Softball performance program
Saw this over at Stacie Mahoe’s Fastpitch Softball Blog and thought it would be worth passing along. It’s a free program called “How to Overcome Failure and Play as Well in Games as You Do in Practice.” (The link is to Stacie’s blog, which will take you to the program.)
This is a fairly common problem, especially in places like the Midwest where I live, and any of the Northern states where we spend most of the year practicing indoors. It’s one thing to be successful in the batting cages, but it doesn’t always translate to the field. When that happens it can be very discouraging.
This program has a series of exercises that can help a player get back on track. It was developed by Tom Hanson, one of the authors of the terrific book Heads Up Baseball: Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time. That’s a book every player and coach should have on their bedstand.
Give it a look. It just might mean the difference between hitting .250 and .300.
New forum for fastpitch discussion
Well, it’s about time someone took up the mantle. There used to be a great forum on the Internet called the Fastpitch Forum. It was a place where fastpitch softball fanatics would gather to argue, debate, dissect and generally discuss every aspect of the game. I know I wasted spent many an hour poking around there and adding my two cents when I should’ve been working.
Sadly, that site came down a few years ago. But now there’s a new one. It’s called Discuss Fastpitch, and as the name implies it’s another place to go discuss whatever is on your mind. The site is already being haunted by some of the old names from the Fastpitch Forum, plus some new faces as well.
If you’re not familiar with it, the difference between a forum and a blog like this is anyone who is registered with the forum can post a topic. So if you have something on your mind that Life in the Fastpitch Lane doesn’t cover, there’s a place to post it up. Same with if you want to register an opinion or bounce an idea off a wide variety of folks.
I’m already on it, and contributing thoughts here and there. You’ll probably want to check it out too. After all, you can never get too much of this stuff. I will actually be working with Marc regarding some of the content and overall management to make sure it remains on track.
Unlike certain other forums around the Internet, Discuss Fastpitch is not a place to post up looking for players, or to sell your old radar gun, or carry on personal vendettas. There will be zero tolerance for cyber bullies and those who contribute nothing but like to knock the contributions of others. It’s about the honest (and positive) exchange of ideas and information between individuals who want to improve their knowledge, and share what they already know.
Be sure to check it out and register. Just don’t forget to come back here too!
The principle of interchangeable parts
One of the most common complaints a coach hears at the younger ages is that he/she is playing players in too many positions. This complaint, of course, is only heard when a team is losing. 
Fastpitch softball is a sport that requires specialization. Each position is played differently, has different decision trees, and largely requires different skills. Some great infielders never learn to judge a fly ball and are disasters in the outfield, despite being great athletes. Some excellent third basemen don’t have the range to play short. Some second basemen don’t have the reaction time to play third. It all varies.
That, to me, is one of the secrets to success in fastpitch softball — matching the player’s abilities to the position.
Now, at the younger ages, perhaps up to 11U, it’s a good thing to move players around more, at least early in the season. They are nowhere near fully formed yet, so how do you know that the kid you have in right field wouldn’t make a good first baseman with a little work and experience. You won’t until you try her there.
As players get older, though, this scenario becomes less attractive. Moving players around, unless you absolutely have to, can end up in disaster. This goes not only for the average ability players, but also for the studettes.
You see, there is a difference between great athletic ability and the ability to play a position. Trying to force a player into a position where she lacks the skills/knowledge/experience can wind up backfiring on you. I don’t know how others feel, but I’ll take a kid with less raw athletic ability but more knowledge and skill at a position than the reverse.
Now, I know college coaches often talk about taking athletes. Perhaps they have the luxury. Most of us don’t. Besides, their pool of athletes, especially at the upper level, are also pretty darned skilled. And they don’t just arbitrarily stick one of those athletes into a new position on game day and hope they can figure it out for themselves.
Softball players are not interchangeable parts that can be moved around willy-nilly. If you feel a position change is required, be sure to spend plenty of time with that player so she can learn the little stuff about that position. Otherwise, sure as you’re reading this, her lack of experience will come back to bite you at the worst possible moment.
Sometimes ignorance is just…ignorance
Saw this one at a high school game today. It makes me wonder sometimes how people get hired to coach kids.
These two teams — call them team A and team B — had played on Tuesday. Team A had the better record but wound up losing to team B. From what I heard they had a tough practice on Wednesday that consisted primarily of running every time they made a mistake. Keep in mind that they had lost primarily because they didn’t hit very well and team B did.
Tonight team A lost again. They made a couple of fielding errors, but the primary reason was again a lack of offense. So what does the coach do? She decides to have them run a bunch of foul poles. I’m not sure how many since I didn’t bother to count but it was probably close to a dozen.
I have to ask: how does this make sense? I highly doubt that any of those kids went to the plate thinking “What I’d really like to do is ground out weakly to the second baseman” or “Boy, a pop-up would sure feel good right now.” I watched them. They were energetic, kept their spirits up and battled to the end. But they came up short. So the coach, apparently in a fit of pique, decided to punish them for something, I don’t know, I guess for not being good enough.
