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Popularity And Coverage
by Dave
Friday, June 08, 2007
The question on Yahoo Answers reads:
"Why such dismal coverage of NCAA softball championship? I just did a search to get the final score for last nights game two of the WCWS between Tenn and AZ. Wow, it took me several clicks. However ask me about the stupid Florida coaches "struggle" with which million dollar job to take and thats "front page"...and they aren't even in season. What will it take for a little equal time?"
Two of six answers offered by readers were:
"There is such a thing as NCAA softball?"
"Softball has never received a lot of coverage because it is not a popular commercial sport. Most sports fans whom advertisers like are men, and most men don't watch softball, especially during the NBA playoffs and the start of the MLB season. No viewers = no coverage because sponsors wont pay for commercials."
Um, those are some rather uninformed opinions to say the least. ESPN airs the WCWS and some regular season games not to mention extensive coverage of conference championships precisely because they get good ratings from them. I can't say that I've tracked the precise amount of air time but this year seems to have had lots more coverage than last, which in turn had more coverage than the previous year.
Last time I checked, I was a man. I watched about 50 college softball games this year on TV. Many of my male friends did similarly. Men watch fastpitch softball at least as much as women. And while I am a huge (enormous) college basketball fan, I have not watched a complete pro basketball game in over two years. The pro game is tremendously boring and one need only check the score, then tune in for the final 4 minutes in order to see everything that went on of any importance. As a result, basketball (including the playoffs) does very poorly in terms of TV ratings. That's why there were very few daytime games on weekends during the conference finals. Nobody brought up hockey but hockey TV ratings (during the playoffs) are fairly similar to women's college softball regular season games. And by the way, there are plenty of advertisers for women's softball since women do most of the buying in this country. Married men generally pick up the crumbs and buy ... very little.
An important part of any analysis of the popularity and coverage of fastpitch softball is the fact that the sport just isn't all that old or well developed. When I mention the sport's age, I am referring to its age generally as well as the length of time it has been played across the country and world as well as the age of the NCAA and other championships. Fastpitch softball, as we know it, wasn't really played before the 1940s and even then, it wasn't played in that version across the country. The slowpitch sport was introduced to Australia in the 1930s and to Europe after WWII. The UK didn't play it until the 1960s. Many colleges didn't play it formally in intercollegiate competition 20 years ago. The University of Georgia which competes in the powerhouse SEC didn't field a team until the 1990s. One broadcaster noted that Florida colleges couldn't put together a single roster with the number of NCAA level softball players coming out of the state's high school until 5 years ago. Now there are a ton of good players coming out of the state. The fastest rising college conference in softball is probably the ACC in which most schools didn't even field teams ten years ago. The NCAA championship started in 1982. It involved exclusively western states until a few years ago because many mid-western, eastern and southern schools didn't field teams, and after they did, were not competitive anyways. That is quickly changing.
Fastpitch softball is but a baby. Complaining about its popularity or the coverage of its games is a bit like complaining about your child's inability to handle calculus or to prepare an expository essay, when your child is 5 years old. It is quickly spreading like a fever, however, and the coverage is sure to follow. It's popularity will surely dictate the amount of publicity it receives.
Wikipedia says "Softball is the most popular participant sport in the United States. An estimated 40 million Americans will play at least one game of softball during a year. It is played by both genders socially as well as competitively. Softball is played, at some level, in over a hundred countries around the world." But that's really just church league softball when you get right down to it. Just how popular is bona fide competitive fastpitch softball?
Our junior high school held tryouts this year and had to cut about 60 kids to bring the roster down to 18, the number for which they had uniforms. I heard similar stories about other schools, both junior and regular high schools. In our local Little League organization, there are about half as many girls as boys but that's largely because competitive girls leave the league to play for travel clubs. And whereas every father with a son wants him to play baseball, many parents of girls do not push their daughters to play ball.
As far as fan interest, recently there was a high school county championship semi-final game about an hour away from my home which drew 750 people! Our local county and conference finals usually draw around 300 fans which is comparable to what baseball draws.
Colleges sometimes do very well at drawing fans to watch softball. The University of Arizona, this year's national champs, draws good crowds to its games. Attendance averages more than 1,000 per game. Games against rivals usually top 2,000. The women's college world series did quite well this year too. At one game they had a record crowd in excess of 8,000.
Our local newspapers do a really good job of covering girls softball in the local high schools. There is one writer and one photographer who are dedicated to coverage of most big games. Almost all the box scores are included each day. And every week they analyze the entire conference, which is very large, including compilations of season to date stats. There is, by contrast, almost no coverage of the local colleges, of which there are many.
And this is where I'd like to end the discussion. A few years back I lamented that there was no place available in the media or otherwise where I could find a listing of local tournaments. That was before my kids got involved with tournament ball and now I know where all the tournaments within driving distance are being held. But people who are not involved in the sport haven't got a clue about where competitions are taking place. If they wanted to see some fastpitch, they couldn't. And that goes double for college level play. We had to dig deep to find out where and when the local colleges were playing. We were committed to finding some college games to view so we kept after it until we found something. The average fan won't be able to find anything and will most likely have to settle for high school games. I think the colleges are to blame for all this problems. They don't make a practice of contacting the newspapers about their results. They don't advertise their schedules. The local band of "professional wrestling" amateurs (and these boys are real rank amateurs) do a superior job of promoting their "contests" than the local college softball teams do.
