Ask the Baseball Coach

[dread pirate jimbo]

I've been coaching baseball now for 24 years (holy shit, that's a long time) and I'm always happy to impart some info to people who are looking to pick my brains. So ask away!

Here's a freebie: You see a lot of pros these days hitting with their back elbow up at right angles to the ground (this has been taught by a few different people over the years). This is bad technique and anyone you're teaching needs to have that fixed. First of all, lifting your elbow creates muscle tension that first has to be released before you can swing the bat -- that costs you time. Second, almost without exception, releasing that tension causes the elbow to drop down to the hitter's side, where it should have been in the first place, and that motion drags the hitter's bat head down with it, causing an uppercut. Uppercuts = lazy fly ball outs and weak ground balls to the pitcher, unless you're Prince Fielder strong and can turn some of those fly balls into home runs (the vast, vast majority of us can't). Better to set up in a relaxed position, with your elbows at your sides, and take a level swing, aiming to hit line drives.

[What Exit?]

Let's say you had a team with power and good bats 1 through 9. You had to choose between two players for the post season bench.

One plays good defensive outfield and is a great runner and can steal better than all but one regular. However, he has little to no bat.

The other plays the 4 corners but not well, is not fleet of foot but can hit a mistake out of the park and has a fairly good batting eye.

Who would you take as your 25th man?

[OneCentStamp]

Who and what do you currently coach? I mean, is it LL? High school? College? Pro? Are you currently a manager? Bench coach?

Further questions to follow based on your answers.

[dread pirate jimbo]

Let's say you had a team with power and good bats 1 through 9. You had to choose between two players for the post season bench.

One plays good defensive outfield and is a great runner and can steal better than all but one regular. However, he has little to no bat.

The other plays the 4 corners but not well, is not fleet of foot but can hit a mistake out of the park and has a fairly good batting eye.

Who would you take as your 25th man?

From my perspective, if my regular lineup already has enough offensive punch and I have one roster spot left to fill with a bench contributer for a playoff run, I'm going with the glove guy who can run. That gives me a pinch runner that I can trot out there in a one-run game to try to get into scoring position to pick up that critical score and it also gives me a guy who can come in for the last two innings to hold a lead with his defense. If I get a hit or two out of him in the handful of ABs he might have, that's just a bonus.

For me, the infielder with a stick only helps me if we have an injury to a critical player, and I'm not going to set my roster based on that possibility unless I have a fragile guy who could break down at any moment.

[Sarahfeena]

You mention batting stances...how is it that guys get to the Majors with bad fundamentals like that? What about someone like Craig Counsel, who had that truly weird stretched-up-over-his-head thing going on, and oddly changed it a season or two ago? Is it bad coaching in their younger days?

[dread pirate jimbo]

Who and what do you currently coach? I mean, is it LL? High school? College? Pro? Are you currently a manager? Bench coach?

Further questions to follow based on your answers.

I'm currently managing a 15-18 year-old team in Calgary Babe Ruth Baseball. Personally, I prefer to just coach and not manage, because that affords me more opportunities to actually teach, but I've run the team a couple times now -- in the past two seasons I've gone 24-16 as a manager. I've also coached with a couple all-star teams back in the day, I managed a T-ball team of little guys one year (9-year-olds), and I've also helped out briefly with a women's fastball team and, of course, I'll provide help to anyone I play with, if they ask.

I spend a lot of time working on hitting with the kids, as well as middle infield defense, catching, and outfield defense. Pitching is my weakest area, but I do understand all the fundamentals and was able to coax pretty good performances out of my pitching staff this year.

Does that help?

[What Exit?]

From my perspective, if my regular lineup already has enough offensive punch and I have one roster spot left to fill with a bench contributer for a playoff run, I'm going with the glove guy who can run. That gives me a pinch runner that I can trot out there in a one-run game to try to get into scoring position to pick up that critical score and it also gives me a guy who can come in for the last two innings to hold a lead with his defense. If I get a hit or two out of him in the handful of ABs he might have, that's just a bonus.

For me, the infielder with a stick only helps me if we have an injury to a critical player, and I'm not going to set my roster based on that possibility unless I have a fragile guy who could break down at any moment.

We agree by the way. I was trying to solicit and objective opinion of Hinski vs. Guzman for the Yanks if a roster spot in the post season comes down to the pair. Though by corners, I meant he could play left and right field also. Not just 1st and 3rd. Sorry about that.

[OneCentStamp]

Does that help?

Definitely! Thanks.

In dealing with a 15-18 group, do you have to deal with many overbearing sports parents? How about gifted kids with rockstar egos? Do you get parents yelling at you from the stands to put their kid in? Does the stereotype of the tennis baseball dad collaring the coach after the game to talk about little Joey's development hold true?

[dread pirate jimbo]

You mention batting stances...how is it that guys get to the Majors with bad fundamentals like that? What about someone like Craig Counsel, who had that truly weird stretched-up-over-his-head thing going on, and oddly changed it a season or two ago? Is it bad coaching in their younger days?

The simple answer is that the vast, vast majority of Major Leaguers are physical freaks who are able to do things no one else can do. If you think about it, the worst player in the Bigs is still the 800th best player on Earth, better than thousands of guys toiling in the minors and tens of thousands beyond that playing amateur ball. Guys in the Show are able to get away with fundamental flaws that us mere mortals would find crippling.

Take, for example, Frank Thomas. In all the years I saw him play, I never once saw him make contact while his back foot was on the ground. For those of us who aren't 6'5" 260 lb superstuds, hitting anything with authority without blocking against your back foot is impossible and adjusting to a breaking ball is even more impossible. In Thomas' case, he literally was putting up numbers that were comparable to Babe Ruth for the first few years of his career and very very good numbers even after injuries started slowing him down. But I still believe that if anyone had ever taken the time to fix his swing, he'd still be hitting 40 homers a year.

