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Rule Clarification - Running Lane Violation
by Dave
Saturday, May 31, 2008
I'm posting this for the benefit of John Kruk and the others calling the UCLA vs Florida elimination game being broadcast right now. I've been over this territory before in a post called "You Make The Call" so I don't want to waste anyone's time rehashing the rules verbatim. Basically, a batter-baserunner running to first is required to be within the "3 foot lane" from a point 30 feet from first. Halfway to the bag, you have to be in the little lane created by the foul line and the other unexplained white line running parallel to it.
(Remainder of the original posting has been removed.)
Correction:
Originally I had posted here that because the chalk foul line is actually located in fair territory, if you run to first while landing your feet on the foul line, you might be considered to be running outside the 30 foot running lane between home and first. As one reader pointed out, that's not quite correct.
The NCAA is actually a bit more specific on the subject. The rulebook states: "The batter-runner is considered outside the runner's lane if either foot is in contact with the ground and is completely outside either line."
My understanding of a batter-baserunner being out of the base path to first has now been corrected. And I, like Kruk and the other announcers of that game, am completely confused by the ump's call.Labels: interference, rules
Permanent Link: Rule Clarification - Running Lane Violation
 
Foul! No, Fair! No, FOUL!
by Dave
Friday, May 30, 2008
I really hope you are watching the Women's College World Series on ESPN. You don't need me to tell you it is being broadcast live and that there are some interesting happenings. One of the most interesting things to me is the presence of John Kruk in the broadcast booth. Now that Kruk hasn't been beating my teams in MLB for a few years, I have to say I kind of like the guy. He knows diamond sports about as well as anyone short of Joe Morgan. (Yes, I know not everyone appreciates Morgan but I defy you to point me to someone who knows the game of baseball better than Joe.) And Kruk seems to genuinely appreciate the game of fastpitch softball. He said that's because there is no margin for error. You can't bobble a ball and get the out. And the girls are well schooled about throwing to the right base, perhaps more so than boys. There have been other happenings on the field of play and one of those spurred me to write today. The one play which most caught my interest was the game-changing one which cost Alabama, its first round game.
Before I get into it, let me say that AZ State is probably my favorite to win the WCWS. I don't know if they'll get there but they are my favorite because I like Katie Burkhart. She's a senior and while things never work out this way, I think it is her turn. Sure Tincher, Jelly, et al are seniors too and I cheer for them as well, but I just happen to like Burkhart. There's something about her style which appeals to me. Maybe its the cool exterior or the "I'm doing my hair from the prom" look she sports. For whatever reason, I hope she at least gets to the final game this year.
Nonetheless, I didn't like the call on that linedrive which grazed the Alabama third baseman's glove. I know it was close and almost nobody said, "gee whiz, that looked foul." There was an uncomfortable moment in the booth when they replayed it over and over again. You could almost hear them thinking "that should have been called foul." They noted that the ball seemed to pretty clearly make contact with the glove of the diving diminutive thirdbaseman. As Kruk said, it looked like it hit the laces. Obviously contact is contact and the focus then turns to where the glove was when the ball hit it. Actually, that's not quite right. The focus turns to where the ball was when it was touched.
Once this year, while watching a high school game, there was a pop-up down the first baseline and the 1B tried to make a play on it. No, this wasn't the one where there was runners interference that should have been but was not called. In this case, the fielder had a clean opportunity to make a catch but she failed to because she lost her footing or bearings. She drifted under the ball with plenty of time to spare, standing with both feet in fair territory. The runner was nowhere near her and no other fielder was poised to get in the way. As the ball came down, I think the wind made it drift back towards foul ground about a foot. She followed it as it fell to Earth but, at the last second, needed to reach more than she anticipated. The ball grazed off her glove and bounded into the fence along first. The ump signaled fair ball, the heads up runner moved on to second, and the play ended.
Fans and fathers on one side of the field, the defensive team's side, began yelling "that ball was foul." Fans and fathers on my side of the field, the offensive side right along first, yelled back "no, no, no, she was entirely in fair ground when she touched it." I don't like explaining this to the folks on my side, and I didn't at the time, but where the fielder is, is totally immaterial to the fair/foul call. The only issue is where the ball is when it is touched.
According to NCAA rules, a fair ball is "any legally batted ball that A) settles on or is touched on or over fair territory between home plate and first base, or between home plate and third base; B) While on or over fair territory, touches the person, attached equipment or clothing of a player or umpire." (Emphasis my own) Additionally, "A fair batted ball shall be judged according to the relative position of the ball and the foul line, including the foul pole, and not with respect to the position of the fielder (on fair or foul ground) at the time
the ball is contacted." And "A foul fly, line drive or grounder shall be judged according to the relative position of the ball and the foul line, including the foul pole, and not with respect to the position of the fielder at the time the ball is contacted."
I dare say that most rulebooks for either baseball or softball read similarly. The bottom line is the position of the ball determines whether it is fair or foul and the position of the fielder is only worthy of consideration in a play like last night's where the position of the fielder's gove tells us the position of the ball when it was touched. To drive this home a bit, think of a bunt or nubbed ball that comes to rest just off the line in foul territory. The third baseman or catcher, lunges, picks up the ball and throws to first from a position wholly in fair territory. The fielder's position did not turn a foul ball into a fair one. The same concept applies to line drives, pop-ups, etc.