The NCAA for its part doesn't do much better. On mother's day, my wife announced that it was a travesty that there wasn't a good game to go see. So I dug for the next three hours, checking every last corner and crevice of the Internet to see if I could find something. Eventually I discovered that an NCAA Div III regional was being played within an easy distance of our home. The only rub was the championship game was over before I discovered it. No place in our media told us that there was bona fide championship softball being played anywhere locally. They just don't promote these things very well. And that's at least part of the issue.
We are all responsible for letting the media know how popular this sport is. We don't want any more attention than the actual interest warrants. But we want as much as that interest justifies. It is our job to write to the Yahoo's, big newspapers, and other media types to let them know what we want. We should continue to badger them until they at least acknowledge us. We are a growing force which will warrant tons of coverage but we need them to see us. And groups like the NCAA should be leading the way.Labels: media
Permanent Link: Popularity And Coverage
 
Just Tape It And Get Out There
by Dave
Thursday, June 07, 2007
During a preseason practice, my daughter took a bad hop grounder and busted her throwing hand index finger. It didn't cause that much trouble for her in terms of playing the field or batting. Her throwing was a little off, lacking the velocity she usually had but she was still able to get runners out during scrimmages from her normal position at third. Her hitting actually improved since the broken finger caused her to grip the bat less tightly, something I had been trying to get her to do for a while. But the real problem was she was unable to pitch her normal 4 times a week offseason regimen. The finger hurt whenever she tried to throw the fastball and screw. We had an early season tournament in which she was playing up an age group and while she was warming up to pitch, the pain reduced her to tears. We had to figure something out or shut her down for a couple weeks.
We decided to give the kid a break for a week and then give it another try. Her pitching coach came up with the idea of taping the finger for lessons. That seemed to do the trick as she said it still hurt but it didn't get any worse as she went along. The coach suggested just taping the finger for workouts and not pitching any scrimmages or tournaments untilo she could pitch without the tape. "You can't pitch tournaments with anything on your pitching hand," he said. "I know," I agreed. Everybody knows that, right? You know that, don't you? OK then, cite the rule!
The other night while watching the Women's College World Series (WCWS), there was a fair amount of discussion regarding Taryne Mowatt, Arizona's ace and some blister problems she had during this year. It got so bad during the WCWS that she was unable to locate most of her pitches and had to rely on her changeup more than I have ever seen any college pitcher rely on it. I think almost half of her pitches during the final series were changes.
One item that was discussed briefly in this context was the fact that she was wearing white tape on her pitching hand to protect the blister. She said something about the ball getting bloody as a result of the blister during some games - kind of puts the "Curt Schilling bloody sock" thing to shame. In any event, I was surprised to learn that she was allowed to wear the tape on her pitching hand so I looked it up.
According to NCAA rules, "The pitcher chall not wear any item on the pitching fingers, hand, wrist, forearm or thighs that an umpire considers distracting. This includes a batting glove, sweatband and loose lacing on a glove, or ball-colored logos. Exception: The pitcher's fingers, hand, wrist, forearm or elbow may be taped for injury, providing such tape is a neutral color." (Rule 10, section 13(c))
So wearing tape is permitted in NCAA play provided the tape is a "neutral color." Personally, I do not believe white tape is neutral since it contrasts with skin color but the umps didn't make her change it. For your information, I have definitely seen medical tape in skin color available at just about any drug store. I would advice college coaches, trainers, etc. to get some since it is just possible that a particular umpire might not allow a pitcher to use white tape due to the contrast.
This was the first time I had ever seen a pitcher allowed to wear tape while pitching in a game. In tournaments, we've been forced to remove both black and white batting gloves from the glove hand because umpires have objected while claiming that a pitcher isn't allowed to wear anything extraneous. This caused us some trouble as one pitcher's glove had cracked and was digging a sore into her glove hand causing excessive distraction while in the circle. But we didn't dispute it because "everyone knows you can't wear anything while pitching." When I saw Mowatt out there with tape and then checked the NCAA rules, I decided I better check other rules as well.
I can't find an official ASA rulebook on the web and I don't possess one, so I can't check there. I decided to look at the NSA rulebook which states, "During the game, the pitcher may not use tape or other substances on the ball, pitching hand or fingers; nor shall any player apply foreign substance to the ball. With the umpire's approval, powdered resin may be used to dry the hand. The wearing of any item on the pitching hand, wrist, or arm that may be distracting to the batter will not be allowed." (Rule 6, Sec. 8)
I wasn't able to find a current PONY rulebook online, 2005 is available but I couldn't find 2007. However, I possess a hard copy of the current one so I decided to check there as well. PONY says, "The pitcher shall not, at any time during the game, be allowed to use tape or any other foreign substances upon the ball, the pitching hand or fingers nor shall any other player apply a foreign substance to the ball. Under the supervision and control of the umpire, powdered resin may be used to dry the hands ... A pitcher shall not wear any item on the pitching hand, wrist, forearm, elbow or thighs, which may, in the umpire's judgment, be distracting. Batting gloves may not be worn on the pitching hand."
So, there you have it. NCAA rules specifically allow pitchers with injuries to wear tape (neutrally colored tape) on the pitching hand if there is an injury. Youth rules, as far as I can tell, do not allow this. I have no idea, off the top of my head, if high school rules are closer to NCAA rules or the ones applying to youth tournament ball. And this raises an important issue to me.
If you compare the NSA and PONY rulebooks on this issue, the differences are diction-related items. There is a "that" here vs. a "which" there and other such meaningless differences. The differences are almost comical. They imply plagarism which has been adjusted so nobody can claim copyright infringement. That's ridiculous.