Craig Counsel gets his hands way high because he has a hitch and drops his hands at the back of his swing, so in order to get to the proper hitting position, he exaggerates his starting position, whereas a typical player would fix the hitch just to make solid contact.

The bottom line is that the pros do strange things because they can, not because they should. I'm very picky about who I recommend my kids watch or try to emulate because some of the pros do terrible, terrible things when it comes to the fundamentals.

[featherlou]

Why do baseball coaches wear their pants so tight? Is it to show off their cute little tushies?

[dread pirate jimbo]

Definitely! Thanks.

In dealing with a 15-18 group, do you have to deal with many overbearing sports parents? How about gifted kids with rockstar egos? Do you get parents yelling at you from the stands to put their kid in? Does the stereotype of the tennis baseball dad collaring the coach after the game to talk about little Joey's development hold true?

First, a few more words about our league that will put my answer in better context:

We have our league set up with five city-wide organizations, divided into two divisions which we call AA and AAA. For the most part, the 15-16 year olds play in the AA division and develop their skillz and the older kids play in the AAA division where they are presumably ready to play to win. At the moment I'm managing the AA squad for my team, although I've moved up and down to fill whatever role the team has required. So I'm managing a team under the direction of a different manager, essentially.

Anyway, the short answer to your question is yes. There are plenty of prima-donna parents and prima-donna players. The stereotype, like most stereotypes, was not created in a vacuum. In fact, a big part of the problem with baseball in my city is that too many egos have fractured the entire system almost beyond repair. This is a city of just over one million people, in a country where baseball is not a priority, and we currently have three leagues and 4 elite all-star travel teams trying to draw players from that smallish pool, all because one dad or another decided that this program or that program wasn't good enough for his kid, so he was gonna create his own extra awesome setup to cater to his special child's needs/whims. The net result is that everyone's talent is watered down and all the programs continue to flounder and struggle to devise new and creative ways to eliminate the competition.

Okay, so that wasn't exactly a short answer. Anyway, the parents with the most money tend towards the elite teams where their kids will get more attention and will get to take very expensive trips around western Canada and the American Pacific Northwest to various tournaments. So that pulls some of the jerks out of the system. The rest of the prima-donnas get kinda spread around all over the place.

For our part, the team I coach with has a set policy that we not only scout the kids in the spring, we also scout the parents. If we get word that the kid or the parents are an issue, we won't draft the kid, no matter how talented he is -- we'll let another team in the league get those kids and the problems that go along with them. Over and above that basic policy, we tell all the parents at the beginning of the year that we will not discuss game stuff/playing time after a game -- if they have a problem, they need to sit on it overnight and bring it to us the next day, which pretty much eliminates any angry confrontations that still might occur. So we will still get the odd attitude from a parent or a player, but not often. In the meantime, I hear plenty of stories (and see some of them) from other coaches on other teams about the horrors of little Johnny who wants to play shortstop or Johnny's dad who thinks he should bat leadoff and pitch more.

[dread pirate jimbo]

Why do baseball coaches wear their pants so tight? Is it to show off their cute little tushies?

Yes, that is precisely why. And thank you for noticing.

[vison]

My very dear dread pirate jimbo. My heart reaches out to you! I am, at this present moment, the secretary/treasurer of a Little League association in a Vancouver suburb. My 2 grandsons both play LL ball, one will play as a 13 year old next season, the other will be 15. Both are good players, but I am not delusional and do not think either one will ever play professional ball, even at a very low level. They are athletic boys with better-than-common hand/eye coordination, and the older one is a very good pitcher indeed. He might even be good enough, if we and he took it seriously, to get to college on his pitching arm. But our league( like yours, by the sound of it) is chockful of nutso parents. I could tell you stories that would make even YOU, a 24 year veteran coach, gasp and fall over in a dead faint.

If I have time someday, I would love to share with you the current situation, the concantenation of several fusterclucks, that has left our league even chockfuller of very disgruntled, angry, hostile, disappointed, and miserable parents. I like being sec/treas. as this LL association means a great deal to me, baseball having got my boys and me through some awful days. I will stay on if I am not booted out when the present president (a white, Canadian relative of R. Mugabe, I believe, or maybe Saddam Hussein . . . .) is booted out.

Some of the coaches are great guys. But an awful lot of them are only coaching because their boy plays and their boy only plays because he is The Next Great Thing, destined for 12 World Series rings, and I don't mean LL World Series, either.

You sound like you gots your head screwed on right, anyway. Keep up the good work.

[dread pirate jimbo]

My very dear dread pirate jimbo. My heart reaches out to you! I am, at this present moment, the secretary/treasurer of a Little League association in a Vancouver suburb. My 2 grandsons both play LL ball, one will play as a 13 year old next season, the other will be 15. Both are good players, but I am not delusional and do not think either one will ever play professional ball, even at a very low level. They are athletic boys with better-than-common hand/eye coordination, and the older one is a very good pitcher indeed. He might even be good enough, if we and he took it seriously, to get to college on his pitching arm. But our league( like yours, by the sound of it) is chockful of nutso parents. I could tell you stories that would make even YOU, a 24 year veteran coach, gasp and fall over in a dead faint.

I doubt it, but I'd love to hear your stories! My best personal one was the dad about 15 years ago who threatened to punch my lights out after a game if his boy didn't get more playing time (he got pulled in the middle innings for striking out and then throwing his helmet when he got back to the dugout, hitting me). He and his son were summarily banned from the league shortly thereafter.

