Things that make me go hmmm #1
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.
Glove work for catchers
The standard technique used by most catchers (and taught by most coaches) for presenting a target is for the catcher to set up, stick her glove out, and sit there like a statue until the pitcher delivers the ball. This mindset is reinforced by coaches and parents yelling “Give her a bigger target” to the catcher when the pitcher struggles with control. (The problem, incidentally, is rarely with the catcher’s target. Usually it’s the fact that the pitcher couldn’t hit an archery target with the way she’s throwing, but that’s a subject for another day.)
Think about what that set-up means from the umpire’s point of view. The catcher sets up low and in. The pitch goes low and out. The catcher moves her glove across the plate to get the ball, and it looks like a miss. No matter how hard she tries to frame it, there’s a good chance that the pitch will be called a ball.
Now consider this, a technique I saw from Angel Santiago of UNLV at the National Sports Clinics a couple of years ago. Instead of holding a formal, tight target, show the target to the pitcher. Then, as she goes into her windup, relax the arm and the glove. As the pitch comes in, you can move to it easily and frame it toward center.
This technique does two things for you. Number one it smooths out the movement, getting rid of the herky-jerky lunge at the ball. Number two, it trains the umpire that glove movement is normal, not something that happens when a pitch goes wrong.
It can be hard to break old mindsets, but try it. You’ll find it’s a much better way of gaining more strikes for your pitchers.
Bringing pitches back down
Had an interesting one this week. I was working with a pitcher who was just coming back to lessons after a few months layoff. She was throwing hard and looking generally athletic in her movement. But every pitch was high. I don’t mean at the letters. I mean like seven to eight feet high.
We tried a few things but none seemed to work. She was not getting her elbow into the slot as she normally does, and didn’t look like she was going to find it anytime soon. Then I remembered a little something in my bag.
I have a long piece of elastic tape that I usually use for the drop ball. I’ll hook it over two tees and extend it out in front of the plate. The idea is to get the ball to travel over the tape, then drop behind or on the plate. It’s a drill I saw on an Ernie Parker video years ago.
I got the tape, hooked it into the cage where we were working, then stretched it out in front of the pitcher, about nine or 10 feet from the rubber. I told her to throw so the ball went under the tape. Sure enough, she started throwing knee-high strikes. When I took it away she went back to throwing high at first. But then she got the hang of it and didn’t need the tape anymore.
The key was the visual cue. She couldn’t feel the release point, but the visual of the tape helped her understand where it was. She found the path for her hand and arm and made the correction.
That’s the fun of coaching — finding a way to solve a problem. And now I have one more tool to use.
More on personal responsibility
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.
Getting the feel of the legs working together
There’s a of talk in the pitching world about the need to get good leg drive in order to get good speed. But I’ve always found the books and videos to be a little lacking on the “how” end of things. They will offer drills and such, which work if the pitcher naturally uses her legs correctly in those drills. But what if she doesn’t?
By that I mean what if she doesn’t use both legs together? Some will push hard off the back side, but won’t necessarily use the front leg efficiently. Others will drive out hard with the front leg, but will allow the back side to lag.
Tonight I was facing the latter with a girl named Justine. Her mom is a reader of this blog so I’m sure she won’t mind her being named, at least by first name. 
Justine was using her front leg to pull, but the back leg was late, and she was not only not throwing as hard as she should, she was also ending up in a forward leaning position. We tried a couple of different things to give her the feel of her legs working together, but it was still a struggle. Then I came upon an idea.
She is right handed, so I had her stand on her right leg, with her left leg slightly up — in what is often called the “stork” position. I then had her move her front knee forward slowly, to see how far she could get it before she lost her balance and wouldn’t be able to push off the back leg. She was surprised to see that she couldn’t get it all that far out. We did it a few times, and I had her push off before she hit the point of no return. Then we went back to pitching full out, with a noticeable jump in speed.
The key to this is the two legs have to work together. If the front leg gets too far away from the back leg it is impossible to get a good drive off the back leg. You need to push off the back foot as the front knee is going forward, not after it’s already as far as it can extend. Doing that moves the whole body together as a unit, which is more powerful than going one piece at a time.
So thanks to Justine I have yet another new drill to bring to my students. I love new stuff!
A common throwing problem — dipping the front shoulder
Maybe I’m just more acutely aware of it now because I’ve been working with a couple of players on this problem. But more and more I’m seeing an oddity in the throwing motion of some female softball players: they dip their front shoulders to initiate the throw.
They start out ok, i.e. they turn their bodies and take the ball back properly. But when it’s time to start moving forward, their first movement is to lower the glove-side shoulder instead of leaving it in place and driving the throwing shoulder through. When that happens, they tend to look like they’re throwing a hand grenade in a WWII movie instead of a softball. The back shoulder gets stuck right about the time they get to square, and the throw is mostly arm.
They may get the ball there, but it’s not very efficient. And it won’t be as hard as they can throw. If you see this, you need to get the player to keep her glove side shoulder to stay in place, then drive the throwing side shoulder through. I refer to it as replacing the front shoulder with the back one. When they’re finished, the throwing shoulder should be lower than the glove side. At minimum, they should be the same height.
Don’t be fooled by looking at videos of MLB pitchers, either. They are throwing off a high mound, and what looks like the front shoulder dropping down is really the whole body going down because of the hill. If they were on flat ground the glove shoulder would remain in place. That’s the way field players throw.
If your player can’t get the hang of leaving the shoulder up, trying having her raise her glove straight up over her head, and leave it there while she throws. You will see an immediate improvement. Then slowly have her lower it until she can make the proper movement with a full throwing motion.
It takes some time and practice to overcome this habit. But in the end it’s worth it.
The state of education in this country
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!
When it’s all said and done
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.
Be careful what you wish for
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.
Choosing a bat – part two
This actually came up in the comments section in my earlier post about choosing a bat, and I thought it was interesting enough that it should be a post on its own. Thanks to Mike Hanscom for bringing it up.
Most of us have experienced that situation where a hitter is using a bat that’s too big for her. Young hitters will often grab the biggest bat they kind find instead of the biggest bat they can actually handle. I’ve seen 10U players try to swing bats that were almost as big as they are. Swinging a bat that’s too big will cause a slow swing, and lots of mechanical difficulties.
But what about going the other way? Instead of swinging a bat that’s too big, is it bad to swing a bat that’s too small? Certainly some people preach that when the pitching gets faster you should go from your normal bat to one that is shorter and lighter. I disagree. I think swinging a bat that’s too small can cause almost as many difficulties as one that’s too big. They’re just different difficulties.
I can definitely talk to the problems with a small bat. I am a big guy, and though I don’t work out much anymore (unfortunately) I retain a fair amount of natural strength. I also grew up swinging a wood bat. When it’s time to hit fungos in our clinics, I will sometimes grab one of the team bats we have lying around. If it’s a 32 inch/22 ounce bat, I have to admit it’s a bit difficult for me to use. Even worse is when I try to hit off a pitching machine with it. I find it difficult to control because there just isn’t enough mass per the effort I’m putting in. I will tend to over-swing. I would think the same would go for any hitter using a bat that’s too small.
The other problem with a bat that’s too short, of course, that it forces the hitter to stand closer to the plate in order to get full coverage. With a properly sized bat, she can move off a little bit, which makes it a little easier to fend off the inside pitch.
Again, the ideal bat is one that comes to the hitter’s wrist when she’s standing straight up. The proper drop depends on her strength, but except for the very young (9 or younger) it shouldn’t be more than a -10. Using the right size bat will help her take better advantage of all the other things you’re working on.
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 