Now, I could see last night that the call was an extremely tough one. I'm not second guessing the umpires judgment. What might I have called had I been the ump? I dunno. That's a pretty stressful situation. I probably would have made the same call. Actually, I'm pretty sure that whatever the right call was, I would probably have made the wrong one. So I'm not on my high horse today. I'm just questioning a call which very well may have changed the outcome of an important game while also clarifying the rules regarding when a ball is fair or foul.
My main reason for writing is really because of what I heard at that high school game. Actually, I have heard similar comments spoken at many other games of all levels. Whatever the reason, I don't think it is crystal clear to everyone that the position of the fielder is not important in determining whether a ball is fair or foul. The most common incidents of this happen when an outfielder drifts into foul ground and then has to reach back intio fair territory to catch a fly caught in the wind. Many times, people along the sidelines ask, "how can that be fair?" Sometimes the play is similar to the one at the WCWS where a fielder standing right near the line reaches into foul ground and fails to catch a hot shot. I have seen other umps call these kinds of balls fair when they are very clearly foul. But enough about the specifics and on to the more general.
My intellectual sense of the play last night is the ump did not carry the right prejudice into the play. What the heck do I mean by that? Let me explain.
In any human endeavor we must carry some form of prejudice, prejudgment, with which to color our decisions. That's true when we decide to make a turn in front of that car. That's true when we decide for whom to pull the lever in a political contest. And that's true in the most sophisticated stuff humans do every day.
In human legal systems throughout the history of mankind, there is always a recognition that the table must be slanted, no matter how slightly. In the US, we consider the rights of the defendant to emphasize that he or she is "innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." In some other countries, the defendant is presumed guilty unless and until he or she can prove their innocence. Somebody has to carry the burden of proof. We don;t go before the judge and jury and say, let the other side prove its case and then we'll disprove it. Before we walk into the courtroom, the prosecution knows it carries the burden of proof. The same is true on the civil side of American justice. Somebody has to prove something and that somebody is established by law. The playing field is not completely level.
The same sort of prejudice exists within the scientific world. Joe or Jane scientist observes some phenomenon and postulates a cause and effect. She or he cannot claim the observation and postulated cause and effect as fact. it is merely recorded, reported and put out there for others to agree or disagree with. It the observation is repeated and the cause and effect not refuted, it rises to the level of theory. The theory sits out there for a very long time while other scientists attempt to find circumstances in which it doesn't hold true. No matter how many times a particular theory is found to be true, one instance of a false finding is enough to throw the whole ball of wax into doubt and make it false on an overall basis, unless and until something faulty is discovered in terms of the technique which found the theory to be false. I don't wish to stir up a political or religious debate but that's why we speak of the theory of evolution. We do not speak of the fact of evolution because, while elements of it have been proven true like the fact that genes mutate, the overall theory is still susceptible to disproof. The burden of proof is very high. Our prejudice is against the theory. In the scientific world, the burden rests clearly upon one making an assertion not on the rest of us to disprove the theory.
In the National Football League, after an official makes a call on certain types of reviewable calls, the head coach of one team can throw that stupid flag onto the field and challenge the call. The refs head to the little video booth, watch for an interminably long time during which broadcasters can show their stuff, usually making fools of themselves, and television stations get to air an additional commercial or two. Then they come out and make "the right call" which also about half the time happens to be different than the three ex-players, who watch the video over and over again many more times than the ref.s, predict! More importantly, when the ref enters the video booth, he enters it with the prejudice that the call already made on the field will be overturned only if there is indisputable video evidence that the call was wrong. In other words, the ref assumes the call on the field was the right one and can only overturn it with clear, convincing, indisputable evidence.
So, no matter what endeavor we are involved with, there exists a human need to have some degree of prejudice, some predilection towards guilt or innocence, some prior-to-the-play leaning towards fair or foul. In my humble opinion, that prejudice should be towards the status quo. That is, nothing changes unless and until I see affirmative evidence that a batted ball has landed fair. I'm not suggesting that an umpire walks onto the field thinking "show me" or every ball is foul until proven fair. But there just has to be some element of prejudice of some degree. You do not call a ball fair unless you actually see it hit fair ground. If you missed it, obviously you have to call something and that's where it gets kind of murky.
I believe we see instances at every game in which an ump just didn't get a good look. How else can we explain that pitch which was clearly in the strike zone being called a ball, that ball clearly resting on the line being called foul, etc.? Humans are not perfect. We blink. We take some period of time (more than we are aware of) to react. We see and think "strike" and then say "ball." How many times have you seen an ump go to pull his or her hands apart to make a safe call and then change in midflight to an out call. Even amongst the most schooled, experienced professional umpires in the world, mistakes are made, often because the ump just didn't get a good look.
Given that humans are not perfect and that even the greatest umpire on the planet can miss something important, the umps have to take the field with some sort of predilection regarding the calls they make. I believe this is manifested when, at the outset of a game, the strike zone seems to be rather smaller than it is later on. Whether they admit it or not, plate umps often carry a "show me" attitude into the early innings. Pitchers need to demonstrate that they can throw strikes before they get the corners. This is particularly true of rookie pitchers in the major leagues where young kids often have "control problems" because they have not established themselves yet. Later in their careers, they seem to be given the benefit of the doubt more often. But early on, they get pinched and often the element which makes or breaks their careers is the adjustments they make when they first get pinched. Sometimes even veterans get pinched unless they come into a game and demonstrate that they can throw strikes. After they do that, the zone can be expanded.
