Skip the wrist snap on the screwball
There is more than one way to throw any given pitch. Different coaches teach things different ways, so once agan I will say that what I write here is not the be-all and end-all of this pitch. But it is what I’ve found to be most effective.
One of the more challenging pitches to throw is the screwball. The challenge comes in the spin. It is difficult to get the 3:00 to 9:00 (or thereabouts) spin using regular pitching techniques (read: wrist snap) because the wrist doesn’t really move in that fashion.
Some coaches will teach a kind of reverse twisting motion with the fingers to get spin on the ball. The trouble is, it kind of works against the natural motion of the wrist, so pitchers tend to lose some speed. And more often than not they either throw with the opposite spin (more like a curve ball) or with a bullet spin — especially if the wrist snaps up as they try to turn the ball.
I’ve found a technique that seems to work better, or at least more naturally. Rather than trying to turn the ball, I teach my students to lock the wrist and allow the ball to peel off the first finger.
To make it happen, let the arm wander a little away from the body at the top of the circle, so it’s angling toward the center of the body on the downswing. As this happens, the palm of the hand faces away from the body. The effect is like a karate chop. At the bottom of the circle, as the elbow gets to a point between the bellybutton and back hip, and with the hand still facing away and the fingers pointing at the ground, allow the ball to peel off the first finger. You can give it a little finger pressure at release to help. Follow through up and around, just like you would on any other method of throwing the screwball.
A screwball thrown properly with this technique will angle in slightly, then break as it reaches the hitter. (As opposed to many “screwballs” I’ve seen that simply angle in.)
Thaat’s the big change. Like the common technique for screwballs you still need to stride out to your glove side, not a lot but a few inches to allow the ball to start around the center of the plate. Keeping the body open is essential — if you close too much you’ll wind up with more of bullet spin than a screwball. And again, no wrist snap. Let the whip of the arm and the position of the hand do the work.
If you’ve been having trouble getting good break with the screwball, give this a try. It’s not always easy to break habits, but if you can pull it off you’ll have one excellent pitch.
Choosing a bat
This is a question that comes up now and then. Parents will come to me and ask what size bat they should get their daughter.
What I’ve found to be the best way of choosing a bat is to have the hitter stand up straight. Then place her bat choices next to her leg, with the barrel down and the knob up. The knob should come up to the hitter’s wrist. That is the ideal bat length. It can go a little above there if she’s willing to choke up, but not too much.
From there it’s a matter of the bat drop — the difference between the length and weight. For most hitters a -10 will be the best choice, although at 10U if the hitter is small you might want to go with a -11 or even -12. (If you’re not familiar with it, a -10 means a 30 inch bat will weight 20 ounces.) If the hitter is bigger or stronger, you might want to go with a -9 or -8, although the latter might mean you have to go with a slowpitch bat.
For some reason a lot of girls seem to like to go with bats that are too long for them. A bat that’s too long can be dfficult for the hitter to swing, and the faster the pitching the more obvious it becomes. On the other hand, a bat that’s too short won’t provide the power and will force the hitter to stand closer to the plate than she needs to.
When selecting a bat, use the “wrist test.” It works.
The lost art of accountability
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.
Learning to catch with two hands
One of the most common refrains you’ll hear from coaches in practice is “two hands,” i.e. use two hands to catch the ball. While there are some cases where you really don’t want two hands — catching and some first base come to mind — generally speaking that’s good advice.
Yet getting players into the habit of catching with two hands takes more than just yelling “two hands” every time they don’t. Here’s one of my favorite drills for forcing the issue.
Have your players play catch using the back of the glove instead of the pocket to catch. When they do that, they’ll either have to use two hands or the ball will fall to the ground. They’ll get the picture very quickly.
This drill is also good for teaching soft hands; if the player makes a stabbing motion they’re likely to push the ball away before they can clamp down on it.
Remember that you’re not using two hands just because it’s more secure for catching. It also makes it easier to make a quick throw since the hand is already on the ball, instead of fumbling for it afterwards.