Personally I think all she accomplished was getting them to hate playing for her. Kids aren’t stupid. They recognize bad coaching when they see it. Now, if she would’ve told them tomorrow cancel your plans, we’re going to hit until your hands bleed it would’ve made sense. She would’ve been addresing the problem. Instead she makes them run. Not for conditioning. Not to improve their technique. Apparently just because she was mad at them — or didn’t know what else to do.
Running shouldn’t be a punishment. It shouldn’t be used to embarrass your players (this little display was done at team B’s field while team B was working the field after the game). It should have a purpose. If your team doesn’t field, hit, get the bunt down or run the bases well enough, have them practice fielding, hitting, bunting or running the bases. As far as I’m considered the person this coach embarrassed the most was herself.
In a little postscript, one of the players who was made to run had an asthma attack in the middle of it. Out of fear of the coach she kept going until she got to the point where she couldn’t breathe at all. It took her at least four hits on her puffer to stop wheezing so loudly that it could be heard across the field. I was getting ready to call 9-1-1 it sounded so bad. She got to stop, but the rest of the girls were made to keep running.
I ask again how does this make sense? Who is it good for?
Finding the release point for the backhand change
One of the challenges of learning the backhand change is finding the correct release point. Let it go too early and it either rolls in or flies in too fast. Let it go too late and there’s a tendency for it to arc in.
One trick I often use during lessons is to stand in front of the pitcher with my arm outstretched about shoulder high. The arm is placed approximately where the hand will reach as the pitcher comes through with the pitch. I tell the pitcher to hold the ball under her hand gets under my arm, then release. If she follows this direction, the pitch will usually come in low and slow, with a kind of floating effect.
That’s great for practice. But as I remind the pitchers, I can’t exactly stand in front of them with my arm outstretched during a game. Even if it wasn’t against the rules, which it is, it would be kind of obvious when the change was coming — which would defeat the purpose.
There is another way to do it, though. Tell the pitcher to hold the ball until her hand gets to where her stride foot has planted. If she takes it there, and keeps her arm loose, she’ll throw a perfect change every time. Over the front foot is the exact release point needed. Give it a try!
Face masks for pitchers and players
Reader Rick put up a question on a previous post asking what I thought of the face masks now being worn by pitchers and other players. He thought it might make a good new topic and I have to say I agree. So here we go.
For me there isn’t a simple answer. To be honest, I’m kind of old school about masks myself. I personally find them rather odd. I thought face masks for hitters was a good idea, especially with all the bunting that goes on in fastpitch. In fact, I think they’d be a good idea for boys baseball too.
But when it comes to fielders I’m having trouble getting behind them. I’m not sure why. I guess it seems like overkill to me. I kind of understand pitchers wearing them. They stand awfully close after release, and the act of pitching consumes the bulk of their attention. With all the high tech bats out there they don’t have a lot of reaction time, and in the one in a million chance one of those pitches comes rocketing back at their faces they have some level of protection.
My own daughter has had a couple of line drives whiz past her ear recently. When I asked her if she wanted a mask she just gave me a funny look and said “no.” But for other pitchers it’s the right thing to do.
It seems less critical for outfielders or other infielders, with the possible exception of third base. Out in the field you should have plenty of time to read and react to a batted ball. A charging third baseman who gets suckered on a fake bunt and slap might be vulnerable, but other than that it just doesn’t seem necessary to me.
Keep in mind I grew up in an era when you didn’t wear a helmet to ride a bicycle, and baserunners in youth baseball would use a device rather like earmuffs instead of a full helmet. We survived. I think players are better trained and more athletic than in my playing days, so there’s even less risk.
That being said, ultimately it’s a personal preference. It doesn’t really hurt anything to wear a mask. If a field player on my team chose to wear one I might secretly roll my eyes but I wouldn’t stop her. If you’re more comfortable playing with one knock yourself out. But I sure hope the day never comes when it’s a requirement. It just seems like overkill to me.
Sportsmanship and class
I’m sure some if not many of you have seen this already, but I think it bears promoting anyway. It’s a video story from ESPN about a college game and the act of class and sportsmanship that one team showed another.
The basics are that a player on one team hit an over-the-fence home run — her first-ever as a player. As she was going into second on her home run trot she realized she didn’t touch first and turned to go back and touch it. As she turned she tore her ACL (probably metal cleats catching in the dirt, but that’s another story). She crawled back to first, then just lay there hugging the base. The umpire told her coach that no one from their team could help her around the bases, and they couldn’t use a pinch runner for her (the latter of which turned out to be untrue). So she was stuck at first, in pain, unable to go on, when a very classy thing occured.
Two players from the opposing team, with the hitter’s permission, picked her up and carried her around the bases, pausing at each one to let her touch it. They certainly didn’t have to do it, but they felt it was the right thing to do.
What an amazing thing. In our ultra-competitive society, where everyone is trying to gain an advantage, it would’ve been easy to let her lie there and her run not to count. The team on defense at the time went on to lose the game. But those players made the decision to do the right thing, consequences be damned.