If I have time someday, I would love to share with you the current situation, the concantenation of several fusterclucks, that has left our league even chockfuller of very disgruntled, angry, hostile, disappointed, and miserable parents. I like being sec/treas. as this LL association means a great deal to me, baseball having got my boys and me through some awful days. I will stay on if I am not booted out when the present president (a white, Canadian relative of R. Mugabe, I believe, or maybe Saddam Hussein . . . .) is booted out.

Some of the coaches are great guys. But an awful lot of them are only coaching because their boy plays and their boy only plays because he is The Next Great Thing, destined for 12 World Series rings, and I don't mean LL World Series, either.

You sound like you gots your head screwed on right, anyway. Keep up the good work.

Most of the coaches in our league are also parents who insist that no one could possibly know how to coach their kid except them -- they're here for 3-4 years and then gone, so it means a lot of turnover and a lot of coaches who really don't know a ton technically about the game, but who have a vested interest in their own kid. A few years ago, one coach was thrown out of the league after the season's stats were compiled and it was determined that his son played all but 6 innings of the 24-game season, which was so obvious an act of coaching bias that even our do-nothing executive felt the need to do something. The team I'm on is blessed to have five non-parent coaches in addition to a few parents who help out. In fact, our coaching staff is usually close to double the size of some of the other teams in the league, with probably triple the experience (or more), so our kids tend to be well prepared and not all that mollycoddled.

Thanks for the kind words.

[OneCentStamp]

If you could point to just one current major leaguer for each of the following skills, and tell your young players, "This guy is technically sound. He does it right. Emulate him," who would it be?

Hit for average:
Hit for power:
Play defense as a catcher:
Steal bases:
Bunt:
Play defense as a shortstop:

[dread pirate jimbo]

If you could point to just one current major leaguer for each of the following skills, and tell your young players, "This guy is technically sound. He does it right. Emulate him," who would it be?

Hit for average:
Hit for power:
Play defense as a catcher:
Steal bases:
Bunt:
Play defense as a shortstop:

Hit for average: Albert Freaking Pujols
Hit for power: Albert Freaking Pujols
Play defense as a catcher: Oh, that's a tough one 'cuz MLB catchers suck fundamentally, but I'll actually go with any of the Molina brothers
Steal bases: Ichiro Suzuki
Bunt: Ichiro Suzuki
Play defense as a shortstop: Jimmy Rollins

Pujols has a beautiful swing. Nice wide stance (kids don't seem to want to get wide for some reason), hands soft and relaxed (although maybe a touch high), good strong, full hip rotation, head always on the ball, excellent extension to and through the ball, very nice bat path. He might win a triple crown one of these years.

Catchers in the Bigs seem to have a lot of bad habits. I've seen a shocking number of them recently who are dangling their throwing hands out in front of their knees where a foul tip could break a finger and end put them on the DL. Stupid. Most of them are shitty, lazy blockers, preferring to try to pick everything instead of blocking properly. Sloppy. They throw from their knees. My kids are forbidden from ever throwing from their knees, including when returning the ball to the pitcher. And proper framing technique seems to have become a lost art -- everyone is trying to drag borderline pitches into the zone instead of just massaging the corners and using correct technique, body movement, and the whole mitt to create the proper illusion. The Molinas are far from perfect, but they all block the ball reasonably well, they have good, accurate arms, they don't wave their gloves all around the zone. Watching Bengie for a season in Toronto was nice, as his technique doesn't make me yell at the TV for the entire game. I also like Yorvit Torrealba (and I love saying his name). Now, if this were just a couple years ago, I'd be saying Charles Johnson, who was the catcher for the Marlins when they won their first World Series. Dude was the first catcher in MLB history to go an entire year without committing an error. Charlie was an outstanding blocker (I believe he also had a passed ball-free season), called his own game most of the time, framed very well, and had a strong, quick release. Too bad he couldn't hit...

Ichiro is a stud. He is scary good on the bases, reads pitchers extremely well, is aggressive, gets great jumps, and makes the defense pay for even the slightest lapse. And no one in baseball right now bunts as well as him -- he puts it where he wants it, when he wants it, consistently getting balls 40-45' down the lines or pushed past the pitcher. I love him and want to marry him.

Rollins has better than average range, a very strong arm, and makes a lot of highlight-reel plays. But the thing I really like about him is that he also makes all the routine plays -- he has the 2nd best fielding percentage of any shortstop in MLB history. He positions himself well, gets behind the ball with nice, soft hands, turns two effortlessly, and can unload with a throw when he has to. Not bad for one of the shortest guys in the Majors right now!

ETA: If you want to see really sound defensive catching, check out a college game -- almost without exception, those kids do things the right way!

[OneCentStamp]

According to Wiki, Calgary's population is about 70% white, 20% Asian, 2% black, 2% latino, and 5-6% everything else. Would you say those same ethnic proportions hold true for the league you coach in, or do you see some groups noticeably over- or underrepresented?




.

[vison]

Oh, you can't marry Ichiro. I have dibs on him.

He is God, if you ask me. I watched the last game of the world classic? Where they decided to pitch to him? The guy is incredible.

We have a catcher's coach here who would agree with everything you say about catchers. My boys both play catcher and have learned a lot from this guy, who is involved with the Big League Experience camp in Oliver, BC. He's known as Grumpy.

I wish there was some way of making a rule that no dad could coach his own kid, but that's not likely to happen. It's hard enough to get coaches as it is. We need more old guys whose kids have gone through the system. That's the secret to Whalley's success - they have an excellent core of old guys.

[dread pirate jimbo]

According to Wiki, Calgary's population is about 70% white, 20% Asian, 2% black, 2% latino, and 5-6% everything else. Would you say those same ethnic proportions hold true for the league you coach in, or do you see some groups noticeably over- or underrepresented?