We, in youth fastpitch, need one common set of rules across the broad spectrum of rules for at least the elements which are common. I understand that while college uses the 43 foot pitching distance, most high school uses 40. Most youth is changing to 43 feet this year at least at the championship level. Personally, I'd like to see the distances identical across all types of competition based on age category. I watched one high school pitcher bounce back and forth from 40 to 43 during the early part of this year's season. That's a bit much since her movement pitches lacked the pinpoint accuracy required for success. But I'm willing to stand back and watch that happen - I do think the distances will become identical across the different types of play over the next two years.
There are other rules which vary according to the type of plkay one engages in. ASA and NSA play require two feet on the pitching plate. The high school games I have seen do not. PONY doesn't require it either. I have observed so much crow hopping in one sort of play or another that I have begun simply "caw-cawing" at certain games. I have watched pitchers walk into pitches at certain competitions, complained to the umps and been told that this is perfectly legal in this particular kind of competition. I've watched pitchers take the signal from the back of the circle, walk slowly to the rubber, and then, without stopping go directly into their wind-ups. There are a million little things which one day is illegal and another day perfectly fine. It is confusing as heck to me and I wonder what that says about a 10 - 14 year old trying to learn to do things the right way.
Last year at a nationakl competition, my kid was pitching and the coaches from the other team watched her very closely. After a couple of pitches to the first batter, they requested a conference with the plate ump and then discussed what they thought she was doing illegal. After severalo tries for different elements of her wind-up, the coaches got the ump's attention about one thing. They alleged she was bring her hands together twice during the wind-up. I have it on tape and can prove that she really was not but it was close enough for the ump to warn her. This threw her into a state of confusion and her coach could not go out and talk to her without being charged for a conference. I recognize that kids ought to be taught the right way and in a national tournament, there is no room for being nice. But these adults decided to try to get into the pitcher's head so their team could win a game. That's reprehensible. And it didn't work. She shut them down completely!
To conclude this piece and get back to my other more mundane responsibilities, I would just like to put this out there. There ought to be one single set of rules for pitching in fastpitch the way the rules are mostly identical in baseball. All this nonsense we see with varying rules about the whole pitching motion ius counter-productive for our sport. In basketball, we see onbe set of rules for international play and a different set for the American amateur and professional games. In softball at the highest levels we see this too. Just what exactly is the purpose of that? Who is served? In the amateur age-group ranks there are different rules for pitching. Why and who is served by that? Can't we all just get along?Labels: pitching, rules
Permanent Link: Just Tape It And Get Out There
Small Ball, Sneer
by Dave
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
The coach of our next opponent approached me because I was the only one wearing the "official" team shirt. He said, "Hey coach, how'd you do in the last round?" I told him that we hadn't had much of an opponent in the quarterfinals of the tournament. We had won via the run rule, something like 12-0. I asked the coach to reciprocate by telling me how they had done in their quarterfinal game. He said, "We won 8-2. They weren't very good either. They tried that small ball stuff on us and scored two runs in the first. After that, we shut them down."
The coach had said "that small ball stuff" with such a sneer that it startled me. After he left, I immediately went to the real coaches of our team (I coach a younger age group) and told them what the guy had said. They laughed and the manager said, "I guess we'll have to bunt them into submission." We did just that, scoring 2 runs in the first which would have given us the win regardless of anything else. We scored a couple more in the next inning with our ... sneer ... "small ball tactics" ... sneer. After that, we let our hitters hit away which was easy since their pitcher didn't want to walk anyone lest we engage in small ball again.
The opposition scored one in the fifth and that was about it. They couldn't touch our pitcher and they certainly were not proficient at "small ball." It wasn't much of a contest. We got all we needed in our first at-bat.
Did you happen to catch any of the first two games between Arizona and Tennessee in the championship series of the women's college world series? The first game was not particularly interesting as two solo homers won the day for Tennessee and Monica Abbott was lights out. Arizona was not able to get many runners on base and, on the few occassions they did, they could not move them. Game two was a bit different.
In game 2, Arizona got a few more hits but they were still unable to move the runners along. Tennessee threatened several times but didn't score as the game went into extra innings 0-0. I'm still a little stressed by it all. Who was I cheering for? I was cheering for as third game. It doesn't so much matter to me who wins the championship. -; I have a deep aprpeciation for Mike Candrea but I think it would be better for the game to have someone else as champion - especially an SEC team. But in my heart of hearts, what I wanted was another game.
So the game went on very stressfully with nobody pushing one across. There were threats and good pitching and fielding put a stop to them. I think it could have gone on like this for hours, perhaps days. Finally Arizona began bunting. They pushed across the winning run on a slap to short with runners at the corners after a great slide on which I'm still not convinced the runner from third got a hand on the plate. "Small ball" won the day. I expect we'll see the same sort of game played tonight when the champion is crowned. I expect maybe both teams will try "small ball," sneer.
I asked a kid to join my team last fall and she agreed. I had invited her because she could bunt and because she was versatile enough to hit away when I didn't ask her to bunt. We already had two kids who could slap and drag. I felt that, given other qualities of kids who had joined us, one more kid who could bunt would be a good idea. Unfortunately, the parents see this girl as a "real hitter" and for most of this season, she has pretty much refused to bunt. I say refused but it hasn't been particularly obvious or overt. What happens is whenever she is called on to bunt, she fouls off two pitches and then I let her hit away. She hasn't laid one down for us all season. She pulls back and takes a strike sometimes and the remainder of opportunities result in foul balls.
