (and coaches) blaming a first baseman for not scooping a ball out of the dirt on an errant throw. While perhaps the ball should’ve been caught, it wouldn’t have even been an issue had the throw been on-line and in the air in the first place.

Hitters blame umpires for ringing them up on a pitch they thought was too low or too far outside, even though the last four hitters had those same pitches called against them. Pitchers (and their coaches) blame an umpire for squeezing them when the strike zone isn’t as wide or deep as last game. Yes, sometimes pitchers do get squeezed by the Blue, but probably not as often as we think.

The key issue is players taking responsibility for themselves. Back in my playing days, I was the reverse. After every loss I would think about a pitch I didn’t hit well, a ball I didn’t field as well as I should’ve, a runner that was safe stealing a base, etc. that was the cause of our loss. Never mind we lost by eight runs. I was convinced that had I made whatever play was on my mind it could’ve turned the loss into a win.

Nowadays, more often than not, it just doesn’t happen. And so the same mistakes continue, game after game. Why would you work on not doing something (like throwing pitches into the dirt) when clearly the ball getting through was someone else’s fault?

I think one big driving force behind all this is the parents. We are in a child-rearing era where parents will do anything to avoid seeing their kids fail or get their feelings hurt. Parents take up a collect and buy them trophies for being on a team instead of letting them earn it. Parents will make excuses on the sidelines for a lack of performance, from “she doesn’t feel well today” to “she was up late doing homework and is tired now” to “she’s letting the other players drag her down.” Hey, how about the fact that Suzie Snowflake just plain sucks today, hasn’t picked up a ball or a glove or a bat in a week, and maybe isn’t quite as gifted as you’d like to think?

You even see this with equipment. At our tryouts recently, I couldn’t believe how many players coming in for a tryout, where they’re supposed to try to make a good impression, had their parents carrying their equipment bags. (When I saw it I would usually say “Must be nice to have your own caddy.”) If they didn’t bring their glove over to where we were doing fielding, it wasn’t the kid who would run back and get it. Mommy or Daddy would do it, like they forgot to bring it. I’ve actually seen players get mad at their parents because the parents didn’t check the equipment bag to make sure all their stuff was in there. That is just ridicuous.

Your equipment, your mental state, and everything you do is your responsibility, nobody else’s. It’s time today’s generation of players (as a whole) quits making excuses or looking for someone else to blame and starts becoming accountable for themselves and their own actions. Because someday, when you have a real job, no one is going to be interested in your excuses. If you can’t do it, the company will find someone who can.

POSTSCRIPT: I am actually fortunate that almost all of the players I’ve coached over the years understand this, and their parents understand it as well. It makes it a pleasure to work with them. Those few who didn’t really stood out like ants in a sugar bowl.