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Crossroads
by Dave
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
The team has come to a crossroads. In order for things to progress and continue, something has to change. When we started out in rec all-stars or early travel, at the age of 8, 9, 10, even 11 for some, it was good enough to have the kids coached by a few parents. Heck, those parents knew much more about the lay of the land in club travel fastpitch softball than the rest of us. They all had prior experience with older daughters and knew the game much more than we did. We deferred to their decision making authority because we really did not know any better. But as time has worn on, some major definiciencies have reared their ugly heads and it is time to do something about this before the team completely splits up.
There are many team coaching/management arrangements out there. But without getting into all of them, the team which started out in 10U ball with a few parents coaching is the single most common one. As these teams progress, sometimes questions arise. Maybe certain hard and fast rules are ignored because one guy or gal makes the decisions for the team and his or her own parental responsibilities conflict with the team's well being.
For example, I can think of an instance in which a team I was involved with had several pitchers who had about the same level of effectiveness. Sometimes one particular father would shove his daughter to the head of the pack, probably believing she was the best on the team. He might use a different set of rules for his daughter than he would for another pitcher. At one point, the four team coaches got together and developed a "best practices" approach with respect to pitching-change decisions on elimination days. They developed a rule which stated that a pitcher will be removed from an elimination game when she has yielded 3 runs unless the team is still ahead by 5 runs or unless there are other strong extenuating circumstances. Then during the first game played after the establishment of the rule, the starting pitcher yielded 2 runs before recording an out in the first inning. One coach turned to the father of the girl, a coach, and said, one more and we have to pull her. The father turned and said, "Both those runs were scored on errors. They weren't her fault. We could have had Jennie Finch pitching and they still would have scored." His thinking was something like, "I'm not letting you pull my daughter in this circumstance." He wasn't willing to blindly apply the rule he had helped develop. The rule didn't apply to his daughter.
The truth was those plays may have been errors or they may not have been. One ball got past the third baseman but it was hit 98 miles per hour and rolled to the fence because the left fielder couldn't even get to it before it got past her. Another ball nearly killed the SS. And the final straw, the play on which the runners scored, was indeed an error, one made by the pitcher herself as she suffered from the shell-shock of being hit so hard. These were not the extenuating circumstances everyone had contemplated. The rule should have applied but it didn't. The team went on to lose 5-4 when the pitcher yielded 3 additional runs and was never pulled.
After the game, a few parents mumbled amongst themseleves but not to that coach, "I thought pitchers would be pulled after 3 runs?" The father-coach was never the wiser, thought "oh well, we lost one, too bad," and believed nobody was particularly angry with him. Think again!
When things like this happen, often what occurs is the other pitchers leave for other teams in order to become aces or at least get more time in the circle. They don't want to play second fiddle for their entire lives to the daughter of the head coach or the one who pushes hardest. They can live with losing but they want to live in a world in which decisions like this one are more objective, more predictable. There's nothing quite like recognizing the existence of two classes of people when one realizes one is in the lower class.
Sometimes the coaches don't have daughters who pitch. But they do play other key positions, sometimes with the result of reduced playing time of a kid with better skills. These circumstances are often not egregious ones but they do raise the hackles on the back of the necks of other parents, whether their kid is directly effected or not. Any error made by the coach's kid while yours is riding the pine creates double the pain. A second error causes the parent of the bench warmer to offer, "If that were my kid out there making those errors, I'd want the coaches to pull her out. But that kid will stay in regardless of how many errors she makes, even if it costs us the game!"
There are some coaches out there who never yell. I do not believe they are in the majority. Assuming you are on a team with a coach who yells, the question is, at whom does he or she yell and under what circumstances? I have been involved with teams on which only the top 3 or 4 girls on the team ever get yelled at. I have been involved with teams on which only the coaches' kids really get yelled at. I have also been involved with teams on which only the kid who competes with one coach's daughter for playing time at a particular position ever gets yelled at - the idea being to establish in others' minds the point that this particular kid isn't quite that good and my daughter should probably play more time at the position. There are many different variations of this but whenever a parent coach yells at some kid, questions are almost always raised.