For all those pitchers who aren’t strikeout queens
The popular view of pitching in our sport is that it’s critical to have a dominant pitcher — one who can strike out 10-15 hitters per game, every game.
While I agree that it certainly helps cover up other ills, and often makes coaches look better than they really are, not every pitcher is capable of such singular heroics. But the truth is, they don’t have to be. A pitcher’s job isn’t to strike everybody out. It’s to prevent the other team from hitting the ball well, so your fielders can help get the outs. Strikeouts are merely a bonus.
Don’t believe me? I just saw the stats on the Gold Medal game. Cat Osterman had nine strikeouts in five innings of work, while Monica Abbott had four in two innings. That’s a total of 13 strikeouts. In the seven innings she pitched, Yukiko Ueno for Team Japan had four strikeouts total. Her team won 3-1.
Mike Candrea is always saying that softball is an individual sport played in a team setting. That team part is the part a lot of people forget about. If you can play strong defense and scratch out a few runs you can win a lot of ballgames even if your pitcher isn’t throwing bullets by batters. Setting up hitters by changing speeds and moving the ball around can keep them off-balance enough to induce weak ground balls and simple pop-ups that turn into outs.
To a lot of people, a perfect inning for a pitcher is nine pitches, all strikes. To me, it’s three pitches/three outs. If you can do that you won’t have great personal stats. But you’ll take the heart out of the other team and rack up the most important stat — a lot of Ws.
So take heart all you undersized or less than gifted pitchers. You can still be effective. You just need to do your part and help the team. After all, they don’t hand out trophies for strikeouts.
One man gathers what another man spills
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.
Good article on coaching the Millennial athlete
Jeff Janssen has posted another great article of general interest on coaching. It’s definitely worth reading if you are coaching the age group known as Millennials — those born roughly between 1982 and today.
If you’re a Boomer like me, you’ve no doubt noticed that today’s kids are very different than we were. In particular, they tend not to just go out and play sports for the fun of it. Either some adults need to organize their sports for them, or they don’t play. They also tend to be rather fragile as a group. They’ve grown up sheltered and protected from criticism and negativity for the most part (think helicopter parents), and thus have a tough time with the failure involved in sports — especially softball.
If you’re a Gen Xer, don’t feel too superior. According to the article, your age group has a lot of trouble relating to the Milennials as well, for many of the same reasons. You were brought up differently and approached your sports differently. In fact, you may find their inability to handle criticism or failure even more frustrating because they look more like you, and you’re not as far from being them as the Boomers are.
Here’s a link to the article itself. I highly suggest you give it a read.
Chocolate milk is good for you
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.
A funny take on Olympic softball
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.
Get a rhythm
One of the things you’ll often see with hitters, no matter whether they’re hitting off a tee, soft toss, a machine or even live pitching is starting from a complete standstill. They stand like statues, and as the pitch comes in they move forward toward it.
While you can do that, it’s not ideal. You’re better off moving backwards first then forward — what is often called a negative move. The reason is simple physics.
Newton’s first law of motion says an object at rest will tend to remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. That means in order to get it moving, a certain amount of energy has to be expended. This energy doesn’t contribute to the swing, so it’s essentially wasted.
Think about a freight train starting from a standing stop. There is a lot of noise and fury but not much movement. It takes a while until it really gets going. But if it’s already moving, it’s easier to get it to go faster. All that early energy is being used to overcome inertia.
The same happens with the swing. If you go forward first, or start with all your weight back already, you’re going to use a disproportionate amount of energy just to get your body moving. But if you push back a little first, before the swing really occurs, your body will be in motion and can slingshot off of that momentum to make a quicker and more powerful forward movement.
That’s what to do and why. But what about how? The best way to think of it is like a dance movement. A small but rhythmic sway backwards usually works better than a stiff movement. Practice in front of a mirror until it looks smooth and natural. When you can do that you will be ready to apply it to your swing.
As Johnny Cash said, get a rhythm. It will do wonders for your hitting.
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 