.

I'd say the vast majority of the kids in our system are middle-upper class white folk, with a smattering of ethnicity. On my team, we have just one kid from a visible minority out of 26 players -- he's east Indian, I believe (2nd generation Canadian, though). We also have a couple Japanese and Chinese kids, one or two latin kids. Two girls. But currently no black kids. I think overall we're pretty close to in line with the general demographics, though.

I remember one season a number of years back now where we had, just on our team, a black kid, a Chinese kid, a Nicaraguan kid, a Venezualan kid, an east Indian kid who had never played baseball but had played a lot of cricket, and a Native American kid as well on a 12-player sqaud. So it varies from year-to-year.

[dread pirate jimbo]

Oh, you can't marry Ichiro. I have dibs on him.

He is God, if you ask me. I watched the last game of the world classic? Where they decided to pitch to him? The guy is incredible.

We have a catcher's coach here who would agree with everything you say about catchers. My boys both play catcher and have learned a lot from this guy, who is involved with the Big League Experience camp in Oliver, BC. He's known as Grumpy.

I wish there was some way of making a rule that no dad could coach his own kid, but that's not likely to happen. It's hard enough to get coaches as it is. We need more old guys whose kids have gone through the system. That's the secret to Whalley's success - they have an excellent core of old guys.

Yep, we're familiar with the Big League Experience program in Oliver -- if memory serves, we send one of our all-star teams to Oliver every year for their big tournament. That's a good program.

As I'm sure your kids have now learned (and I mentioned above), one of the biggest mistakes most catchers make is what I call "over-framing" pitches -- trying to move a borderline pitch into the strike zone to get a few extra calls. It rarely works when done badly and there's some actual technique to do it effectively. One of the other critical ckills catcher need, but don't always get taught, is how to be a leader. I instruct my catcher to buy themselves a copy of the Bull Durham DVD and memorize it -- THAT'S how you deal with pitchers: you take control, break their spirit and force them to do your bidding.

[vison]

Well, right now I'm finishing up the books on a national tournament we held in August. It was a great thing, but more work than we could have envisioned to start with. We went through almost $90 thousand, and our team - NOT our league - raised over $88 thousand. Incredible, especially in this economic climate. The league will have to cough up about $2,500 at most, and that's not bad at all for a national tournament. It was something the boys will remember fondly in their golden years.

It's very hard to say why people go to such lengths for a kids' game. There might be a boy in that group who will go on to a baseball career, that's maybe one reason. For me, I absolutely love watching my boys play ball. When a boy is playing baseball he's in a safe world, exhausting himself, learning some useful skills, etc. I think 14 year old boys are like Border Collies, they have to be run 8 or 9 hours every day. Most of the people are very nice. The creeps do tend to spoil things a bit, but they wander off to "elite teams" most of the time.

[dread pirate jimbo]

Even the Onion understands what I'm saying about framing pitches!

[vison]

lol

[Raymond Onion]

My son is 14, and did a tryout for his high school team.

He played on his middle school team, but suddenly they are playing at a much higher level. So what happened was that he rode the bench most of the time, and when they put him in it made him nervous, so he made dumb mistakes. Which then meant the next time he went in, he was even more nervous.

So what do you recommend in the off season (which is now) that he can do by himself to make himself a better and more confident player?

[dread pirate jimbo]

My son is 14, and did a tryout for his high school team.

He played on his middle school team, but suddenly they are playing at a much higher level. So what happened was that he rode the bench most of the time, and when they put him in it made him nervous, so he made dumb mistakes. Which then meant the next time he went in, he was even more nervous.

So what do you recommend in the off season (which is now) that he can do by himself to make himself a better and more confident player?

I'd say there are a couple things he can do during the offseason to make next year better. The first is to practice the fundamentals and lock them in. This can be done very simply -- get a tennis ball and bounce it off a wall for a half hour or so every couple days, fielding it cleanly, looking the ball right into his hands, and then going again. Making routine plays feel routine and automatic will go a long way towards putting him at ease. Same thing with batting; he should plan to take 50-100 swings at least twice a week. Even if they're dry cuts in the basement without a ball, so long as he's keeping in mind the proper swing mechanics as he's doing it, this will help to smooth his swing out and lock it into his muscle memory, making it one less thing to worry about once he's on the field.

Another thing he can start doing is some physical conditioning. From what I've seen, boys at age 14 still boys, whereas boys at age 16 are young men -- they fill out dramatically in that short period of time, so most 14 and 15-year olds do tend to struggle when they're asked to play with the 16s, 17s, or 18s. If he want to narrow that gap a bit, he needs to start working on strengthening his wrists, shoulders, and core in particular, and also needs to place some focus and improving his quickness. Wrist strength can be improved in several ways, from playing tennis (or any racquet sport) during the offseason, to squeezing a tennis ball or stress ball, to playing the drums. To get the most out of a shoulder program, he needs to plan to do high reps with very light weights -- no more than 5 lbs -- to engage only the rotator cuff muscles and firm them up. And core, of course, means a butt-load of crunches. My favorite quickness drill is "The Dot Drill" or "Five Dot Drill" which can easily be located in several places on the web -- if you google it, you can pull up instructions as well as a few youtube demonstrations. Basically, it's a hopscotch-type drill designed to get the athlete's feet moving very quickly in a series of simple patterns, developing foot speed, balance, and body control.

One other thing he can do is get his hands on as many instructional books and videos as he can and learn everything. Tom House's books on pitching are very good, anything by Rod Delmonico is an invaluable resource on offensive skills, etc. Knowledge is power and the game of baseball is no exception.