This can really be a problem at practices. Walk up to any field and notice who is disturbing the flow of things. That is almost invariably a coach's kid. Fathers and/or mothers would yell at these kids but they recognize that they will not achieve the desired results - their kid won't listen to them. That creates stress. Then when some other kid, taking the lead from the coach's daughter, begins to cause trouble, she usually gets it twice over to make up for the parent's inability to yell at his or her own kid.
Another phenomenon we see with parents coaching teams is the parents who are not coaches want to make contributions too. They'll make sure their kid doesn't disobey the coaches ... even ... if ... that ... means ... coming into the dugout in the middle of games to set her straight. These parents really do appreciate that the coach can't be expected to always straighten out their kid. That applies equally to behavioral issues and softball technical ones. Maybe Bob doesn't see than my Sharon is out of position in right. She's oblivious to everything, don't know what I'm gonna do with that kid, "HEY SHARON MOVE WHAT ARE YOU DOING, MOVE OVER TOWARDS CENTER." So, instead of four designated parents coaching the team, what we have is 24 coaches, depending on who shows up at each game or practice. Once this dynamic starts, it is impossible to stop!
I have seen situations in which pitchers' or other players' parents who coach have put their kids ahead of others regardless of one of those kids being head and shoulders above the coach's daughter. Sometimes I have seen the reverse occur.
I can think of at least one situation in which a pitcher's parent made sure to keep her out of games against the very best competition because the parent was afraid the kid might fail. Some people put growth in confidence well ahead of learning to compete. They want their daughter to pitch perfect games against nobody in particular rather than to learn to compete with the best and face losing 3-2.
The precise reasons for discontent in parental coaching situations don't so much matter. The bottom line is, if a parent is making team decisions, if a parent makes all disciplinary decisions, it is sort of expected that he or she may sometimes make wrong ones attributable to the parental relationship with one member of the team. Everybody makes mistakes of one kind or another but the issue under these circumstances is the other parents and the kids themselves are likely to see this problem as a continuing one, not likely to disappear over time and via gained experience, and then lose faith in the team structure. This becomes more and more apparent as girls get older. I would guess that these situations can evolve as early 12U ball, are more evident at 14U, and become absolutely intolerable by 16U.
Whatever the age, whatever the circumstance, the question is, what do we do about it? Well, the "12 families" got together, discussed the issue (aired the grievances), and hopefully agreed to stay together. Before we moved on, it was necessary to create a group decision-making process. We decided that, if all the girls agreed to stick together through thick and thin, all decisions would be made by a minimu vote of 8-4. It was a constitutional moment. We had to agree to agree or we would be mired in bureaucratic hand-ringing. Let's leave that to government.
After we established a decision making format, the first issue on the table was the little thing about parental team issues. That's what brought us to the table. How do we resolve this?
One proposal was to find someone outside the 12 sets of parents and bring them in as a volunteer coach. That's a nice idea but the truth is, it is extremely difficult to find someone willing to undergo the rigors of coaching a travel club as a volunteer. Some organizations can do that but nobody at this table can think of a single individual suitable for the role who would be willilng to do the job. So that one was tossed. The best idea and one on which the vote was 12-0, was to hire a coach from outside the org and have her (preferably a female - 11-1 vote) train the girls and make the important decisions. And that's where we left things.
So, now the question is, what does one pay to a "professional" travel team coach and what is expected of her? That's at the heart of this writing.
Before we begin to look for the qualities of the coach, the first item which came up for discussion is what will it cost us, what will we pay her. Personally, I've heard figures tossed around between $2,500 and $5,000. With 12 kids, the bottom line nut would be anywhere between $200 and as high as $500 once certain incidentals are factored in. That's quite a range. How do we evaluate it?
The only way I can think of evaluating what to set as an expected range for the hired coach's salary is to list out the time we will need her based on our annual calendar. Here's about what that looks like:
1) The year begins with tryouts in August. But in this case, we have an intact team and will not be conducting tryouts.
2) The team plays fall ball in September-November. These games usually are played in some league in which double headers (total 3 hours each) are played on Sundays over 8 weeks = 24 hours. The team generally might practice a few times during the fall for an hour and a half each time - let's say that totals to 9 hours. They also play a couple two day tournaments with each day taking up approximately 7 hours of everyone's time = 28 hours. Most of November, the team will take off. So that totals to about 61 hours. But, to be reasonable, the coach doesn't need to be there every double header. We're playing these just to keep our feet wet. If she can be there for the practices and the two tournaments, that cuts it down to 37 hours.