Something about the manner and frequency this happened caused me to become suspicious that perhaps it was occurring intentionally. I'm just guessing, I can't prove anything, but I think perhaps her father told her to just foul off the bunts until two strikes and then I'd be sure to let her hit away. I've had a lot of discussions with the guy and I know he doesn't have respect for "small ball." He has commented to me about how good his kid's swing is. He occassionally sends her for private lessons to work on it, spending several hundred dollars per season.
The last time he told me about how nice her swing was, I reacted somewhat defensively by telling him that, given the "sweetness" of her swing, maybe he ought to invest in a bat. He replied, it isn't the bat which determines the good hitter, it's the swing. I agreed but I had to add that no matter how good of a swing a hitter possesses, she must also possess a bat and that thing your kid has in her hands doesn't qualify. I suggested that he was going to need another bat for her because when we play the serious tournaments, the umps are likely to ban the thing for giving the opposition too big of an advantage and because it was manufactured before they put ASA and other seals of approvals on bats. I was even willing to go into my own pocket to come up with the 30 bucks with which he could purchase a dramatically better bat. But I digress.
I'm pretty convinced that this kid was not bunting the way I had seen her in the past because the father had become convinced that she should be a big hitter and because he had seen a little too much baseball. People who spend their time around baseball rather than fastpitch softball sometimes make comments which are not relevant to the game. This guy said some thing like that and I became convinced he was trying to draw parallels between the two games. That's a fatal mistake. So I needed a way to get this kid, and some others on the team, to bunt. If I accomplished nothing else, that would be my success for the year.
My resolution was to announce that from this point forwards, we would be signaling bunts even on two strike counts. I also announced that every kid on this team was going to have to put one down or I would refuse to let them advance to the next grade - no report cards, no graduation - unless and until they successfully bunted one into fair territory. I told them that if I needed to, in one preliminary round game, each and every kid who came to bat would be instructed to bunt until they got on or were put out. I added that anyone who refused to bunt would be benched. Then I simplified the sign for bunt so that every person in the entire complex would know exactly when a bunt was called for.
The strange thing was that after these announcements, most of the kids, especially the "good hitter," were able to put down bunts at will. Surprise, surprise! For unknown reasons, almost nobody bunted foul after that. I never had to bunt with 2 strikes. I never had to take any extreme measure. We went back to the old signs in hopes of catching our opponent by surprise. Our kids just did it. They bunted into fair territory because they knew they had no other choice.
Along with my announcements, I offered a bit of a lecture to both the kids and their parents. I told them that bunting was far more an integral part of fastpitch softball than it was of baseball. In baseball it is possible for a kid to never learn to bunt and yet be successful. That's not the case in fastpitch where there are far more one run games and baserunners come at a greater premium. If you don't learn to bunt, you will not be able to move to the next level.
I suggested to my team long ago that they try to attend high school and college games whenever possible. Some have made an effort to do so. Of the biggest HS games in our area, most have been determined by small ball tactics. And many of the televised college games over the past couple of weeks have similarly been determined. Since my announcement, a number of parents have been heard commenting that I was right about bunting and they're glad I was so abrupt with them about the subject.
I have always had an appreciation for a well made bunt. I enjoyed bunting as a kid but my coaches would never let me do it. I once bunted in a game and beat it out. When I got to first, the coach greeted me with the threatenting statement, "if you ever do that again, I'm going to strangle you right here while you are on base and the game is still going." That's because he wanted me to hit the ball hard into or over the outfield. OK. I learned to live with that as a young baseball player. I only ever bunted that once in a game. I never got proficient at bunting because I was more interested in preserving my life. Then I grew up, had kids and the first thing I ever noticed in a fastpitch game was the value of a successful bunt, be it sacrifice or drag.
In fastpitch, you always want to try to put the ball in play because the bases are so close. Yet it is a bit harder to bunt successfully with the different spins and such. It's certainly not impossible but it is something which must be worked on. And you have to take your opportunities in games to try it out for real as often as possible, especially at a young age and in meaningless contests. Your offensive repertoire is most definitely incomplete if you cannot lay one down. That is true whether you plan on breaking the NCAA homerun record or not. There's going to come a time when you have to bunt so you might just as well get good at it.
During the broadcasts of the WCWS, both Jessica Mendoza and Michele Smith gave advice to would-be bunters. Some of it I have heard many times before and some of it was, I think, new to me, at least until I considered it more deeply. They both noted the difficulty of bunting a riseball or anything that comes in at eye level or above. They both emphasized getting the bat head higher than the handle in order to avoid popping it up. I had heard these things many times before and discussed them here. But one thing Smith said which I found interesting was that the first thing she does when she tries to bunt is switch her feet. She pulls her back foot forwards and then puts her weight on it. I thought about this for a while and after contemplation, I realized it wasn't anything new per se.
Last year, or possibly the year before, in a discussion regarding the sacrifice bunt, I suggested that batters should square around before bunting. Squaring around means pulling your back foot about even with your front and then standing with your shoulders nearly open to the pitcher. I still believe this position offers some advanatages to the "pivot bunt" in which the batter maintains her basic foot position in the box. But I've seen many bunters succeed using the pivot technique. The pivot technique allows you to pull back and swing away in the event that is a better option than bunting. Sometimes the infielders crash in hard on you while the middle infielders sprint to cover bases. A well placed slap is a better alternative to a bunt in those circumstances. So I'm not going to state that I believe one superior to the exclusion of the other. I think there's room for both.