Finally, your son needs to not panic. Entering his second year with the team, he should now be familiar with the way things are done on the team, he should have an understanding of the coaches' expectations, and he should be a year wiser and stronger. That, all by itself, should make the upcoming year better for him, even if he does nothing else during the winter.

Oh, and one other thing: I have never in my life met a coach who doesn't appreciate hustle and hard work. If your son is busting his ass on the diamond, he will get rewarded with playing time and, chances are very good, he'll progress faster than other kids who don't work as hard, even if those other kids have more natural talent. Give me nine so-so athletes who work hard and I'll win more games than I lose, no matter who the competition is.

Good luck to your son!

[Raymond Onion]

Thanks! That sounds like great advice.

[dread pirate jimbo]

You're very welcome! If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask.

[dread pirate jimbo]

We're right in the middle of spring training these days, so I just wanted to throw it out there that I have much baseball wisdom to impart to eager students... Ask your questions! Do it! Do it now!!!

[Clothahump]

YER OUTTA HERE!!!!

Sorry - I'm an umpire. Couldn't resist!

[Cluricaun]

We're right in the middle of spring training these days, so I just wanted to throw it out there that I have much baseball wisdom to impart to eager students... Ask your questions! Do it! Do it now!!!

Ok, so the Cubs seem to be cursed with guys who are All Stars for half the season and then just collapse in the second half, Kosuke Fukudome and Alfonso Soriano come to mind, but why is that? Are they injury prone types that are trying to play through pain and that's limiting them or is there some other reason that they die a slow death at the end of June every season? Is it that the manager is apathetic?

Also, true or false, Chone Figgins has the best name in the history of baseball.

[dread pirate jimbo]

Ok, so the Cubs seem to be cursed with guys who are All Stars for half the season and then just collapse in the second half, Kosuke Fukudome and Alfonso Soriano come to mind, but why is that? Are they injury prone types that are trying to play through pain and that's limiting them or is there some other reason that they die a slow death at the end of June every season? Is it that the manager is apathetic?

Also, true or false, Chone Figgins has the best name in the history of baseball.

The Cubbies seem to have a special knack for recruiting the perfect mix of players who will find a way to self destruct before they can get too far into a playoff run. It's hard to pin down what exactly it is about the team that causes this: my man Fonzie Soriano, for example, never played in fewer than 145 games in a season before arriving in Chicago. Now, inexplicably, he's a lock to miss a month or more, although his offensive numbers, when he's healthy, are as good or better than they've ever been. I don't think anyone would accuse Lou Freaking Pinella of being apathetic to his face without getting punched, so I don't think that's the problem. Nor do I think it's upper management, as they have been pretty loose with the money and consistently pretty good at building what looks like a pretty strong organization. To be honest, I'm not sure how a team that has consistently looked that good on paper has managed to die every year for so long. I think the only legitimate explanation is that the Baseball Gods just don't like the Cubs and wish them to suffer, although I have no idea what you poor bastards did to anger Them.

I'm going to have to go with false to your second question. Chone Figgins is a damn fine name, but I was always partial to Benito Santiago -- it just rolls off the tongue so pleasantly. I also like the names Yorvit Torrealba, Dizzy Dean, Clay Hill (minor league catcher in the late 70s, although he never made it to the Majors), Ryne Sandberg, and Coco Crisp.

[vison]

Baseball, baseball. Yes, we have our Opening Day on Saturday, March 27th. Our president quit in a huff two weeks ago and left us scrambling and after the season is over I think we're going to burn him at the stake. Why is it that some guys just lose their bloody minds over their kids' game? The saga would make an excellent movie. Maybe I'll write a screenplay and send it to . . . . oh, let's say Gene Hackman.

Baseball players do have lovely names, don't they? How can you improve on Mickey Mantle? It's like a comic book hero's name!

[dread pirate jimbo]

Baseball, baseball. Yes, we have our Opening Day on Saturday, March 27th. Our president quit in a huff two weeks ago and left us scrambling and after the season is over I think we're going to burn him at the stake. Why is it that some guys just lose their bloody minds over their kids' game? The saga would make an excellent movie. Maybe I'll write a screenplay and send it to . . . . oh, let's say Gene Hackman.

Baseball players do have lovely names, don't they? How can you improve on Mickey Mantle? It's like a comic book hero's name!

League executives are easily the biggest hassle I have to deal with. Every year there are a couple fresh faces, always looking out for the interests of "the kids," and by "the kids" they always mean their own kids and to hell with the other 150 athletes in the system. Their arrogance and political motivations preclude them from seeking advice from those of us who have been around forever and seen it all, so the same mistakes get made over and over. It can be very frustrating.

Happily, we've never had the league president up and quit like that -- that would really suck big-time. Last year, we had a guy volunteer to be the league VP finance and then promptly quit when his kid wasn't drafted, in spite of being specifically asked if that would happen before he was given the job. Not cool. Even worse, the assholes running the league re-elected him to the same position this year, with the same assurances that he wouldn't quit if his talentless kid didn't get drafted in his second try -- a team took pity on the kid and selected him with the very last pick of the draft, so I guess we dodged that bullet this year. Still not cool.

There have been a great many excellent names in baseball history and tons and tons of awesome nicknames, although that has begun to fall out of favour in recent years. Still, ya gotta love nicknames like Shoeless Joe, Babe, Yogi, Scooter, The Wizard of Oz, Chipper, The Big Train, Boog, Three Finger, etc...

[vison]

Well, I'm nearly at the end of my 3 year term as secretary/treasurer and I believe I will stay on if asked to. It's not a lot of work and I think this league is important enough for me to put some effort into it. My own 2 boys still play but luckily they are both pretty good players and get drafted without worry. However, I wouldn't interfere anyway. They're there to have fun playing ball. I'm really looking forward to seeing my 15 year old on the field, boys that age play such good ball. They're reckless and yet having played since they were 5 years old they have lots of skill, too. And now that the Nationals are behind us, there shouldn't be too much political interference. The VP that stepped up has no kids in the league and he's been our head umpire for 20 years and knows everything and everybody. A bit of a blowhard (like all umps) but capable.