3) We won't get going hot and heavy in December. Perhaps the team will do some clinics and get together for a couple two hour sessions during the entire month. That's just about maybe 4 total hours.
4) In January and February, things really get going with 9 weeks of 2 practices each lasting say 2 hours. The coach must be there for these. The total number of hours should be about 36.
5) During the March to May time period, these girls will be playing with their school teams, some of which prohibit any activity (especially travel ball) during their seasons. We can conduct a few practices without the prohibited girls but there isn't much sense to holding many sessions with a partial team. Let's call that 16 hours of practice. Lest I forget, we're probably going to enter a couple (maybe 3) one-day tourneys/round-robins on Sundays late in the season. Varsity players will be excused from attending but anybody below that level will be expected to come. So will the coach and that adds another 21 hours to her schedule. This brings the total time commitment to about 37 hours over these three months.
6) Things get hot and heavy in June and July. We'll play 5 2-day tournaments, one 4-6 day event, probably at some nationals, and the girls will be expected to practice twice per week for two hours each session. Of course, the last two weeks of July will be the final big tournament so let's figure 6 weeks worth of practice. The total time commitment for the coach looks like 70 (5 X 2-days at 7 hours per day for regular tourneys) + call it 30 for the big one + 24 hours of practice, for a total of 124 hours.
If my practice schedule looks light to you, consider that I build in assumptions including personal participation at strength/agility training and perhaps technical lessons and clinics for all girls. The hired coach need not attend these and, in fact, is probably not welcome.
So the total time commitment for our hired coach stands at 238 hours with some whiggle room should we need to adjust it downwards. For instance, we could cut out the entire fall season. That would cut it down 37 hours to a total of about 200.
In any event, if we divide the expected salary range of $2,500 to $5,000, we are left with somewhere between $12.50 and $25.00 per hour excluding certain incidental costs such as hotel rooms (end of year national tournament), car costs, etc. $12.50 is probably just barely above McDonalds' wages and a bit lower than Home Depot / Wal-Mart. $25 is a nice decent wage for the type of person we're looking for.
And, yes, that brings us to the type of person who would best fit the needs of a youth travel team. I suppose the best possible circumstance would be someone who has played college ball in the recent past and/or has coached a bit at the school ball level. Most likely, with this schedule, we're not going to attract someone who has 25 successful seasons of coaching top level high school ball. We may pull in an assistant coach (part-time) at a small college but that seems a bit of a reach.
Another option is a girl currently in college though I'm not certain of the NCAA ramifications of that - she'll most likely have to be from a Div II or III school. I have seen college players coach for certain organizations but I'm uncertain of the divisions in which they play.
A final option, perhaps the best one is a recent graduate who has not figured out exactly what she wants to do yet. Perhaps she is giving batting or pitching instruction on the side while she substitute teaches or works part-time someplace. Maybe her career goals are ultimately to coach in high school or college and she needs to build her resume. Coaching a 16U or 14U travel team that turns out to be pretty successful might go a ways towards qualifying a new teacher or part-time employee to be an assistant at a lower level college or even to obtain a high school head coaching position. I can think of at least a couple people whose primary qualification for a HS coaching position was experience in travel. I'm not sure what college coaching positions require but I would think that experiences in travel couldn't hurt.
A gal who is making ends meet via part-time teaching stints, a few weekly softball lessons, perhaps an assistant coaching job at a high school might view the opportunity to earn an extra $2,500 favorably. A high school coach with no out-of-school plans might really appreciate the opportunity to continue coaching during the summer months while earning a few bucks to fund some vacation plans. There may be restrictions against such a coach working with any kids from his or her own high school during the period after school begins until the spring sports season. You've got to check and make sure because not only can the coach be penalized, but also the kid can be subject to certain prohibitions.
So that's where we stand with our expectations for how much we can pay a coach, what it will cost us, and the type of person who might consider taking the job. Now we need to form realistic expectations of what it means to hire a coach.