What a tribute to those players, their coach, and their parents. I hope they were at least named conference players of the week. This is the type of thing sports are supposed to teach but don’t always do. If you want your kids to have role models, you couldn’t find any better ones than these young ladies.
Blasting balls at fielders
You see it everywhere. Teams of younger players out on the field for fielding practice. A big coach (usually a guy) standing at home plate. He tosses the ball up, takes a powerful swing, and blasts a hard ground ball at one of the girls, who does her best to field it and make the throw. The coach is hitting the ball hard at the girls with the best of intentions. He wants them to learn to handle hard hit balls, and to improve their reaction time. Yet what he is more likely doing is practicing to lose rather than win.
Think about it. Let’s say the team is 10U or 12U. How many girls that age can hit a pitched ball as hard as a large, grown man can fungo it? You can probably count them on the fingers of one ear. Once in a blue moon a ball might be hit that hard, but it’s certainly the exception.
By hitting hard ball after hard ball, the coach is teaching his players to sit back and wait. He’s also teaching them that the elapsed time from contact with the bat to contact with the glove is one second or less. Yet that’s not really what happens on the field. It’s more likely that the ball will be hit softly, requiring the fielders to charge it. But since they’re used to sitting back so they don’t get killed, they’re slow to charge the batted ball. In the meantime, the batter is running up the first base line. The throw gets there late and everyone is unhappy that the fielder got to it late.
The other thing that happens with hard fungoes is the practice becomes more about survival than technique. The fielder may learn to knock the ball down or stab at it, but she’s not really learning proper fielding technique that will translate to the field. She’s less likely to be able to get her butt and glove down properly, receive the ball gently, scoop it cleanly and make the transition to throw. She’s just going to grab it and go.
Contrast that with what I see when I watch college teams practice. They often roll the ball by hand to players so they can work on their fundamentals — even before an actual game. When they do fungo ground balls, they’re hit lightly so the fielders have to be aggressive, rather than sitting back passively waiting for the ball to nearly overpower them.
It applies at every level, but especially at the younger levels. If you’re smacking hard grounders at your players, make a pledge to stop now. Hit the ball at the speed they can reasonably expect based on your level of competition so they set their minds on making the plays you need them to make. Believe me — if anything is hit harder and right at them, they’ll make the play out of self-defense. Coach for the majority of what you’ll face instead of the minority and you’ll make more plays and win more games. It’s just common sense.
Adding Life in the Fastpitch Lane to your RSS reader
This entry should actually be filed under “housekeeping,” but since I don’t have that as a category we’ll just leave it under General Thoughts. It’s something that I was finally able to figure out how to do, so I want to pass it along. I might even add it as a sidebar instruction since it doesn’t seem to be intuitive.
The topic is how to add this blog to your RSS reader. Those who are into the whole Web 2.0 thing are probably familiar with RSS readers. They are tools that let you aggregate the content from various blogs in a single place so you can see what’s out there and decide whether to read it. (Hopefully the answer is always “yes” for Life in the Fastpitch Lane.) Google Reader, My AOLand Yahoo! are three examples. Bloglines is another.
In the past I’ve tried to add the buttons in the sidebar that make it simple, but it hasn’t worked. I’ve also tried using their tools, but when I entered the URL for this blog I received an error message.
Yesterday I figured it out. What you have to do (assuming you have an account with one of the services) is click on the button that lets you add a feed, then come to Life in the Fastpitch Lane, click on the type of feed you want, then copy and paste THAT URL into the feed reader.
Here’s an example from Google. On the Google home page, go to the top and click on the link to More. In the left hand column there is a button that says + Add subscription. Click on that, and it will give you a box that tells you to find feeds or paste in the URL. With me so far?
Now come to Life in the Fastpitch Lane. In the right hand column there is a section labeled Syndicate. Click on your choice (Entries RSS 1.0, Entries RSS 2.0, etc.). The page will change and there will be a new URL at the top of the page. Copy that and paste it into the box on Google. Once you’ve done that your feed reader will start showing the latest entries.
I haven’t tried it on the others yet but I will. If there is anything different to do I will let you know. But I know it definitely works with Google.
For throwing problems, check the thumb
Sometimes the solution to a big problem is something small. Take throwing problems for example. If the ball is tailing off, or is not going hard enough, it could be due to the position of the thumb.
Girls have a tendency to lay their thumbs on the side of the ball rather than opposite the middle finger where it belongs. This is often driven by the size of their hands v. the size of the ball.
It’s funny when you think about it, really. Boys, who tend to have larger hands, play with a baseball that is nine inches in circumference. (Yes I know boys also play fastpitch, but it’s not predominant). Girls, whose hands are generally smaller than those of boys, play with a ball that has a circumference of 11 or 12 inches. It just doesn’t seem to match up.
The problem this creates is putting the thumb in the proper position opposite the middle finger can be somewhat uncomfortable for girls. The younger the girl, the more uncomfortable it can be. But laying the thumb out to the side is not a strong position, which means the throws won’t be as good as they could be.
As your players throw, it’s definitely worthwhile to check their grips and make the correction if needed. They may not like it at first, but you’ll be doing them a favor.
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 