But given Little League's Byzantine rules, it's hard to manage the 11/12 division. Everyone gets Williamsport in their heads and it's so stupid, the kids go down there and get smoked by teams that have many advantages Canadian kids don't have. One of which is, a lot of them can play ball all year long. We get April, May and June.

Still, it's fun.

[dread pirate jimbo]

Well, I'm nearly at the end of my 3 year term as secretary/treasurer and I believe I will stay on if asked to. It's not a lot of work and I think this league is important enough for me to put some effort into it. My own 2 boys still play but luckily they are both pretty good players and get drafted without worry. However, I wouldn't interfere anyway. They're there to have fun playing ball. I'm really looking forward to seeing my 15 year old on the field, boys that age play such good ball. They're reckless and yet having played since they were 5 years old they have lots of skill, too. And now that the Nationals are behind us, there shouldn't be too much political interference. The VP that stepped up has no kids in the league and he's been our head umpire for 20 years and knows everything and everybody. A bit of a blowhard (like all umps) but capable.

But given Little League's Byzantine rules, it's hard to manage the 11/12 division. Everyone gets Williamsport in their heads and it's so stupid, the kids go down there and get smoked by teams that have many advantages Canadian kids don't have. One of which is, a lot of them can play ball all year long. We get April, May and June.

Still, it's fun.

Let's be perfectly honest, too -- one of the major advantages some teams have at the Little League World Series (and the Big League World Series, for 16-18 year-olds) is that they cheat shamelessly, usually without consequence. When 14-year-old Danny Almonte and his team from the Bronx got caught in 2001 pretending that Danny was only 12 while utterly dominating the competition, my response was to shrug and say, "Well, yeah, that's how Little League does business." Back in the mid-90s, the league I coach in ran under the Big League umbrella and we lost the Canadian championships to a team from BC who had faked three birth certificates for star 19-year-old kids playing college ball for Washington State to put them over the top. We demonstrated that they had cheated, but Big League International chose to ignore our complaint until months after the World Series, allowing the BC team to go while our kids got screwed over. We left that organization and changed our affiliation to Babe Ruth Baseball, where we've been ever since.

My point is that there are a significant number of people out there whoput winning above all else, don't look out for the best interests of the kids, and seek only their own glory -- those people cause nothing but problems. That really pisses me off. Good to hear you take your position so seriously!

P.S. I once met an umpire who wasn't a blowhard. But just once.

[vison]

Oh, the cheating is appalling. But any big organization has one main rule: Admit Nothing. Well, 2 main rules: the second one being: Cover Your Ass.

One of our past coaches had coached in Washington State and California and he had the same kids from the time they were 5 until they were 14. No draft, no "fair play", none of it, and yet they represented Washington State in several World Series events over the years. He was absolutely gobsmacked when we actually followed the rules. Well, some of the time.

Our erstwhile president brought in an illegal coach for the post-season and almost got away with it. Almost. But had our boys won another game in the Nationals, there would have been protests and those protests would have been upheld at the District level - so the coach threw the last game they played to avoid the embarassment, I guess. Not only did he throw it, he put in an illegal pitcher, which would have meant we forfeited the game anyway. When I think how hard our boys worked all the winter and spring of 2008/2009, and they did, they worked their asses off, and then got thrown under the bus in the semi-final? I could choke that man to death, no kidding. I can still see our boys standing by the fence watching the final. 14 year old boys have hearts, too, and those hearts were broken. Those kids know baseball and they knew they were deliberately screwed over.

They weren't going to win the tournament anyway. The team that won was unstoppable. Then, the president awarded a Golden Glove for Outstanding Defensive Play to HIS kid. I am one of the official scorekeepers and I counted up afterward and his kid had as many errors as all the other boys put together. Shortstop. He'd miss the godamned ball, then stand staring with this cute little puzzled look at his glove, as if to scold it. Once, he KICKED the ball to first base!!! If there's one place you need a guy with a good glove and who can think on his feet, it's short. We had 2 boys who excelled at short, but they sat most of the time.

In the various tournaments leading up to the nationals, this idiot kid pitched a lot. He was allowed to walk 6 batters in a row in 2 games. In the first game, after 8 runs had scored (4 of them walked in), my grandson went in and struck out 7 men in a row. In the other game, he went in after the president's son, and allowed one run in and struck out 4, with 2 fly outs and one at home plate. Did he pitch in the final game? What do you think?

I'm really surprised my boy and most of the others still want to play this year. The Golden Glove boy is now on the Blaze, where your daddy has to pay big, big bucks for you to ride the pine. It's not the kid's fault his dad is a dork, but unfortunately the kid is also a dork.

It's not that I think my boy is Big League material, because I certainly don't. He's not interested in trying out for the various rep teams around here, or for the Blaze or the Cardinals or any of those. He just wants to play for fun. But he's a really good ball player for a 15 year old boy, throws like a rocket, loves the game, loves the atmosphere at the park, and when guys like our former president pull the kind of crap we saw last season, it's very disheartening. Most of us parents and grandparents have been together since the kids were 4 or 5, we have many seasons of fun to remember, many friends made. I hate to see that kind of thing destroyed as it nearly was last season.

[dread pirate jimbo]

A 15-year-old with a rocket for an arm might have a future in ball at the college level, if he wants it. After that, who knows? Hard throwers are a relatively rare commodity, and that makes him valuable.

[OneCentStamp]

Hard throwers are a relatively rare commodity, and that makes him valuable.