First of all, it is entirely possible that 90% of the people we might consider hiring as a coach are inferior to our existing parent-coach. That depends on how knowledgeable the parent is. I have observed a number of parent coaches who, if they chose to, would be extremely successful college coaches, perhaps even at Div I. I can think of several professional skills coaches giving private lessons who got their starts working with their own daughters. There is not a way to say that any professional team coach is always going to be better than a parent coach. But there are differences to the team dynamic when an "outsider" is making the critical decisions like who is going to play what and when.
I'm going to share with you the thoughts of Joe who has been down this road before with his daughter who is currently playing very high level ball. I am using Joe's thoughts because I want you to know that other folks have faced this already and while everyone's experiences will not be identical, I prefer to use other's thoughts in certain circumstances. In Joe's words:
"The girls knew this person was impartial and that made it an even playing field in their minds. We had the same group of girls together for two years - no cliques. They got along extremely well and, while that might just be good parenting or outright luck, I think it had something to do with the coaching. Second, we had a female coach and that was a great experience for our girls. They connected with our coach and could relate to her differently than a male/father. Our non-parent coach wasn't a great coach - she had virtually no coaching experience and, while she did a pretty good job overall, there were times when I thought "what is she doing??"
In addition to these thoughts, Joe also notes:
"We (the GMs - heads of the parent committee) took responsibility for schedules, the calendar, website, overall communication - especially with parents. It was expected that parents would come to us with issues, players would go to the coach. And we found that we had very few complaints regarding playing time, etc. When the parent/coach is taken out of the equation, there was very little room for excuses. Our philosophy was "playing time is earned, not given" and that determination was made by the coach. The GMs went to great lengths to stay out of and away from any on-field decisions. One of the side benefits was that we were unique in our area and that has attracted more and more talented players to our team."
So, that's my post for the day. I do not believe I've gone very deeply into the issue of having a paid coach for a girls travel softball team. In my area, they are not commonly seen. There are advantages and disadvantages, the primary one being cost. But I thought I'd at least begin the discussion of this issue with some thoughts about how one would go about analyzing the possibility of hiring a coach. I look forward to your comments, experiences and suggestions regarding this post but please don't merely send me stories about your experiences with daddy and mommy coaches.Labels: coaching, parents, playing time, youth tournament teams
Permanent Link: Crossroads
 
Something Freakish
by Dave
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Something freakish happened at the Olympics. There have been plenty of freakish "things" at this year's Olympics. Of course there's the Freakish Chinese government with its centrally planned, highly disciplined and choreographed air pollution. Too bad the authoritarian government didn't will away water pollution as well but that doesn't show up on aerial photographs of the venues. Speaking of water, you've got to admit that US swimmer Michael Phelps is a bit freakish. The 8 golds for a single Olympics are freakish in and of themselves. The 14 overall career Golds are perhaps more freakish. Then there's the likely event that his Olympic career is not over yet. He may add to his career total at the next games! That's pretty freaky. But the 12,000 calories per day is so far off the freak chart, that it doesn't warrant discussion. Still, this is a softball blog and the freakish thing I saw happened in a softball game.
If you don't have a DVR or, alternately, if you aren't an insomniac, you may not have seen many or any of the Olympic softball games. The way the Americans plowed through the preliminaries was freakish but not unexpected. Some have suggested that this is bad for the game's prospects for inclusion in future games. Perhaps that's so, since nobody in the rest of the world wants to consider putting anything extra into the Olympics which would serve to increase the medal count for good ole USA. But it is way too much to expect a team as talented as this year's squad to do anything less than compete for the gold medal while pretty much trampeling all but the absolute best opponents like Japan. This country dominates softball more than any other sport including men's basketball and swimming.
How about the freakish Jamaican gold medal sprinter Bolt? At 6 foot 5, he is freakishly tall for a sprinter. I watched him run the hundred and he looked like a sixth grader running against the entire third grade. His height was not as freakish as his performance in the hundred meter final. He broke the world record which is always pretty freaky but he did so by besting his own previous mark by 3 tenths of a second. If that's not enough, the previous mark was 2 tenths faster than anyone else has ever run. That puts him a half second ahead of the next fastest human being ever to have walked or run the planet in a less than ten second race. And anyone watching the event should have noticed that he did not appear to be trying! There's an explanation for him not putting out his best effort - he said he wasn't there to break the world record, just to win the gold. But, come on now, it isn't as if this is some sort of new race. Highly trained athletes have been working at setting fast times in the 100 for decades. How can someone step up and run 5+% faster than any other athlete has ever gone before? I believe highly advanced blood tests are called for in this case, not so much to see if he used performance enhancing drugs but more to see if he is, in fact, human!! In my humble opinion, his performance at these games should call into question his precise species. He obviously has some Cheetah blood running through his veins. And, maybe his speed should disqualify him from playing in any future reindeer games. This was the most freakish performance to date in these games but perhaps when he runs the 200 in less than an hour from this writing, he'll best that with another, more freakish accomplishment. Still, as I said, that's not what caught my attention.