I am of the opinion that fair and foul batted balls should be no different than strikes except that you don't have those "expansion issues" nor the deliberate attempt to hit the corners. What I mean is, just as an overly broad or pinched strike zone can change a game, the determination of whether a batted ball is fair or foul holds the potential to change the outcome of a game, particularly in late innings. To me, a ball must be affirmatively in fair ground to be called fair. To me, if there is any material question, it should be called foul. And last night there were material questions. To me that ball had to be foul.
Let's look at a few salient facts before closing the book on this chapter. First of all, the third baseman was very close to the line when that ball was struck. She was completely laid out, in flight, when she dove for that ball. It barely grazed her glove. The ball landed several feet wide of the line, just past third base. Given that the contact between ball and laces was very slight, that contact could not have changed the trajectory very much. The actual point of contact was very quick, too quick to really get a look at it without benefit of multiple slow-motion replays. But the ball trajectory was more evident, providing a longer look. And the ball was clearly foul where it landed - had the fielder not made any contact, it would easily have been called foul. To me, you just can't call a game changing hit fair based on the available visual evidence.
Now add to the visual evidence that the umpire behind homeplate was off to the side of the line. She or he was behind the catcher, who was behind homeplate, and the foul line extends from the point of the back corner of the square part of the plate all the way to the foul pole. The ump was several feet from the foul line. The third base ump was in fair territory, also unable to look straight down the line. I didn't see which ump called the ball fair but it doesn't really matter. None of them had what you would describe as a good angle to the trajectory of the ball nor of the impact between ball and glove. So, not having a good view, what I'm saying is they have to call it foul.
This has been an interesting intellectual exercise. We sit here with rulebooks, videotape and rewind, replay, slo-mo buttons, and dare to question the split-second umps' judgment when they had none of those. We hear talk of using videotape in MLB games while making them a part of the game with respect to every blessed call would turn diamond sports into a tedious, boring spectacle. I am not in any way advocating a five minute commercial break on any protested judgment call. But I do think umpires should at least consider that before they enter the field of play, they need to have some sort of prejudice with respect to certain kinds of calls.
Last night was bang-bang. I would have made the wrong call in the moment. I'm not an ump. I believe that ball was foul at least in the sense that there was not clear and convincing evidence that it was fair. I believe the folks should have called it foul. But that doesn't help Alabama who must now win out of the losers bracket if they want to remain alive. It does give me more chance to watch Burkhart. And that's the way the ball bounces. That's this crazy game of ours.Labels: rules
Permanent Link: Foul! No, Fair! No, FOUL!
Hey Coach, Leave Them Kids Alone
by Dave
Thursday, May 29, 2008
I wasn't paying much attention to my kid because I was working with others on the team. Then for some reason, something caught my attention and I listened to the guy giving my youngest batting instruction. After 10 seconds, I went over and put a stop to it.
A girl on a highly regarded high school team was in a bit of a slump. One of the assistant coaches took control of the situation and began "correcting" her swing mechanics. This particular assistant coach, while not a very good player in her own right, was the sister of a kid who has appeared on the NCAA Top 50 watch list for NCAA softball player of the year. Not exactly a newbie to high level fastpitch softball, she should have known better. She had been raised into rotational hitting mechanics and she was trying to correct a pure linear hitter by making "adjustments" completely inappropriate to her swing. The father of the hitter, after talking to his daughter and realizing what had transpired, approached the team's head coach who put a stop to it. The kid recovered from her slump. At the end of the year, the assistant coach was released for reasons unrelated to the incident.
About a year later, this same coach found a position with another team in the same conference. I talked with a father on that team and warned him about this coach and her practices. He didn't listen to me.
The guy I spoke with has a daughter who is a pretty darn good hitter. She finally got interested in playing college ball this past off season when she went to a clinic put on by a college about three or four hours away.
The coaches at the clinic had all the many girls hit in their cages. They watched, wrote notes and then separated the girls. a couple dozen went over to the next station and two were pulled aside to take some additional swings in the cages. This girl was one of those two kids.
This time, the college's head coach just happened to be watching what was going on in the cages. This time some of the underclass girls who play on the team just happened to come around and make friends with the two kids at the clinic. This time their was much more discussion regarding the virtues of the institution, the team philosophy, and something about how many kids would be graduating out of the program over the next couple of years. Something might have been said about needing a DP who could really hit or something like that.
This girl isn't much in terms of defensive skills but she can really hit. She's played the game at fairly high levels on tournament teams but her interest sometimes wanes, particularly when she is in a slump. Usually this can be rectified by a quick visit to her hitting instructor after which she begins ripping the cover off the ball again.
This kid also, incidentally, happens to be a linear hitter. I don't know what happened to her early high school season slump but I didn't see her name mentioned much in the papers.
After the season was over, I again spoke with the father. He told me his daughter had given up. She wasn't going to play travel ball this summer. Her swing had disappeared. She wasn't trying anymore. She might not even go out for the HS team in 2009, her senior year.
I asked the father if she had ever gotten out of her slump. He told me she really never had. She had hitten a number of extra base hits but her average was poor and she was tremendously frustrated right before she really turned downwards and gave up. He was a little surprised that she hadn't pulled out of her tail spin. "She's been in slumps before and always pulled out of it. Why should this time be any different?" What made matters worse was she had lots more help from the team's coaching staff than ever before. So and so "has been really helpful, pulling her aside and giving her lots of attention. The only thing I questioned was she made all these little adjustments to her stance and the early part of her swing which are different than what she has been taught over the last six years. She wanted her to open her hips earlier. She had her drop the head of the bat below her hands. I guess she was just trying to help her but none of this seemed to work. The more she tried to help, the worse she got."