Along these lines, would you say arm strength is something that can be refined if someone has it, but not taught to someone who doesn't? In basketball, you can't teach height. In football, you can't teach speed. Is there such an attribute in baseball?

[vison]

Tay has always had amazing hand/eye coordination. And he has naturally good mechanics, he's tall and lean with long arms. Physics guarantees that the ball is going to be going fast when it leaves his hand. Mechanics are very important and luckily for Tay he never learned any bad habits, has always thrown properly and seldom gets a sore arm.

However, he doesn't want to take baseball that seriously. He could probably get a college scholarship all right, but not to a good school and he doesn't want to go to college anyway.

You can tell which kids have the nature and which kids don't. The above-mentioned president's son is not a natural athlete, even though he LOOKS like he is. He has no instinctive understanding of motion, can't see the play ahead - always reacting, never pro-acting, if you know what I mean. Tay and a couple of other boys on his team have that "instinct". You can't teach it.

Baseball is a game of time and motion. Long spells of nothing and then furious action. You have to be ready, but not waste your energy.

[dread pirate jimbo]

Along these lines, would you say arm strength is something that can be refined if someone has it, but not taught to someone who doesn't? In basketball, you can't teach height. In football, you can't teach speed. Is there such an attribute in baseball?

Arm strength can certainly be improved, as can most things (except height, as you've noted), but your natural gifts are a limiting factor. Nevertheless, I've seen learning proper throwing mechanics and developing more muscle mass improve a kid's velocity significantly -- we had a guy onm the team a few years back who we drafted late based on body type and potential who was throwing about 63 mph when we got him, but was a tall kid for a 15-year-old (already 6'1") and had clearly never got any instruction. By the time he was 17 (and 6'5"), we had him clocked at 89 mph and he was getting some attention from Major League scouts (although he never got drafted). He went on to play a couple years of college ball before hanging up his cleats.

Speed, quickness, soft hands, bat speed, hand-eye coordination can all be improved with the right training and the right dedication. But yeah, a slow kid will never become a fast kid -- he might be able to evolve into a less slow kid. And so on. The one thing I've seen that truly can't be taught is focus; a kid is either dedicated to putting out the effort to get the most out of his abilities or he doesn't. The ones with focus and drive move on to bigger and better things and the rest go on with their lives.

Tay has always had amazing hand/eye coordination. And he has naturally good mechanics, he's tall and lean with long arms. Physics guarantees that the ball is going to be going fast when it leaves his hand. Mechanics are very important and luckily for Tay he never learned any bad habits, has always thrown properly and seldom gets a sore arm.

However, he doesn't want to take baseball that seriously. He could probably get a college scholarship all right, but not to a good school and he doesn't want to go to college anyway.

You can tell which kids have the nature and which kids don't. The above-mentioned president's son is not a natural athlete, even though he LOOKS like he is. He has no instinctive understanding of motion, can't see the play ahead - always reacting, never pro-acting, if you know what I mean. Tay and a couple of other boys on his team have that "instinct". You can't teach it.

Baseball is a game of time and motion. Long spells of nothing and then furious action. You have to be ready, but not waste your energy.

Having The Knack is a huge advantage -- knowing where to go and when and what to do when you get there. Cal Ripken had that -- his stats would suggest that he was among the absolute elite shortstops in history in terms of range, but I don't thgink I ever saw him take more than four steps to a ball -- he was simply always in the right position at the right time because he knew, before the pitch, where the ball was going to be hit and would go there. Stud.

But again, ultimately, if the boy doesn't desperately want it, and he's just out there to have fun, well, that's fine too and I'm sure he'll enjoy his time playing. But he might have some options available to him down the road if he changes his mind.

[dread pirate jimbo]

YER OUTTA HERE!!!!

Sorry - I'm an umpire. Couldn't resist!

Forgot to mention -- In all my years of coaching I've never once been ejected from a game. I've been warned a time or two (including once when I went out to the mound "to talk to my pitcher" and then questioned the ump's strike zone when he finally came out to break up the meeting... but I started getting the low strike. Win!), but never thrown out. Maybe I need to start running my mouth some more...

Anyway, IN YOUR FACE! You got nothing, Blue!!

[vison]

I always feel sorry for the umpires that are kids, because in every league there is some jackass coach who tries to bully them. Our head umpire is at the park all the time (it seems that way, anyway) and he keeps an eagle eye on these things. As well, as a member of the executive, I have the power to intervene if I think a coach is going too far and the ump looks worried or scared. I haven't done it, but sometimes if I just go and stand close to the fence they get the picture.

Most of the guys are great. They know the umpires are only kids and if an ump makes a crappy call on one team, chances are he'll make another one and it'll likely be on the other team. We rarely run across umps with an obvious bias - and when we do, it's always an adult ump.

Off to the park this evening for the first practice in the 13/14 division and to find out which team my 15 year old is on. A beautiful day, too, so will be a beautiful evening.

I do love baseball.

[Laughing Lagomorph]

Coach, where do you stand on Dallas Braden's assertion that other players shouldn't cross the pitcher's mound during the game?

Do you think it is simply common courtesy that most players would follow, or do you think it rises to the level of "unwritten rule"?

[dread pirate jimbo]

Dallas Braden just joined a pretty elite group of pitchers yesterday by being the 19th guy ever to throw a perfect game in the Majors. So whatever he wants, I say he gets!

But seriously, though, you're referring to the incident last month when A-Roid ran across the mound, to which Braden took exception. This definitely falls into the broad category of unwritten rules in baseball (of which there are many) and is really all about conducting yourself with class and respect. A-Roid has shown on any number of occassions that he has neither. The correct method of instructing the offender in this little scenario, of course, is to teach him the proper level of respect by putting the next pitch he sees in his ear-hole. But teams don't tend to take care of business like that anymore.