After considering Smith's advice and trying it out for myself, I came to the conclusion that what she was advocating was pretty much a square around. If you try squaring around for yourself, I think you'll see that what was your back foot is, rather than actually being even with the front, now your front foot and your weight is on this one as Smith suggested. You started out trying to be perfectly square to the pitcher but in reality, you have put what was your backfoot forwards and placed most of your weight on it just as she says. If you don't do this, you really cannot cover the outside part of the plate which is where any good pitcher is probably going to try to throw it if she expects you to bunt. I never really put much thought into what I was doing when I squared but as soon as I tried Smith's technique, I realized that is exactly what I do.
Jessica Mendoza was more focused on the drag bunt than on a generic sacrifice. Her advice was to step back with your front foot and get into a good running position before doing anything else. I'd never heard anyone explain it like that before but this too makes sense to me. The only thing I would like to add is that you want to actually make contact as far up in the box as possible since that improves your chance of bunting the ball into fair territory. The draggers I have seen in the past do not so much step back as they do step forwards with the back foot and get in exactly the position Mendoza showed. But her approach actually makes more sense to me since it provides the opportunity to be moving far faster when you make contact. Since the idea is to get to first before a throw rather than merely move baserunners, this is critical. I think a little experimentation in practice makes it evident that Mendoza's approach is better than the way I learned dragging.
Mendoza also noted that both of her hands climb up the bat when she bunts. She not only pushes her top hand up onto the barrel but also brings her bottom hand up about ten inches in order to get better bat control. This may be difficult for young players to execute without getting hit in the hands. But it is definitely a great way to make sure you have bat control. I have seen a number of young draggers miss the ball outright more than they ever make contact. And on the few occassions they make contact, they don't have enough control to put the thing down in fair territory. The less bat you have, the easier it is to control when bunting. But given a particular size of bat, the closer your hands are to each other, the more control you will have.
In conclusion, "small ball" is as important to softball as the relief pitcher (or a series of relief pitchers) is to baseball. We do not have a bullpen full of backup catchers and pitchers in softball. We don't need them. Baseball does not make the use of "small ball" the way that softballers do. The games are not all that similar in execution and tactics. Applying a baseball ethos to the offensive side of softball is probably a formula for disaster. No hitter under the age of 18 is so good that she doesn't need to bother learning to bunt. And to the coach who sneered at "small ball," I hope you learned your lesson but I expect you didn't.Labels: Bunt
Permanent Link: Small Ball, Sneer
When Does 2B Leave To Cover The Steal
by Dave
Monday, June 04, 2007
Bob writes in with the following:
"I have a question that I would appreciate an answer to. I am an ex-college baseball player and my daughter now plays high school softball. On a first to second base stealing situation, our shortstop is always late (in my opinion) getting to the bag on the steal. As a former second baseman, I would vacate the position as soon as I saw a player steal to be in position for the put out. My daughter's coach doesn't allow the shortstop to move until the ball goes by the batter (to wait for a possible hit ball). I believe that is way too late to make a play, which has been the case most of the year. What's your call on this? When should the shortstop / or second basemen break for the bag when covering on a steal."
Bob,
The only way I feel comfortable answering this question is to break it down a bit. I had the same question and a related one when I initially got involved with fastpitch softball and saw my first high level game. I do not claim to be an expert on this or any other aspect of the game but I will share with you what I have learned through the years. Not everyone will agree with this analysis - I know I've discussed it with several who disagree - but I can only tell you my opinion.
The first thing I want to say is that fastpitch softball is not simply a version of baseball played with a bigger ball on a smaller field. I don't intend this statement in a condescending manner. But many baseball people do think that way and so did I before I was disabused of the notion.
Many of the differences in the games stem from the differences in ball and field size but these differences create an entirely different game and they are not the only ones worth noting. For one thing, when you see the game played at a high level, you almost never see an infielder bobble a ball briefly and still throw the runner out at first the way you do in baseball.
Because of the dynamics of the game, a single run is the margin of victory far more often than it is in baseball. That being the case, it is much more of a bunters game than its brother. There are other manifestations of the shorter field which play into the game as well. For example, true slap hitting is an important part of fastpitch softball while it is a relatively uncommon phenomenon in baseball, notwithstanding Ichiro Suzuki. Slap hitting is intended to take advantage of the short distance between the bases.
In terms of the dynamic of the bunt, the spin on the pitched ball is opposite that of the typical pitched baseball. Only riseballs spin similarly to a throw baseball but even that differs since a riseball has less backspin on it than a four seam fastball. Most pitches are thrown with top spin causing the bunted ball to be airborn more so than in baseball. Also, if you take a good hard look at baseball bunting, good bunters usually hold the bat level or close to it. In fastpitch they hold the barrel up higher in order to get more on top of the ball precisely because of the different spin - to avoid hitting the ball up.
In terms of how these differences (and others) impact your specific question, there are a couple of important points to make. First off, the fastpitch infield is not set up exactly as the baseball version is. Corner infielders usually play well in front of the bag to guard against the bunt. In fastpitch, a third baseman playing around the bag is not going to be able to throw out most bunters. So she comes forwards. Similarly, the first baseman comes forwards, in front of the bag. That can vary depending on the fielding ability of the pitcher but most of the time you'll see first and/or third 10-15, sometimes more, feet in front of the bag. This has advantages because, as I said, the bunted softball is frequently airborn if only for a few moments and a charging corner infielder can often make the catch and double the runner off of first.
If you consider the typical first baseman covering the bunt first and her bag second, that makes the second baseman's responsibilities different as well. The second baseman is probably at least as much responsible for covering first as the first baseman is, particularly on bunts. So she generally shades over toward first from her baseball counterpart, a step or two. Also, she is frequently much closer in - though this depends on the type of hitter who is up to bat. Many times she is in front of the baseline and, therefore, cannot judge whether the runner on first is stealing as you indicate a baseball second baseman can. The shortstop has a better angle to judge this.