I turned to the guy and asked him, "do you remember a discussion we had about three months ago regarding 'rotational hitting?'" He said he didn't recall the discussion and wasn't quite sure what I meant by rotational.
Well there's 3 little anecdotes for you and now I'll give you the moral of the story. I don't really care whether you approach hitting by using rotational, linear, Lau's, or any other kind of hitting mechanics. What I do care is that you don't try to mix and match little pieces of each. I mean to say, you can learn all the schools and utilize each when appropriate but only if you are truly an advanced student. You must be steeped in all the schools of hitting and have a competent instructor before you begin utilizing the full universe.
First of all, rotational and linear are incompatible. You cannot really bring a little of this and that from rotational to linear. You cannot really bring a few pieces of linear into rotational. If you try to do this, what you are left with is a dictionary definition of "hitting slump."
The times when you might find yourself using differing approaches has to do with an adjustment made when facing a particular pitcher or perhaps a conscious change based on a differing approach in a game situation. For example, let's say you are a complete hitting student who knows the ins and outs of several different hitting styles and can use each correctly at will. You are facing a girl who throws 80% screwballs on the inner half of the plate and further in. The game is in a situation where you really want to try to hit the ball out of the park. Well, that might be a time to take a rotational approach. Conversely, let's say that this next time up, what you really want is a ground ball to the right side of the infield or an opposite field hit or even fly out. In those circumstances, a linear approach might be preferable. There aren't many players at any level who can pull this off and make it look good but if you happen to be A) a tremendously gifted athlete, B) well steeped in several schools of hitting, and C) your team's best chance to win this game by taking the right approach, then by all means go ahead and have at it. Otherwise, stick with what you have learned and correct that within the context of the school which has trained you.
The troubles usually arise when some coach and his or her student aren't aware that there are different schools of hitting which are incompatible. I recently received an e-mail from a coach telling me that there has been much discussion amongst his staff od assistans and parents of kids on the team about what the "right approach to hitting" was. Several people had gotten into a heated discussion and they could not reach resolution. He wanted my opinion on the "right approach."
My advice to this coach informed him of the differing schools, went on to warn against tweaking kids who had received instruction from professionals, and then went on to explain that you are never going to get 100% buy-in regarding one school or another on just about any team you coach. I told him to first leave the kids who had received instruction alone and focus on those who have not. I forgot to mention that if the parents of this kid or that advocate a particular style, maybe he should also leave those kids alone since whatever he tells them is going to be questioned and refuted later and all he is going to get is one very confused kid who can't hit.
Going back to my first anecdote, the conversation I had with the coach who was trying to instruct my youngest was not a pleasant one. He informed me that I "was teaching your kid to hit baseball style and softball style is different." I asked him to explain softball style. He proceeded to demonstrate a complete mastery of about 5% of rotational hitting mechanics. I told him what he was describing was what is referred to as "rotational," my kid goes to a coach who has coached some of the top hitters in the state and his style is incompatible with rotational, and unless and until he was willing to A) learn the full set of rotational hitting mechanics, B) provide weekly instruction to my kid for free ... for the rest of her softball career, and C) suffer the blame and other consequences when my kid struggled at the plate, he should keep his knowledge to himself.
The bottom line is there are differing schools of hitting mechanics. Some few hitters can learn and employ several of them in their game. Most cannot. You cannot employ little pieces of each and have any degree of success. There is not "one right kind" of "softball swing" which is different than the "one right kind" of "baseball swing." Each of the several schools have people at high levels who they can point to and say look at so and so, he/she is a (fillintheblank) hitter and is world class. Now that's the right way to hit.
I've said it before and this is one of my sticking points, there is also this commonly used statement which claims "rotational hitting is used by ?90%? of all major league hitters, particularly the good ones." That just isn't true. All those guys you see who relase their top hand on follow through are non-rotational hitters. They are Lau hitters. That field includes George Brett, Barry Bonds, Alex RodrÃguez, Manny RamÃrez, David Ortiz, etc. and so forth. Just about anybody who releases their top hands is a Lau hitter. And the list of Lau hitters who are already in or destined to be inducted into the hall of fame is quite long.
I'm sorry if this repeated discussion regarding linear, rotational, Lau, etc. hitting mechanics bores you. I know I've said it ones too many times. But apparently sometimes people are not hearing me and the consequences can be quite serious. It sickens me that this once promising high schooler who just now decided that maybe she would play in college, after all, is now about to give up the game because this one idiot coach, one who should now better, has destroyed the kid's swing and ruined the game for her. She was thankfully caught once committing this mosty heinous of softball crimes. But she is perpetrating the offense again and some seem to be unaware. She's hardly the only potential criminal out there. That inconspicuous coach over there is also a potential offender because his daughter once attended a clinic and he believes everything he heard there. We have to put a stop to coaches who know 5% of one particular style and set about tweaking kids with this limited knowledge. You're familiar with the phrase that a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing? Well, there's your proof.Labels: hitting mechanics, linear, rotational
Permanent Link: Hey Coach, Leave Them Kids Alone
Imperfect World
by Dave
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Recently, I have received a number of e-mails requesting some help with respect to a "situation" which arose on some youth travel team or in somebody's travel "career." These questions generally fall into a few categories so, in the interest of not fashioning a custom response to every question, I figure it might be more efficient to write something up about a number of these here.