Generally speaking, I would put this infraction in the same category as many other etiquette issues on the diamond, like standing at the plate admiring a home run, which should earn you a hit batsman the next time you come to bat. Or maybe trying to slap the ball out of the first baseman's mitt or screaming like a little bitch as you run by a player trying to catch a pop-up. These are all things I do not tolerate on my ball team and I'd like to think are things that are reinforced among most teams as the difference between doing things the right way and doing things without class or respect for your opponent. Rodriguez has tremendous talent, no question (even without the artificial enhancements), but he has consistently conducted himself in a very poor manner. This has a lot to do with why he's so unpopular while someone with arguably less talent like Derek Jeter is so consistently praised.

[What Exit?]

Dallas Braden just joined a pretty elite group of pitchers yesterday by being the 19th guy ever to throw a perfect game in the Majors. So whatever he wants, I say he gets!

But seriously, though, you're referring to the incident last month when A-Roid ran across the mound, to which Braden took exception. This definitely falls into the broad category of unwritten rules in baseball (of which there are many) and is really all about conducting yourself with class and respect. A-Roid has shown on any number of occassions that he has neither. The correct method of instructing the offender in this little scenario, of course, is to teach him the proper level of respect by putting the next pitch he sees in his ear-hole. But teams don't tend to take care of business like that anymore.

Generally speaking, I would put this infraction in the same category as many other etiquette issues on the diamond, like standing at the plate admiring a home run, which should earn you a hit batsman the next time you come to bat. Or maybe trying to slap the ball out of the first baseman's mitt or screaming like a little bitch as you run by a player trying to catch a pop-up. These are all things I do not tolerate on my ball team and I'd like to think are things that are reinforced among most teams as the difference between doing things the right way and doing things without class or respect for your opponent. Rodriguez has tremendous talent, no question (even without the artificial enhancements), but he has consistently conducted himself in a very poor manner. This has a lot to do with why he's so unpopular while someone with arguably less talent like Derek Jeter is so consistently praised.

I don't really like to defend A-Rod, he does often do stupid and silly things, but this unwritten rule seems to be one of the less universal ones. Veteran and retired pitchers seem fairly divided on it especially as he did the walk over the mound after the 3rd out and not during the inning.

Braden seems to have his nose out of joint far more than he should have and looked foolish to me.

[dread pirate jimbo]

I don't really like to defend A-Rod, he does often do stupid and silly things, but this unwritten rule seems to be one of the less universal ones. Veteran and retired pitchers seem fairly divided on it especially as he did the walk over the mound after the 3rd out and not during the inning.

Braden seems to have his nose out of joint far more than he should have and looked foolish to me.

While I don't necessarily disagree with you that it was an overreaction, we're looking at a player who has a track record for classless moves. As far as I'm concerned, the only reason any player who isn't the pitcher should ever be on the mound under any circumstances is either a) to hand the pitcher the ball, or b) if they're having a conference on the mound. Beyond that, he's in a spot where he ought not be. And again, you'll note that Braden didn't flip out over Jeter running across his mound, or Teixeira, or Posada or anyone else -- pretty much without exception in the last few years, if someone on the Yankees is doing something jerky, it's Rodriguez doing it. And let's face it, most of his classless actions have been pretty minor offenses in the grand scheme of things. Yelping as you run by the third baseman as he catches a pop fly? How old is he, 12? As much as I despise the Yankees with every fiber of my being and wish them all to DIAF, the organization has been very, very classy over the last number of years, with that one abberration over at third base, who should be horribly disfigured in a fire, then recover a bit, then be more horribly disfigured in a different fire, then recover some more, then be accidentally dropped in hydrochloric acid, then somehow manage to recover from that, only to DIAF.

[What Exit?]

Hard to disagree that A-Rod often acts like a spoiled brat at best and a punk all too often.

[Laughing Lagomorph]

Yeah, I'm reluctant to defend A-Rod as a human being either. The best interpretation you can put on too many of his actions over the years is that he is possesed of an epically huge sense of entitlement.

I do wonder though how this mound-crossing incident happened. Was it:

1) A Machiavellian plan on his part to get inside the head of a young pitcher by doing something, apparently innoncently, that he could plausibly deny doing on purpose?

2) An honest mistake on his part where he crossed the mound on purpose and really didn't expect the reaction he got?

or

3) He is so supremely wrapped up in himself that other human beings barely register and he didn't think about it one way or the other?

[Rube E. Tewesday]

Something I'm kinda curious about is a point Jimbo touched on. Why doesn't A-Rod get the dustings and the cleats to the shin that would have been used to teach him some manners in an earlier era?

[What Exit?]

Yeah, I'm reluctant to defend A-Rod as a human being either. The best interpretation you can put on too many of his actions over the years is that he is possesed of an epically huge sense of entitlement.

I do wonder though how this mound-crossing incident happened. Was it:

1) A Machiavellian plan on his part to get inside the head of a young pitcher by doing something, apparently innoncently, that he could plausibly deny doing on purpose?

2) An honest mistake on his part where he crossed the mound on purpose and really didn't expect the reaction he got?

or

3) He is so supremely wrapped up in himself that other human beings barely register and he didn't think about it one way or the other?

I vote for 3. Seriously, I really think this was it.

Something I'm kinda curious about is a point Jimbo touched on. Why doesn't A-Rod get the dustings and the cleats to the shin that would have been used to teach him some manners in an earlier era?

Damn good question considering how often they go after Jeter, the Yankee that all the other players seem to respect and the Yankee haters begrudgingly praise. You would expect A-Rod to be throw at more often.