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One Dimensional Approach
by Dave
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
I was reading earlier today, on a fastpitch softball forum, the opinions of a person who said something along the lines of "slap hitting is garbage." He felt girls should learn to hit the ball hard and give up the slapping. Later I had a conversation with someone who is putting together a new softball organization with the help of a friend. The two ladies played Div 1 college ball. One played as recently as five years ago and the other hasn't played in several years longer than that. They are, however, both big fans of the game and observe college ball on a regular basis. The older of the two said something to me about how all these fathers want their darling daughter to grow up to be slap hitters to the exclusion of everything else. She went on to say, "you think all these college girls who slap can't do anything else? Think again." I have to agree.
The prevailing wisdom says that if a girl can't hit the ball hard, the only way to go is slap hitting. The point at which this determination occurs is apparently sometime in the 10U years. A little girl with some speed struggles to get the ball out of the infield so what we do is turn her around to the left side and start teaching her to slap. Seems easy but it really, really is not.
Slap hitting is definitely a specialty which must be worked at with a tremendous amount of time and effort. It isn't easy to do. The footwork alone takes quite a while to master but that's only a small part of it. The rest of the body posture and the swing itself are no easy tasks. After you've mastered the footwork, posture, and swing, now you're ready to start vectoring the ball while your head is moving towards the pitched ball. Now there's a difficult task.
I believe that if you want to learn to slap effectively, you've got to devote at least a year to learning the mechanics and then another trying to "perfect" them. After this amount of time, you are ready to start seeing some pitches and trying to slap them into play. And the point I'm going to try to make is you can't just drop everything else and focus exclusively on slapping. You've got to be more multi-dimensional than that.
I once had a slap-hitter on my team and she was coming along nicely with her technique. But slapping is all she could do. She stopped taking any regular swings at pitches. The result was she forgot how to swing. Once everyone realized that she couldn't hit, what they did when she came to bat was move the middle infielders up to the pitching plate distance from home, bring third and first in similarly though a little deeper and on the lines, and then position the outfielders to pick up the slack for the infielders who were drawn in. Defensively, it worked every time because the girl had great difficulty getting the ball past the anyone. She had become so one dimensional that she wasn't even able to get the ball out of the infield. She ended up being, I think, 0 for the year.
The best slap hitters in the world do not merely put the ball on the ground and go. They are capable of hitting it over the outfielders' heads if they draw in too closely. They are capable of making infielders eat the ball if they come in too tight. When the defense moves to counter their slap hitting, they are as capable of taking advantage of the defensive realignment as they are of slapping to holes if the infield doesn't react to their style of hitting. They are also capable of bouncing the ball over the drawn-in infielders', perhaps outfielders', head if that's the best oppotunity. Slap hitting is not a one dimensional strategy. It is an oppoortunistic one.
I watched a girl with moderate base-running speed struggle through a season in an older division recently. She couldn't buy a hit for the winning lottery ticket despite having long arms and pretty good strength. I believe she thought she just was no good at hitting. She had nobody to tell her that the problem had to do with improper swing mechanics and a failure to practice a good stroke. What this girl needed was time at the batting tee - lot's of it. Instead, she began to slap hit from the left side. She was a natural right-handed hitter. Her footwork was intermediate at best, she tended to begin early, pull out before making contact, and really just stick out the bat rather than taking a real slap-stroke. The result was a lot of grounders to third basemen who then threw her out, 99 of 100 tries, by about two steps. The times she failed to put the ball into play, she would wait until two strikes and then switch back to the right side to finish the at-bat. This had the effect of reinforcing the defense's suspicion that the girl was just trying to slap from the left side, and giving her an at-bat down in the count. That had the effect of reinforcing the girl's belief that she couldn't hit from the right side any more.
The lessons I learned from observing this girl were: you might think you're fast but slap hitters need to be really fast; simply putting the ball into play might work at young ages but in older age groups, they're going to get you out if you don't put the ball into the right spot; slap hitters need to really have command of their craft the way other specializations do, and you need to have something else so you can keep defenses honest.
I believe that when you switch a girl around from right to left in order to work slapping into her repertoire, you've got to teach her to hit (in the usual sense) from the left too. This way, she'll be able to do more than simply punch the ball into play. If the infield counters, she'll be able to give the ball a whack and thereby get them to move back the next time she's up. Now that can be a potent weapon.
Aside from examining what a slapper can do in any given at-bat, there are certain situations in which she is not going to want to slap. She's sometimes going to want to hit a sacrifice fly, maybe put down a sacrifice bunt, or do anything other than her limited slapping skill. I can't begin to count the number of times a designated slapper has come to the plate in a situation in which doing anything but slapping could have broken the game open for us. Instead we end up with a runner nailed at the plate because the ball was hit directly to a shortstop or other infielder 40 feet from the batter who had an easy throw to the catcher before the runner got two thirds of the way home.