Life in general is imperfect. Travel softball is no different. We do not participate in any activity which involves a number of other people and experience nirvana. Whenever there are folks with competing or different interests involved in our pursuits, problems arise and they need to be addressed or ignored, as the case may be.
I cannot offer up advice in a forum such as this which will instantly solve everybody's problems but I think I can offer some sound general advice which might help those lost in the woods find their way back to a reasonably usable path. Without any further ado, here are some common "situations" which can arise in a youth travel fastpitch setting and some of my thoughts about how to deal with them. I can't cover every general problem in a single writing but here are some of the more prevalent ones I hear about:
Daddyball / MommyballFor those unfamiliar with the term "daddyball," it refers to circumstances in which the head coach (probably all team coaches) have a child on the team. She may be the most marginal player on the roster or she may be the team's star. She may be a pitcher, catcher, centerfielder or shortstop who sees every inning at her chosen slot(s), or she may be somebody hidden at the place deemed least likely to see any action. She may bat fourth and strike-out every time up or she may be buried in the lineup and deliver an occasional sacrifice bunt at crucial moments. She may deserve, based on performance, to be the team's shortstop or to ride the bench because she's "terrible" but the coach writes her into the lineup where she truly hurts the team. She may not ever impact your kid's playing time or she may be the only reason your kid only sees action when the team is comfortably ahead or about to be mercied. She may be just an average player who belongs in the line-up just like everybody else and plays no more than other kids or she may be out there every inning of every game in every tournament despite being the reason you can't get past a first game on elimination days. There are any number of possibilities and I believe I have seen many of them.
There may be some great place in the world where every travel ball coach is some person who has no relative on his or her particular team. Some folks who have written me over the years claim that every coach in such and such place is a professional with no daughter on the team and really knows their stuff. That place is usually not where the writer of the e-mail's kid plays but rather someplace far away in a promised land.
Sometimes the real or imagined coaches are college coaches employed during their off-season who "really know their stuff" and can take 12U teams to places no daddy coach possibly could. Sometimes these coaches are former collegiate players who all presumably know the game extremely well and can "relate to the girls" better than a parent ever could. But as I say, these coaches are not found in your area. They exist someplace else.
I have known some situations in which such hired coaches are in charge of a team. What I know of these teams and coaches make them less than idyllic situations for most kids. For one thing, hiring a professional coach is extremely expensive. That's entirely reasonable since coaching any travel team is an endeavor requiring many hours between practices, tournaments, and other functions. To understand what it takes in terms of man or woman hours to coach a team, consider a few facts.
Any good team is going to play 8-12 tournaments. Each tournament is going to involve at least 8 hours in a preliminary round and probably a similar amount of time during the championship one, especially when you factor in travel time and warm-ups. Let's be conservative here and say that each tournament involves the paid coach for no less than 15 hours. Multiply that by 10 tourneys and we calculate 150 hours. Now add to this an absolute no frills, bare minimum two hours per week for one lonely practice over a short season of say 4 months and we come up with an additional 32 hours. That's a ridiculous count by the way! Add to this two hours per week during the off-season training regimen of, again the bare minimum 4 months and we get another 32 hours.
So far we are scrapping the required man power hours down to a very low number and figuring 250 hours. Not that this leaves no room for meeting with parents, conducting tryouts, etc. If we factor in normal functions, we easily get to 300 hours and that is again, a ridiculously low figure for somebody truly involved with a team. let's be absurd and cut that down to 200 hours just to make a point.
So how much should we pay this coach? Do we give them minimum wage, $10 per hour? or should we pay them as much as a reasonably skilled laborer, say $20 per hour? I do not think it is too much to figure a rate of $4,000 ($20 times 200 hours) as a very low figure. Most likely a more realistic low ball would be $5,000 per year for a very inexperienced coach. With a roster size of say 12 kids, that figures to an additional $400+ to your yearly travel ball expense. It ain't cheap and let's remember, this is for just one rather inexpensive coach.
Typically any travel softball team is going to utilize no less than 3 coaches and no more than 5. So, if we are willing to foot the bill for a professional coach, that still leaves 2 to 4 fathers or mothers in the dugout who have the coach's ear most of the time and will be able to negotiate, better than you, playing time for their kid. There is little doubt that even the paid coach is going to be easily persuaded to put that kid in the games more because, all other things being semi-equal, the paid coach is going to appreciate the help he or she gets from the parent who volunteers to assist.
Moving along to a deeper look at the paid coach thing in general, there are some other considerations. You remember that TV commercial where one set of dudes go to a basketball camp run by "Coach Jay" while another unexpectedly finds their drills run by "Coach K?" The last time I checked, Coach K of Duke was not offering cheap basketball fundamentals clinics to a bunch of guys who just want to learn how to play. The same is true for the gals on Team USA. They are not offering to run any old 10U travel team for the tidy sum of $5,000 per year.
Chances are pretty decent that the former college player who has been hired to coach your kid's team is not somebody you watched in the WCWS last year who graduated, took a teaching job at the local elementary school and is looking to fill her spare time and summer with the sport she loves. Chances are pretty decent your coach played (or rode the bench) on some non-descript Div III teaching college's sub-.500 team. That doesn't make her a terrible coach. Actually, she may be the best coach you could ever possibly imagine. Heck, one day she may be pulling the strings behind some team in the WCWS and this is merely her first step in that direction. My point is the "prodigal daughter," former college player, newly hired, professional coach is not always what it is cracked up to be.