That's my take on why the second baseman almost never covers on a steal. I once heard Jennie Finch, Michele Smith or some other "name" in the sport explain that shortstops always cover second and second basemen never do to a co-announcer who was asking about the differences between the two games. The big name personality did not get into why but merely said, matter of factly, that this is one of the differences between the games. I believe the differences are caused by the reasons I have stated but welcome any comments from visitors who would like to correct me.
To address your question a bit further, I know that if I were coaching against a team which had second covering steals, I was just bunt right at the first baseman (assuming a righty at 1st) because most likely she would have a difficult time throwing out a runner at second and because I think my bunter could get right past her before the ball. With nobody covering first, I'd get two for the price of one.
Now, moving to your criticism of the HS coach, let's put some numbers to this. My guess is that your HS pitchers throw around 60 mph. That converts to about 88 feet per second. The distance from the HS pitching rubber to home plate is 40 feet in most states. The average pitcher pushes off about 6 to 8 feet and the typical batter positions herself forwards in the box. So the total distance from release to too-late-to-hit is conservatively around 32-34 feet. Baserunners are not allowed to leave the bag until they see the ball come out of the pitcher's hand which is usually a timed phenomenon - the runner doesn't actually see the ball come out of the pitcher's hand but rather begins her forward motion trying to leave just as it does so. But even so, that gives her just a .39 seconds advantage. If it takes the fast runner 3 seconds to reach second base (3 seconds is generally considered moderately fast), that gives her less than a 10 foot headstart before the shortstop can try to cover the base.
By the way, the runner is now about 15 feet further from second than the second baseman who, if she is responsible for covering, must A) recognize the steal is on, B) begin running from a dead stop, C) arrive there before the runner, and D) catch the throw / apply the tag. You may think the same is true of the shortstop but she is unconcerned about the bunt which is just about automatic in fastpitch when you have a runner at first. As soon as the shortstop sees the ball passing the batter, she runs to cover second base regardless of whether the runner is coming or not. The second baseman can't afford to shade or jump that way or she may arrive to first too late to catch the throw from a fielder trying to nail the bunter.
You say the shortstop, in your opinion, gets there way too late to make a putout. I suggest to you that typical in fastpitch is a shortstop who gets there just momentarily before the runner and ball - just barely in time to make a play. If she gets there earlier than that, she probably left her position too soon. But if she held her position properly, she should arrive just in time to make a close-to-simultaneous catch and tag.
In softball, the spot on the throw from catcher is slightly more important than that in baseball. You don't often see a high throw get the runner in softball the way you sometimes do in baseball. The differences here are very slight but they, I believe, exist nonetheless. It is just slightly more bang bang than in baseball.
It takes quite a bit of time and effort for a catcher-shortstop team to develop their teamwork at catching base stealers. It is just possible that your HS shortstop is a little slow in her reaction or running speed. Or maybe she needs another year to develop the skills. Or maybe the coach has her so worried about fielding her position on hit balls that she has become too careful about not leaving too early. Shortstop is a very demanding position in fastpitch as it is in baseball but pound for pound, responsibility for responsibility, I believe it is slightly more difficult in fastpitch softball.
There's another possibility which is the catcher's throwing arm or release speed is a little slow, or her accuracy isn't up to snuff. You said the shortstop gets there too late to make the putout but you didn't say she misses the ball. That means she gets there in time to make the catch so she can't be arriving too late. If she were, the centerfielder would be fielding those throws. Ideally, the shortstop should catch the ball on the bag and therefore, not have to worry about "making the putout." If, on the other hand, a quarter or more of the throws were ending up in centerfield I might have some questions but my resolution would not be to have the second baseman cover the bag.
If you get the chance, watch some of the few remaining games being played in the NCAA Women's College World Series tonight, Tuesday and, if necessary, Wednesday. You'll see two of the very best teams to have ever played the game, Tennessee and Arizona. Arizona is coached by Mike Candrea who has established much of the game as we know it today. He has been the coach of Team USA (Olympic and World Cup competitions) for quite some time. His NCAA team, while not quite as fast as it has been in past years, plays the game as well as any other. I believe that if you watch this, you may see some of the differences in the game I described to you.
Just now I re-read your question and realized that perhaps the biggest issue you inquire about is the timing when the middle infielder, whichever middle infielder, leaves to cover the bag. You suggest that it should be as soon as the steal is recognized and the HS coach says it has to wait until the ball passes the batter. I think it depends on the game situation. If it is the first inning with no outs, I'd prefer to avoid opening the flood gates by having SS cover too quickly and leaving a hole for the hit and run, thereby setting up a potential big inning. If it is the 5th with two outs and they haven't touched my ace except to break up her perfect game with a solitary walk, I want to try to nail that runner. So I would advocate her leaving a little early to cover in those circumstances.
To me, there are very few absolutes in this game other than to do everything in your power to have more runs than the opponent when the last out is made. I realize that sounds a little tongue-in-cheek but I mean it. The game and inning situation control so much about what a player should do right now that it is almost impossible to discuss anything without laying out every possible fact such as what inning it is, the score, the number of outs, even the count on the batter. If the count is 3-0 in the third inning and your pitcher can't find the plate, why worry about the runner moving to second from first? She's going to get there anyway!