If you haven't seen any of the softball medal round, you may want to skip the remainder of this paragraph so I don't spoil the outcome for you. As much as the US dominated preliminary play, the first game of the medal round was quite a bit different. Japanese ace pitcher Ueno held them in check. That could be called freakish by itself but what first strikes me about Ueno is she can throw the ball 70+ mph. The official listing of Ueno says she is 5 feet 8 inches tall. She is not 6 feet or taller. I didn't think it was supposed to be possible for anyone that height to throw that hard. Her speed alone should put her into the books as a freak but her pinpoint accuracy is perhaps even more freakish. Another freak on the softball diamond is American Crystl Bustos. As good as Ueno is, she must have not enjoyed the moment Bustos stepped to the plate in extra-innings. The US had already scored the go-ahead run but Bustos pretty much put the game out of sight when she jacked one out for a 3-run homer. Japan did score one in their half but that was all the offense they could muster. Bustos is a great hitter but that fact gets lost on a freakishly good hitting team. They've hit almost .400 in these games. That's not, however, as freakish as their pitching. The rest of the world is hitting under .050 against US pitching. And it wasn't until the medal round that anyone scored an earned run against them. That results in a freakish ERA but the thing which caught my attention happened in what turned out to be an inconsequential moment.
In the middle of the first medal round game against Japan, Stacey Nuveman came to the plate with a runner on first and one out. Nuveman is a top hitter although she has struggled quite a bit in these games. She was, however, starting to come to life as things began to really matter. She got hits in each of the last two preliminary games she played. She had already gotten a hit off Ueno in the third inning, at the time, just the second one the team had been able to muster. But the freakish thing Nuveman did was ... drumroll ... she laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt!
The bunt didn't matter as Jung struck out looking to record the third out but Nuveman's bunt could have changed the outcome of the game. I thought big, strong girls weren't supposed to be able to bunt. I've heard many of you out there tell me time and time again that you don't want your real hitters bunting. Nuveman is one of the top hitters to have ever played the game.
Nuveman finished her NCAA career with four career records: home runs (90), RBI (299), slugging percentage (.945), and walks (240). Her on-base percentage was around .600. Her international career is almost as good as her college one. In 2004, she hit over .300 in the Athens Olympics. In 2005, she hit over .400 at the World Cup. In 2006, she hit the home run which resulted in the eventual winning run in the World Cup championship game against Japan. If Stacey feels obligated to learn to bunt, everyone should!
Many folks I know have said that they'd prefer girls just hit. Many folks I have come into contact with have argued over and over again that they don't want girls waisting time learning to bunt when they can hit .500 or get an extra-base-hit in a quarter of their at-bats. There seems to be an aversion to ... sneer ... small-ball. I've discussed this issue while watching pretty high level high school and 18U games. I've dealt with it in discussions with parents during 10U, 12U, even 14U seasons. I've seen huge arguments break out because some big strong kid was told to bunt in the second to last inning of a 0-0 game. I've seen entire teams come apart over precisely this issue. It truly is a shame.
The fact is, at some time or another, every kid who has ever played the game of softball is going to come face to face with a situation in which bunting is not only the best play but really the only reasonable one. I don't particularly care if the girl in question is hitting .500 or .050. I don't care if she or her parents see her as a homerun hitter. I don't care much if she cannot run to first in under 3 days, let alone 3 seconds. Every kid who steps foot into a batter's box must learn how to bunt. It's as fundamental to the game as, well, bunt defense. It's as fundamental to the game as throwing, fielding a grounder or pop-up, or learning to swing the bat. I can't say it enough so I'll repeat myself. Every softballer must learn to bunt.