Also, the reality is the vast majority of travel softball coaches are not hired coaches. Little league does not permit paid coaches. The same is true of PONY. I'm not 100% sure about other types of play but I believe both ASA and NSA allow for paid coaches. Still, kids from less than hugely affluent areas cannot afford to pay an extra $400 ($1,000 is probably a more realistic amount) to hire a coach. As it is, they are canning and conducting fundraisers just to pay for uniforms and tournaments. Even when there is a paid coach involved, there are other unpaid daddies and mommies.
So "daddy and mommy coaches" are far more the norm than anyone admits. And many of these are people who played baseball or softball in college or otherwise have been involved in the sport in serious ways before they ever had children. Sometimes you just might be the luckliest person on the face of the Earth to have your kid on a team which is run by former MLB catcher Bob Smith who is currently being considered for induction into the Hall of Fame or Sally May, former SS for Div II champion Empire State who still holds Div II records for homeruns, sacrifice bunts, and an error-free career. They, by the way, also have a couple daughters who are destined to exceed their parents' accomplishments!
The bottom line is no coach is perfect and no coaching circumstance is nirvana. You meet the coaches. You watch them coach and decide if they are going to be good for your kids. If you decide that you don't want your kid around that adult, move her to some other team.
Playing TimeI would take any words which imply or state unequivocably a promise of specific playing time or time at a particular position and do with them what you would a spec of infield dirt on your kid's uniform. Brush them away and forget about it. Don't seek out such promises. Don't listen to them when they are spoken. There's just no way on God's Green Earth that such a promise will ever be remembered when it comes time to draft a line-up card or determine who is going in to replace whom when push comes to shove. It just doesn't happen in the vast majority of cases. Moslty, when a coach says she will play shortstop 2 of every 3 games, what is meant is, if your kid continues to improve at least as much as other kids, she's gonna be our number one SS. But if Sally-Jo should happen to practice twice a day, every day, with a professional coach her very rich father has hired full-time at the plant, well, all bets are off.
I dare say that the only place a promise to play should ever be honored is on a showcase team playing a college showcase. There, the costs are very high, the potential benefits specifically what is sought after, and the very nature of the beast is far more about getting girls on the field than it is about winning games. Everywhere else, like it or not, play is about winning, about implementing strategies to get the most out of any given tournament.
This having been said, there are certain realities which dictate playing time for most kids on at least half of all game days. For one thing, most travel clubs consist of about just 12 kids. You need 9 on the field and possibly a tenth in the DP slot. Any coach worth his or her salt, wants to make sure that their 10th through 12th players have enough experience to step in when needed. Injuries and fatigue are a reality of travel softball and any coach who plays 9 for every game of a 4 game minimum is out of his or her mind. If a coach exclusively plays the "starting 9" during every game of a tournament, you are almost guaranteed there will be injuries resulting in number 10-12 taking up residence in the order at the wrong moment.
I have seen catchers catch all 6 games of a two-day tournament even at the 14U level. It is the rare individual who can pull this feat of strength off. I recall one such girl playing an outstanding tournament and then in the middle of the championship game, played in 90 degree humid weather, she removed her helmet during a brief time-out and nearly collapsed. After that, the opponent began taking advantage of her and ultimately won the game on small ball and base running plays. It's bad business to play a catcher for an entire tournament particularly during the seeding rounds unless you have to do that due to injuries to your other catchers.
Obviously the same facts hold true for pitchers. We do see some few pitchers who are able to pitch every inning of a 7 or more game tournament but that is a rarity and I guarantee you that her stuff is not as good in game 7 as it was in game 1. If you want to win tournaments, you have to have more than 1 or 2 pitchers. The same is true for other positions. If you leave your stud SS out there for every game and she happens to be the team's best hitter and baserunner, I'll lay even odds that at some point in your season, you will be without her skills in the field due to a hard slide on a close play (on offense or defense) after which she is gone for one or more games.
Usually injuries, like the one I'm contemplating, don't occur when you don't really need your SS or catcher. These key position players usually go down right before the championship or elimination game. So, having played one girl exclusively at SS who goes down right before the big game, who you gonna put out there now?
The way I like to coach a team involves: 1) getting two girls involved at every position, preferably more if possible at key positions; 2) insuring that every kid on the roster can play someplace at any time; 3) getting a reasonable level of experience for every kid on the roster so that if they are needed in a key game, you are not better off playing 8 kids. I have had situations arise before in which several kids on the roster were not able to fill a slot in the line-up with any success at all and that's not a happy circumstance. It's incumbent upon a coach to make sure all kids get ample experience.
It should be the rarest of circumstances in which your kid gets almost no playing time at all. In any given 4 game minimum tournament, with a 3 game seeding round, every kid on a 12 person roster should see at least a game and a half's worth of action. If you don't see at least that much action, I would strongly urge having a brief conversation with the coach. That conversation should go something along the lines of "how can you reasonably expect my Sally to play should you need her to fill the 9th spot during some championship game when 3 other girls go down with injuries if she doesn't at least get in there for some whole games" What you do not want to do is ask "when is Sally ever going to get the opportunity to pitch?" What you want is some playing time, some at-bats, and a reasonable opportunity to prove that maybe she should be in there more than she is now. What you do not want is any promise of a specific amount of playing time. If you don;t see at least a game in a half of any set of 3 preliminary games, you are right to have a problem with that and maybe it is time to move on to someplace else.