There have also been a number of times when a self-designated slapper has come to the plate with runners at first and second with one or no outs - the perfect sacrifice opportunity. The infield pinches in because they know the girl can only slap. Then when she puts down a sac bunt, they're already in position to field and throw the runner at third out with the leftfielder covering the bag. It's very frustrating.
To me the girl who has a solid approach at the plate can cause havoc when she also possesses the slapping skill. Defenses don't know what to do with her. They can pinch in but she'll probably lace one over their heads. They can play straight but she'll put one in the hole and advance the runners that way. She can drop down a bunt and really get the inning started. If you've got a runner at third, she can pop one out to at least the middle of the outfield gaps and sacrifice her in. She is multi-dimensional.
My advice to the aspiring slap-hitter is to start things off by teaching yourself to hit from the left side. You don't have to develop real fence power but you've got to be able to hit a linedrive into the outfield. Then, once you are able to do that, start working on slap technique. Work diligently at this skill while also continuing to take regular BP from the left side. When you get in games, don't automatically default to slap. Take a couple hard hacks at some pitches. That'll teach the infielders a little religion and get them back to playing at an honest distance. Then when they're back in regular positions, try a slap. If they pull in again, swing at the ball.
Multi-dimensional slap hitters derive great benefits from being able to lace a single or hit a flyball once in a while. Often pulling the fielders in can open holes that weren't there before. And being able to do that, can open things up for drag bunting. Bunt a few times and pull the infielders back in or get them up on their toes. Then show bunt and pull back and slap one past them as they come charging. Do that in sacrifice situations like the one above and you'll blow games wide open. You'll become an indispensable tool for your team and theenemy of anyone who plays you. They'll begin to hate you and you may find yourself hit by a few pitches!
Finally, when I think of slappers, I think of the world's best ones. For example, take Caitlin Lowe - obviously one of the best softball players ever to walk onto a diamond. She's technically a slapper, maybe the best slapper ever. She's a rock solid .400 hitter. But did you know that she is fourth all-time at Arizona in triples? She also slugged .564 during her 2006 year. For another example, how about UCLA's Andrea Duran? I suppose you might not think of her as purely a slap hitter but her stroke is definitely slap derived. I think of her as being best described via the oxymoronic term "power-slapper." When she stands at the plate, she is equally capable of pounding a ball into the ground (which will then not re-enter the planet's atmosphere until she steps on first) as she is of hitting one out of the yard. Now there's a multi-dimensional hitter!Labels: batting
Permanent Link: One Dimensional Approach
 
Give A, Give A, Give A Garmin!
by Dave
Monday, December 03, 2007
 Most times, the simplest things are best. At other times, there's no substitute for good old-fashioned technology. So it is with the Garmin nuvi 200 Portable Automotive GPS System with United States Maps, an indispensable part of your tournament fastpitch softball kit!
If you are new to travel softball or struggled through the past year or two shuffling directions at 6:00 AM while trying to get to the fields on time; if you have found yourself with two hours to kill after one game before warm-ups for the next and can only locate a WaWa or 7-11 at which to satisfy your hunger; if you have found yourself cursing while trying to locate the medical center so you can have your daughter's eye looked at after she took a line drive to the face, it's time to consider buying yourself a navigation device!
Technology can be intimidating. When cassette tapes came out, I was a little upset because most of my music was on 8-track. I went so far as to purchase a used car once because it had an internal 8-track player. Then most of my tapes ripped inside the reader when the heads got dirty and I had no idea how to clean them. My next car had a cassette player and I never looked back ... until CDs came out.
I remember how I held out and refused to purchase a VCR for years until I finally felt I "needed" one. I bought one for double what they would sell for in just a couple years but was satisfied with the knowledge that now I could rent and watch all those movies I missed while I worked my way through college with minimal free time. I purchased my first movie, "Apocalypse Now," because I was convinced I would always treasure it, for the tidy sum of $80. Now that movie can be rented for two bucks and I haven't watched it in probably two decades. I still have the tape though we haven't owned anything that plays tapes in quite some time.
I've been burned by technology buys before. I recall the very beginnings of the PC craze during which I read how ordinary people would have no use for the things other than to store recipes or figure the family finances. I was wary of buying a computer but, again, decided I simply must have one of those gadgets regardless of any uses (or lack thereof) I might be able to think up for it. I received something in the mail from American Express and proceeded to buy the latest technology for just $20 a month until I repaid the $1,000 revolving credit line plus interest. I was so proud of my new Tandy machine although I had no clue how to use it. I scrunged (erased by magnet) my first program disks which was problematic because the thing had no internal software since it actually had no hard drive. Everything ran on the kind of floppy disks which actually flopped - the big kind before the small kind before CDs before DVDs. So there I was with a $1,000 machine which was incapable of doing anything because I had erased its software. I was really frustrated and thereafter suspicious of technology purchases even after I got things straightened out and began merrily programming in basic on removable floppy disks.
Thankfully, my wife has no such "fear of technology" or technology purchases. She is more bold than I when it comes to buying HD TVs, DVD players, wireless internet access, etc. She encourages me to buy all sorts of things. Still, I am loathe to attempt to use the things. Instead, I let her futz with new purchases and then give me lessons on how to use them. I can't even operate the TV remote control without some sort of in-person lesson.
