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.

The title phrase for this post is a song lyric. It comes from the Grateful Dead. My friend and co-coach Rich was the person who introduced me to it (old hippie that he is). I was thinking about that tonight as I pondered the aftermath of tryouts.

By now most teams have completed their tryouts for the 2009 season. Some of them, maybe even many, look a lot like they did in 2008. Others, however, may have had a lot of turnover in players.

That kind of thing can be traumatic for some people. They look at the players who left — whom they know — and wonder how the team will ever recover and be any good. This is more of a parent thing than a player thing, incidentally.

Well, the team will certainly be different. But if you’re one of those left behind, it may actually be a good thing for you. You see, on teams that have been around for a while, the coaches make certain assumptions about their players. Consciously or unconsciously, there is a pecking order that was established long ago, especially at certain key positions. It’s tough to break through that for new players, or players who skills may not have been so good when they joined the team.

But as those preferred players leave it opens up opportunities for others. If there was an established shortstop you (or your daughter) may never have had a reasonable shot to play there. If the shortstop leaves, however, she has to be replaced, which creates an opportunity that wasn’t there before.

The same is true at every position — even pitcher. While it’s always tough on a team to lose a great pitcher, it does create the opportunity for #2 (or #3 or #4) to step up and take on a bigger role.

Remember what Charles R. Swindoll said: Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. Players leaving a team is part of the 10%. What you do about it falls in the 90% category. Instead of moaning over it, take advantage of the opportunity. You don’t get that many opportunities in life to make such a big leap forward.

When I was a kid growing up we were told that adding chocolate to milk would take all the nutrition out of it. Regular milk was fine, but skip the chocolate.

I just read an article in the NCFA’s Recruiting supplement written by Brandon Marcello, the strength and fitness coach for Team USA, that says chocolate milk is a good choice for recoverr after a workout. In fact, he references a 2006 study in the International Journal of Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism that showed it’s a better choice than those fancy carbohydrate drinks that go for $40 or more a bottle. While the price of milk has gone up, it’s a lot less than $40 a bottle. Tastes better too.

What’s on your training table? If you’re getting into your off-season strength and conditioning program (as you should be), make sure there’s some chocolate milk in the fridge.

Alright, as Larry the Cable Guy would say, this is funny I don’t care who you are. The Onion, the satirical online newspaper, ran an article explaining how ISF President Don Porter was teaching the Netherlands team how to play softball right before the game. Ok, I guess you have to be there, so go here.

There are some things in life that seem like little things to some people, but they’re really indicators of bigger issues. For me, one of those is being on time.

I am a fanatic about being on time. When I was young and dating, if the girl lived more than a few miles away I would always allow plenty of extra time. Sometimes I’d wind up driving around for a half hour, but it didn’t matter because gas was 50 cents a gallon. It’s a tendency I’ve continued throughout my life. I always try to allow enough time for a flat tire, a traffic jam, or a lack of parking.

With softball, I definitely subscribe to the notion that if you’re 15 minutes early you’re on time, and if you’re on time you’re late. But it has more to it than just my own personal preferences.

Being late, to me, is a sign of disrepect to your teammates. You may not realize it, but you’re telling them that you and your time are more valuable than them and theirs. Why else would you feel like you can keep everyone else waiting, or skip part of the warm-up or other activity? It also throws off warm-ups, and may leave either you or your teammates unprepared for the practice or game ahead.

Yes, some people have more trouble being on time than others. But it’s still a choice. They could choose to leave earlier, have their stuff together sooner, or otherwise take steps to be on time. If they’re depending on their parents I might cut them a little more slack, but mom and/or dad need to learn the value of being on time for the same reason.

People who work with elite ballplayers say the difference between them and ordinary players is elite players willing do the things ordinary players don’t want to do. A lot of that is the little things — like being on time. It’s a simple thing, and something that really doesn’t take a lot of effort.

Respect your teammates, and respect the game. Learn to be on time.

So I see a lot of people are licking their wounds over the gold medal game by saying the US loss should be helpful in the cause of getting the sport back in the Olympics in 2016. Not sure if it really matters or not, but it could be possible.

What I’m wondering is how long before the conspiracy theorists suggest that Team USA laid down on purpose (or better yet was told to lay down on purpose) for that very reason? After all, there are those who believe FDR knew about Pearl Harbor and let it happen to bring us into the war, and those who believe the CIA and/or FBI knew about the Kennedy assassination but let it happen anyway to get him out of the way. The softball conspiracy is no more far-fetched than that.

I wonder if Oliver Stone is already optioning the movie rights?