Coaching StylesRegardless of whether you have a paid coach or volunteer daddy or mommy coaches, you are going to face up to one reality whether you like it or not. Different coaches have different coaching and communication styles. As you might imagine, I'd fall into the verbose category of coaches. I tend to communicate too much which sometimes means not enough emphasis on what matters most. Some coaches say almost nothing. Some coaches are very encouraging when your kid makes an error. Some few coaches will storm to the pitching circle after an error to conduct a conference with the infielders and then proceed to yell at your kid in rightfield about how she "cannot make those kinds of mistakes" without really hurting the team and maybe causing them to lose. Some coaches will never utter a single word about a mental or physical error yet remove the kid from the position at the next opportunity and never allow her to play that position again. Some coaches will leave your kid out there pitching when she is being pummeled by the other team and looks about ready to crawl into a hole in the ground and die. They'll tell you why they did it if asked, but otherwise, you'll never hear a thing. Some coaches might come over to you and ask if you think she is alright when she looks at her hand and then bites off a hangnail.
The reality is every human being is different, having had different life and softball experiences. Everybody uses a slightly different communication style. If you examine things closely, you will find that the whole universe of coaching styles and communication skills is very broad indeed. One of the things you should closely examine when picking a team is the styles the various coaches employ. If these don't suit your kid, don't join.
But let's face facts, you often do not get a full picture of coaches until well after you have committed to a team, often long after real games have begun. The best you can do is try to understand the way they are going to coach your kid and decide whether that is going to do the trick.
Also, coaches do change as the season progresses. If a team unexpectedly wins or loses a high percentage of their games, sometimes the changes are shocking. I am currently involved with a team which we expected would be beaten up pretty bad early and then hopefully progress to where they can compete for a championship at a few B tournaments late in the year. They are young and inexperienced but rather athletic. As time has worn on, the coaches have tried to do the best job we could of teaching these kids fundamental skills and plays they would need to utilize during tournament games. Things have been fairly mellow so far. The other day we were playing a medium level tournament intending them to win a few games and build some confidence. We hoped they would win one on Saturday and maybe learn to win one on a Sunday. So, of course, this team of underaged kids with no real tournament experience, won every game on Saturday and made it to the championship game on Sunday! The kids are very competitive. I suppose the coaches are too but we had such low expectations for this team that it was easy to not make mountains out of molehills when errors were made or girls ran us out of an inning. We certainly made the most of games we lost. We weren't afraid to lose or even have a bad game. But as this tournament wore on and we realized that these girls were playing outstanding ball, each of us experienced differing levels of game stress which began to manifest themselves in weird ways. We changed. And things were no longer so nice and comfortable. We'll have to see what happens at the next tourney since expectations have been raised quite a bit.
To wrap up this subsection, I suggest that you try your hardest to match what you think your child's needs are to the personalities of team coaches. You won't always do a perfect job of it. As I said, we dwell in an imperfect world. Just try your best - you know, do what you tell your kids before they take the field. And if after spending a lot of energy contemplating whether this team's coaches are a reasonably good fit for your kid, act appropriately.
FinancesOne of the issues which can be extremely important to parents is the cost of joining this or that team. Usually a team has a set fee to sign up. Then there are uniform charges as well as costs associated with getting one of those team jackets, sweat suits, additional work-out clothes bearing your child's name and number, etc. Those costs will usually get you some specific things such as a pre-determined number of tournaments, a certain number of off-season workouts, the specific article of clothing, etc. Sometimes things are far more vague.
It is very important to as fully as possible understand just what this venture is going to cost you. If the coaches don't simply offer up exactly what the costs are before you join, ask them to give you a complete run down and commit to that. It is riduclous for a team and organization not to be able to give you a pretty good picture of what is involved and what you get for your money.
I have known teams which charge a great deal to join and then tack on ancillary charges as the year progresses. Sometimes they deliberately obfuscate the total annual cost in terms of out of pocket money or the commitment for fund raising. When this happens, all sorts of red flags should go up. You want to know exactly what the commitment is in terms of time and money before you join and any major deviation from that promise should cause you to put up resistance unless you receive an adequate explanation and agree to those terms.
Within any organization, there usually is a group of several teams at different age groups. Some of those teams may receive a little more than the others. But the disparity between teams should be negligible unless there is a difference in fees or fundraising responsibilities. For example, if your organization has an 18U club and they travel far and wide to play major tournaments and your team's fees just do not compute, there may be something going on which is forcing you to kick in funds so the older girls can do what they do more cheaply. That's not just unfair. It is wrong. And don't believe organization people when they tell you that your daughter will benefit from the same circumstances when she's 17 and playing on the big club. That's not the way it works and there are no guarantees that she'll even be asked to join the showcase team when she is old enough. You pay for what you get ... period.
Sometimes, organizations do not have adequate safeguards built into their systems to insure that you get your money's worth. This can take many forms. If all the money falls into one kitty or if one person oversees all collections and disbursements, there is room for less than perfectly honest behavior. If that person also happens to be involved with one particular team and that team always seems to have something different than others within the same organization, again, red flags should go up. We have seen teams where one or two teams never gets a single dirty ball with which to practice while another has a batting tee for every kid, every new-fangled training device, four buckets of sparkling new balls halfway through the season, etc., etc. We have seen teams where one younger group plays 5 tournaments (two cheaper one-days) while the oldest plays 20, each kid on each team paying exactly the same fee. We have seen one team in an organization offer "scholarships" to some of its elite players while the parents of a ten year old playing her first season pay the rent late in order to come up with their non-discounted fee on time.