I hope this gives you some insight into the question you pondered and asked of me. I doubt I'll change your mind per se about a second baseman covering but I hope you begin to consider some of the differences between the game you played and fastpitch softball and then make up your own mind about whether the second baseman should cover on steals some of the time or whether possibly your daughter's HS coach is right.Labels: defense
Permanent Link: When Does 2B Leave To Cover The Steal
The Virtue Of Tennis Balls
by Dave
Monday, June 04, 2007
Somewhere in the middle of a four day stretch in which my team spent ten hours at a one-day, hot and humid tournament and 3 days of practicing for a scheduled 7 hours which I had mistakenly caused to run to 9, I found myself bored. More importantly, I looked out at the sweating contenances under my charge and realized they were more bored than I. That's a big fat problem, one that must be resolved.
Somebody once said to me that "while boys have to play ball in order to have fun, girls must have fun in order to play ball." I'm not sure that's an absolute. For one thing, I know my own kids have to play ball to really have fun. There's very little they would rather do. And since I was once a boy playing ball, I know that while I needed to play the game, I needed it because it was fun. Boring practices detracted from my enjoyment of the game. This thing just has to be fun.
I am still often surprised when my kids and I climb our sweaty bodies back into the car to go home after a long practice and one of them says, "Dad, that was a fun practice. I wish it wasn't over." I am also surprised when my body is about to give out and I call practice five minutes before the scheduled end-time and a bunch of players on my team say, "ohhhhh, can't you just hit us some more fly balls or grounders? Please?" If I run my practices properly, not only do the kids' and the team's skills improve, but also the kids don't want to stop "playing." They want this fun to continue no matter how tired their bodies are.
As an old man, I often forget what it was like to play ball as a kid. I know it was fun but I guess I forget how, after the official, organized baseball games were over, we would often look for something else to do like play catch in the street for four hours, then see if we could get up a neighborhood whiffle ball tournament for another five, and then walk a mile to meet our friends to play twilight stickball before sauntering home to our beds on a hot June or July evening.
We were always playing ball. We established a formal structure to our whiffle ball league on more than one occassion. Stickball became fairly routine. And long hours of just playing catch or running bases (when enough kids were around) filled every last crack and crevice of our free time. Yes, we sometimes ate lunch or took a dip in the pool but that was just a break meant to refresh us for the next game.
More important than playing ball back then was the motivation. It was fun. It was never boring. We woke up early in the morning and ran out of our houses just to go back and play more. There was near constant diversity of play and we lived for it. So when I saw boredeom in the eyes of my team, I knew something was wrong.
Fastpitch softball and baseball are games of repetitious practice the same way basketball is. If you want to learn to shoot a foul shot, you've got to stand at the line and shoot, shoot, shoot for hours even after your mechanics have been perfected. Similarly, even the top stars on Team USA need to throw every day for hours, field hundreds of grounders, take countless swings, etc. in order to get and stay on top of their games. That means many practices end up looking, sounding, feeling, even smelling the same. It is necessary to run the same fundamental skills and situational defense drills practice after practice. You want to get to the point where your players don't even have to think what to do for a bunt. You want them fielding grounders or flyballs with perfect precision in their sleep. But you've got to watch out for boredom. Boredom creates lack of focus. Boredom causes kids to go into slumps. Boredom causes kids' mechanics to break down the same way a kid forced to sit in a chair for hours will eventually develop very poor posture.
In my quest to make things a bit more interesting, I thought back to my very first days as a softball coach. I was "working" for a manager who really knew the game and thought up new stuff to do at every practice. He thought our young team's ability to catch pop-ups was well below average and decided he would work on that at one particular session. He said, "OK girls. Today we're going to work on catching so drop your mitts over there and form up a line over here." Some of the mostly ten year old girls said, "drop our mitts? How are we supposed to catch the ball without our mitts." The manager muttered so none of the girls could hear him, "that's the problem. You can't catch with them until you learn how to without them." He was right but I'm not sure his next steps were the best ones possible.
The manager showed the girls how to catch a ball without their mitts. Then he proceeded to toss light pops to them and, one by one, they tried but mostly failed to catch them. Many were afraid of the ball even with their mitts on. Almost all were petrified of it without the protection afforded by a glove. Evenutally the girls got better but I don't think they made as much progress as they could have.
Back to my current situation, I decided to give something a try which I had been contemplating for a while. My team can catch as well as most, far better than the old 10U team which dropped their gloves to learn how to catch. But they aren't doing quite as well with hard hit grounders. They still pull up expecting the ball to take a bad hop and hit them in the face. They lack confidence in their ability to react well on hard hit balls. So I rummaged around in my equipment bag and came out with a container of ... tennis balls. One of the girls quipped, "Sorry but I forgot my racket at home. Didn't know I was supposed to bring it." Another asked, "Tennis anyone?" A more direct kid asked me, "what are you going to do with those?" I said, "Hang on a minute, I'll show you."
I lines the girls up out at shortstop and stood near homeplate on our hard, bumpy, ungroomed rock of a practice field - possibly the main cause of our collective fear of being hit in the face by a bad hop. I had placed a cone out where I wanted the fielder to stand and called for my first victim. I threw a bouncing ball at her which, given the lighter more bouncy nature of the tennis ball, careened all over the place. She approached the thing properly and tried to grab it with one hand (something I would like her to stop doing on ordinary ground balls), missed it and got hit in the leg with the wild bouncing ball. She exclaimed "Ouch!" when the ball hit her. I wondered aloud, "Are you telling me that ball hurt you?" She thought for a minute and then said, "Um, I guess not" and everyone else at the practice began laughing.