So, with this in mind, I accepted my fate when she insisted on giving me a Garmin nuvi navigation system. I figured she could use it and then, if there was ever a reason for me to try it, I would rely on her expertise. Unfortunately, the opportunity never presented because I was always driving when she was operating the thing. Then one day I dared to turn it on without her around. I think I was sitting at a practice with nothing else to do and looking for anything to distract me. I was amazed at how easy it was to use the nuvi. Everything is more or less logical and the graphics are excellent so there's no squinting because you left your reading glasses home. One hour, less for most people, of fooling around with it and you are as expert as you'll ever need to be.
The nuvi has infinite uses for the tournament parent or coach. You can easily find those difficult to locate fields or new indoor workout fascilities. You can actually find your way home after you made all those convoluted turns to get to the destination. You can mark locations you've already been to and throw out all those mapquest directions you once kept in a folder in your glove compartment. By the way, when is the last time anyone stored their driving gloves in the glove compartment? Does anyone actually own driving gloves? Did anyone? Why doesn't some bright automobile manufacturer change the confuguration of the blasted thing to fit something else like papers?
One of the nicest features of the nuvi is its "voice." I don;t have much experience using other navigation devices but what I most love about the thing is I don't have to constantly read like I do when I use mapquest directions. The nuvi tells me to turn right in .4 miles. Then, while I'm sitting at a light, it reminds me turn right onto Despondent Street. If I want to look ahead before proceeding or get a sense of where I'm headed, I can look at the directions by touching a post on the device.
There are two things I feel I should warn you about when using the nuvi. First of all, the thing is not artificial intelligence. It, like all navigation devices, cannot really help you when there is a construction newly started that causes you to take an alternate route. I have found myself a little confused at times when a bridge or highway construction resulted in a street being closed. But, once you miss your turn and take the following one, the nuvi is pretty good at getting you back on course most of the time. The way in which it accomplishes that is the other thing I want to warn you about.
When you don't absolutely obey its directions, sometimes the nuvi seems to cop an attitude. I'm not delusional here. Several people have agreed with me when I suggested that the nuvi gets a little short with me when I miss turns. It has a snotty way of acknowledging that the error you just made has required it to "recalculate" how to get where you told it you were going. You can change the voice to several different options so if one voice is excessively short with you, you just change it. I tried the British woman's voice after both the American man and woman annoyed me. But that was almost as nasty so I switched to an Australian woman named Karen. She seems to be a little more forgiving.
The nuvi can not only help you find your way to the fields or back home, but also has a reasonably up-to-date listing of all the local establishments. I don't know what your experience has been but we play tournaments at several locations which seem to be out in the "boonies" with no business establishments nearby. You drive in off the highway, pass some county recycling center, go past a series of junkyards, farms, exclusive gated neighborhoods or some such and never see any place which might sell a decent sandwich or slice of pizza, let alone cup of coffee. You play the 8:00 AM game and notice that your next one is set for 1:00. Your darling daughter lets you know that even though she insisted on skipping breakfast because she wasn't hungry, she'll being needing sustenance any time "NOW." Ordinarily, you might wander the fields asking anyone who looks like a local if they know of anyplace nearby. You might find someone who got lost on the way in and noticed there was a WaWa 10 miles in that direction but she's not really sure how to tell you how to get there. Instead you pop open your nuvi and look for convenience stores, restaurants or whatever. You learn that not only is there a 7-11 within three miles in the direction you haven't yet been but there's another one 5 miles away as well, not to mention 3 of them 6 miles away, 4 more 5 miles beyond that. etc., etc.
Maybe you don't care for 7-11 coffee and prefer to keep going as long as it takes to locate a Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks. You can search the nuvi for specific establishments. Sometimes spelling can be a bit of a trick, particularly when you're not sure whether or not to use numbers or other non-alpha characters like when you're looking for a 7-11 or don't remember if Dunkin Donuts is hyphenated or not. But a little experience with the thing will clear that up pretty quickly.
The Garmin nuvi isn't just useful for getting someplace, finding your way home or locating food places once there. It can help you find doctors offices in the area or just see a map of where you are. It can help you locate gas stations / automobile repair shops to have somebody figure out why your car is making that noise or just to fill up before hitting the highway. Heck, it can provide you with coordinates if you need to call in an air strike and have the location you played your games wiped off the map so you don't ever have to think about how your team did at this tournament again.
There are so many uses for the nuvi that I don't know where to begin or end. So I guess I'll just end by saying, if you are a softball parent and just don't know what you or your spouse could possibly need for Christmas, after the Rocketech, Jennie Finch batting gloves, radar gun, pitching machine for the basement, cooler or cooking device which plugs into the car's power jack, portable recliner, etc., what you really need to round out your repertoire is a Garmin nuvi Labels: parenting
Permanent Link: Give A, Give A, Give A Garmin!
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