Also, I know of some teams which charge a fair amount to play 10 tournaments, perhaps three times as much as other organizations playing the same tourneys. The expensive team has access to some pretty good indoor facilities and the parents believed when they signed up that the cost of this was part of the original fee. Nobody ever thought to ask because it just seemed so logical. And the organization never suggested anything one way or the other until well after the first installment of the team fee was collected. Then they informed the parents that each indoor workout would require the paying of a $20 fee. They also mandated participation in certain very expensive clinics held at the same facility. The end result of whatever was going on was one team in another organization played the identical tournaments as another, had comparable uniforms, conducted similar indoor workouts, so on and so forth, and costed one quarter of what the other team ultimately charged.
The Universe is big. The world is imperfect. You had better try your darndest to get a grasp of the costs associated with a team before you sign up and hand over your first deposit. And if you are already on a team whose finances are murky and don't compute, either leave or expect more of the same in the future.
Team JumpingThe real crux of this piece involves the fundamental values parents held before they got involved with travel ball. We all want our kids to get exercise, learn good sportsmanship, and benefit from experiencing the team concept first hand. We want our kids to learn the value of working towards a personal and team goal. We want them to experience competition in the rarified circumstance of the sporting field. We are looking for them to pick up all the good traits either we ourselves picked up in sports or see exhibited in others. What we do not want them to learn is anything negative like how to be a quitter, prima donna, or poor loser. We don't want our kids to learn how to dog it through a practice or how to achieve mediocrity by formulating the reasoning that this kid gets to play and she never tries so I'm not going to try because I won't get any better treatment if I do. No matter what, we don't want our kids to grow up thinking that whatever they try, as soon as it gets difficult, as son as things don't go right for you, as soon as you encounter major problems, the thing to do is pick up and leave, the thing to do is "when the going gets tough, the tough get going ... right out the front door.
Most of us in this sport do not want our kids to become quitters. The term "quitter" can be defined by us on the fly so whenever we leave something, we worry that we are quitting. A girl gives up pitching because its too much work. A girl decides she wants to move out from behind the plate because playing outfield doesn't require you to put on that sweaty mask which causes you to break out. A girl decides that while she likes playing ball, this "A" ball thing is way to stressful and she'd like to go back to lighter travel, maybe rec, or school ball. Those kinds of decisions can be gut wrenching and let's face it, at some point you have to hang up the spikes, glove and bats. But more immediate changes like switching teams often feel like quitting, at least after the fact.
The problem is everything in this world and in the softball world is kind of fluid and in motion at all times. You decide not to try out for a better team because you feel like you committed to this one for as long as it is together. Then you learn that it isn't going to be together anymore because every other kid tried out for better teams and made one. You commit to going to weekly, expensive pitching lessons and doing an hour pitching practice 4 times a week only to learn that nobody else on your team does that and they are having trouble finding their mitts because they haven't picked them up since last game. You cancel your out-of-town family plans because you see on the schedule that you have a tournament planned and then, on the Thursday evening prior, the coach calls to let you know he can't muster 9 girls so the team will be dropping out of it. You cancel all sleepovers on tournament nights and then arrive at the tournament to listen to other kids talking about the sleepovers they attended last night, and then watch the team lose because 6 girls haven't slept and are completely unable to play. You go to practice and watch the kid who really needs to practice complain about how her leg hurts and then sit on the bench texting her boyfriend for an hour. You watch while the coaches daughter gets chewed out for being lazy and then chews back. You hear some kid cursing out her father or mother, and maybe the father or mother cursing back while using words you haven't heard since your church group paid a visit to the prison. Your 14 year old kid makes serious inquiries about how she can learn to do her make-up like that gothe kid who is almost never at practice unless she happens to be walking by with her gothe boyfriend who is no longer in high school because he dropped out and also because he is now too old to attend, while the two are on their way into the woods.
There are any number of reasons why you may feel the need to change teams. I'm pretty sure I have been over this before many times. We sometimes worry that we have switched teams too many times or that we are teaching our kids to be quitters and prima donnas. I have no easy formula for you to use to determine if you are just being smart or you have become a quitter. The only wisdom I can offer is to remind you that we live in an imperfect world and at some point you really need to stick with a team through thick and thicker.
I can't say that 3 teams in a single year is absolutely wrong, always, because I can see circumstances in which it is just possible that this can happen and it be completely somebody else's fault - not yours. I could tell you that if you happen to have changed teams at the beginning of each year for each of the past four years, that you are jumping too frequently but, on the other hand, it really depends. Lots of team use mixed ages and the younger kids want to stay down next year while the older kids have to move up. Sometimes it isn't possible to stay with your particular team and the organization has nobody to coach the next level or can't pull together enough kids to play at all, let alone at the level you are accustomed to. Sometimes that great coach whose daughter is the team leader leaves for a better team taking the only other two real players on the team and you don't like the other kids. There are any number of valid reasons to find yourself constantly jumping to new teams. If that's you, only you can decide whether you are running from something or to something and whether that is the right move in the overall and microcosmic senses.
We must always examine what we are doing in this and other endeavors. There's no two ways about it. We live in an imperfect world and have no choice but to do the best we can to endure. Still, there's no reason why we can't try to make our world the best it can possibly be. Sometimes that means moving to a new locale.Labels: youth tournament teams
Permanent Link: Imperfect World
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