My next victim tried to field the ball I threw but ended up falling down trying to catch the elusive thing whereupon everyone again laughed. We went through the whole team with maybe one kid fielding the ball cleanly and everyone getting some good laughs. Then they started to catch on. The girls began to approach this new drill with a vigor which had been lacking. They were enjoying themselves again while also learning to field better. After a while, all but the worst hops were fielded cleanly. So I decided to make things more difficult.
I began hitting rather than throwing the tennis balls with my bat. This again made things interesting and fun. Once I hit a pretty hard one, the fielder missed it with her hands, got hit someplace on her body and exclaimed, "Ouch!" I asked if that one had really hurt because I honestly wasn't sure. She, obviously embarrassed, replied, "no, it didn't hurt my body, but it did hurt my ego." Everyone laughed hard at that one and then we got back to business. The girls were never able to go through a complete line fielding the hit balls cleanly but they did make great efforts and eventually everyone was able to field one out of three. Later I would learn the value of doing this when I hit regular groundballs and the girls did far better at those than they had at previous practices.
Something else occurred to me during this practice. I had been pondering drills which I could use to work our fielders at dealing with hard shots to their left and right. In particular, I wanted our corner fielders to learn to dive for liners hit to their left and right since we play close in at third and first. I also wanted to get our middle infielders to dive when hard shots were hit past them. But I was afraid to really smash balls at our girls since I know I can hit the ball far harder than anyone they play against can. I also have this bad habit of either hitting the ball too soft or too hard to mimick real world line drives. I couldn't come up with anything good which wouldn't have the risk of serious injury ... until ... it finally occurred to me that I didn't need live softballs since it was really the footwork I was after. So I began hitting hard shots using the tennis balls.
I say hard shots but my broken shoulders, arms and back were not taxed much by hitting balls. Tennis balls fly off the bat with very little effort. So afterwards I wasn't nearly as sore as usual. And while you want to hit the ball so that it is similar to the hardest shots the girls are likely to see in games, you don't want to crush them because even tennis balls can do real damage if they, for example, hit someone in the eye. As I was hitting the balls, I realized that my objectives were being met and the girls were continuing to have a good time. Even when they were able to get their hands to the ball properly, the things were hard to catch and that made the whole exercise that much more valuable. Kids realized that if they could get both hands to the ball, they had that much better of a chance of catching it.
This realization of the virtue of two handed catching caused me to work in yet another drill, this time one for the outfielders. I first threw and then hit flyballs to the outfielders using the tennis balls. I instructed them that the point of the drill was not so much to catch the ball but rather to get the glove hand to touch it. The tennis ball flys higher than the softball and girls were really running, not drifting, to get under it. Even though the objective was to get the glove hand to it, the kids saw the challenge of actually catching it as important. Because you cannot catch a tennis ball falling from 50 or 100 feet with one hand, they figured out quickly and on their own to bring both hands up to it and to use "soft hands" where you pull the ball into your body as you make the catch. I couldn't have done better with hours and hours of instruction and repetitious drilling. The kids learned two handed flyball catching with soft hands on their own.
There are a few other points I'd like to make about using tennis balls in a softball practice. Typically when I leave for practice, I bring two dozen softballs with me. usually when I return, I have two dozen less one or two. These lost balls usually occur because I've hit balls a little too far to the outfield or because I hit one past somebody and told them to leave it so we don't slow down practice. We leave the field with a ball or two hiding in the high grass and escaping into someone else's yard when it is found later that day or the next. That gets expensive after weeks and weeks of multiple practices. I'm sure I still lose good softballs but I suspect I loose left of them. And tennis balls can be had on the cheap.
Tennis balls do get stale after a while. That's why they are vacuum packed. Since the bouncy quality is what you are after, discard them after a couple practices. They're still cheap even if you only get a couple uses out of them.
I told you to be careful not to hit them too hard, expecially if you use them in close-in line drive drills. When I was a young player, I had the misfortune of catching a baseball with my eye and scratching my cornea. The doctor said, "You're lucky it was a baseball. A tennis ball would have done more damage because A) it has hairs on it which would have scratched more abrasively and B) when a tennis ball hits something, it contracts and then explodes outwards while pushing off of the struck surface. That alone would have caused more damage." So don't think that because you are using soft tennis balls, no injury can result.
Another thought I have regarding tennis balls is you ought to give some to your players to bring home. I purchased a gross of tennis balls at the local warehouse store for very cheap. The container I bought for something like $15 had 15 packs of three balls each. No, they're not of good enough quality for a tennis tournament but they sufficed for softball drilling. And if a kid who cannot find a local whiffle ball, stick ball, or pickup game has a tennis ball, at least she can play in the driveway with it while working on skills useful to a softball player.
Finally, while I was hitting flyballs to the outfielders, one girl caught a ball cleanly, crow-hopped nicely and threw the ball back to me pretty hard. That's to be avoided. You do not want your players to get into the habit of throwing a tennis ball or anything else, for that matter, which is lighter or smaller than a standard softball. It is easy to hurt your arm by throwing a smaller, lighter object with force. It also changes your throwing mechanics disadvantageously. Major league baseball pitchers rehabbing repaired arms sometimes throw 11 and 12 inch softballs precisely because they are easier on the tendons and ligaments than the smaller, lighter baseball. One who I watched continues to throw softballs as part of his warm-up routine before entering games. Discourage your players from ever throwing anything smaller or lighter than a softball.
So that's my cure for practice boredom. As the dog days of summer approach, boredom will hit most teams during a practice. Tennis is not a game I choose to play or observe but their ball is virtuous for us fastpitch people.Labels: coaching
Permanent Link: The Virtue Of Tennis Balls
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