In order to fully understand this, let's look at a game scenario. There is one out in the sixth inning of a nothing-nothing game. The number three hitter has just walked. The hard-hitting, high average clean-up hitter is stepping up to the plate. But she looked really bad her last at-bat, striking out swinging on three pitches. The number five hitter drilled a double to right center, only to be left at second when the next two hitters struck out swinging. The opposing pitcher is obviously very good - only the number five has looked decent against her. What are you going to do? Let your number four swing away and possibly leave the runner at first with two outs? No, you must bunt and at least give the number five a chance to bring her home. If the other team walks her, then so be it. You can't control that. For now, you must set the stage for scoring a run.
Let's say a kid hits .500 with extra-base-hits making up half her successful at-bats. There is a 50-50 chance she'll get a hit in any particular circumstance. And there's a 25% chance she'll hit a double or better. These odds obviously vary depending upon who she is facing. But a well-prepared bunter should be able to get one down 75% of the time in a sacrifice situation. That's a higher percentage bet, particularly with no outs. You just can't afford to pass it up.
OK, I'm done amusing and proseltyzing you. Please teach your kids to bunt. It is a necessary, fundamental softball skill. If the one time homerun record holder can do this proficiently, there is absolutely no valid excuse for any softballer to not learn how to bunt.Labels: Bunt, coaching
Permanent Link: Something Freakish
Dad, Don't Throw Batting Practice!
by Dave
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
I was horrified as I turned to pick a ball out of the bucket and caught a glimpse of one of the most horrendous sights in girls youth fastpitch softball. I stood up to take a good look. Across the field complex, in the batting cages, was a father throwing batting practice to my precious daughter ... overhand.
I dropped the bat and ball I was holding to hit grounders to our infielders and raced the 100 feet towards the batting cages. I felt blood swell my brain and my life flash before me as I experienced one of those dream sequences you get where you are being chased by the beast and cannot seem to make your feet move. I tried to scream out and make them stop it. I opened my mouth but everything inside was so dry and stuck together - I was dehydrated from running defensive drills - that I couldn't make my parched throat say anything, let alone yell across the complex. I felt stabbing pain in my chest, presumably from the heart attack I was either about to or already experiencing.
As I failed to find my voice, I thought I heard something. It sounded like my darling daughter's voice. It was almost a whisper. I thought I heard her call to me, "dad. Dad! DAD!!" I knew she had either seen me and was trying to put a stop to the embarrassing spectacle of me running all out across the softball complex, or she was crying out for help and unable to utter "make him stop." The thought occurred to me that perhaps she wasn't calling out to me with her voice. Maybe I was experiencing ESP and my daughter was willing me to do something, do anything, to stop this father from pitching overhand to her. I continued running despite my chest pounding but I still could not make my feet go.
Everything was moving in slow motion the way it sometimes does in highly stressful situations. I felt as if I was running very slowly but maybe this was just my stress response. Maybe I was actually running faster than I ever had before. Maybe everything had slowed as adrenaline kicked in to help me deal with this life or death situation. Come to think of it, the overhand pitch motion appeared to my eyes to be awkwardly slow. And the pitches came in as if they were Bugs Bunny change-ups. I pressed on knowing that everything was slow motion because my body was reacting to the stress I felt.
Sweat dripped down my forehead and onto my nose. It created a terrible itching sensation which I felt I had to attend to immediately. I reached up to wipe the sweat from my face and touched .... a finger? I felt my eyes burn as I realized they were closed and struggled to open them. There before my eyes was my daughter poking her finger into my chest and tapping my nose, trying to wake me up. I had fallen asleep while watching a taped USA softball game and she needed to get me up because it was time to go to practice.
I shook the sleep from my body and brain and grabbed my daughter in a tight embrace. I was almost crying as I told her, "Oh thank God you're OK. I was so afraid. Thank God it was only a dream, uh, nightmare. Everything is OK now. You're alright."
My daughter didn't talk to me for the rest of that day. She made sure to keep her distance from her weirdo, loser father. She was probably wondering what the heck was wrong with me. So I guess I better explain it here.
In real life I have had to put a stop to a well meaning father throwing batting practice on several occassions. I have even found it necessary to stop a father from throwing said batting practice overhand. I try to addresss these situations in as politically adept a manner possible. But sometimes that's just not possible. And other times, the girls themselves take matters into their own hands.
Once I watched an extremely well meaning father take over batting practice. He watched as another father soft-tossed to hitter after hitter. Then, when his daughter came to the plate, he exclaimed, "Let me take over the pitching duties. I know soft-toss is OK but I want to fire a few fast ones at her." The other father willingly turned over the bucket of balls and left the field to find some liquids with which to replenish his body. The father of the girl at bat stepped in and proceeded to station himself 40 feet from the plate and try to windmill a few.
The first pitch would have read about 40 on the radar gun but it was way high. The next one saw a drop in speed from the father's now injured arm down to 35 or so. I suggested he move in a bit closer and throw from say 35. He did and this time he grooved one at his new top speed of 35. His daughter ripped it while keeping her hands back quite a bit longer than she would otherwise have done. She hadn't seen pitching this slow since 10U, 2 years before. She drilled the pitch right back at him, nearly hitting him square in the face. He moved back to 40 and continued pitching.
His daughter sometimes struggled to slow her bat down enough to meet the ball which was now probably coming in around 30, slower than any change-up she was likely to face ever again in her life. The father got upset and gave her advice. She tried again and hit one without any real authority. He gave more advice. She got mad and just about said, "shut up and pitch." He threw some more. She hit a few, missed a few but was always out in front of it. He corrected her and she found her opportunity to get him off the field. She said, "Can't you throw it any harder? This isn't doing me any good!" The father shrugged this off and then finally gave up when his energy level dropped off and he, too, needed to grab some water.
On another occassion with a different team, I observed a father throw some extremely slow pitches to 14 year olds. The girls mad faces and then told him "these are way too slow." He tried to throw harder and then realizing he wasn't capable of doing the job, he found another way. He said, "You want fast pitching - hit this." He began trying to rekindle his old baseball fastball and use that to shut these little whipper-snappers up. Of course he injured his shoulder and had to stop but he must have thrown 50 overhand pitches to the thoroughly confused girls by then. I, seeing my opportunity, walked onto the field and suggested that he needed his shoulder for work and he should, therefore, stop trying to pitch after the initial injury.
Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that having girls see too much overhand pitching is not a good idea. We were indoors from January through March. Our first tournament was early in April. I was not a coach on this particular 12U team but I went to almost every practice to watch.
The indoor hitting sessions were conducted at a Frozen Ropes franchise. Frozen Ropes is a nicely designed place with loads of equipment and lots of kids around taking hitting, pitching, and other lessons. They do all sorts of agility training and other things relevant to the diamond sports. But it is undeniably geared towards baseball as opposed to softball. There were ten hitting tunnels at this facility, each with its own pitching machine (maybe Iron Mikes?).
The pitching machines were all the overhand variety but they put us down on the end where they had a Jugs machine which is suitable for softball as it can be set up to simulate a pitch from a low release point. I should say that the overhand machine we were using was set up presumably for softball since it was using larger balls than the other baseball machines. Still, it threw overhand.
This would not have been a huge deal since we had use of the Jugs machine but at a point halfway through our reserved time slot, sometime in mid-February, the Jugs machine broke and they never bothered to fix it. We were stuck using the overhand pitching machine. Our girls did rather well even when we had the guy on duty turn up the speed. Actually, I;d have to say that our girls were crushing the ball towards the end of our training season. We were looking forwards to a great season with tons of offense.
As winter turned to spring, we were unabel to go outdoors thanks to the seasonal rains. Thank goodness the Frozen Ropes place, which still had not fixed the Jugs machine, was available so we held a few in-door hitting sessions to keep in shape and maintain our storng offensive skills.
Finally the rains let up enough to play outdoors but it was already time for our first tournament. We went into our first game with loads of winter-induced confidence. And ... we struggled with the bat. Our girls swung and missed many times. About the only offense we were able to generate that first game came from small ball. That was against a middle to low caliber pitcher. The second game was an entirely different matter.
In the second game, we faced one of the better 12U pitchers around. She threw hard, mixed speed and movement, and hit her spots. If it wasnt for an error, a hit batesman, and a questionable walk, we wouldn't have had any baserunners at all. Everyone on our side was completely befuddled with our lack of offense.
As the outdoor practice and tournament season wore on, our hitting prowess returned to at least a semblance of its former self. By mid season, girls made contact at least as well as we had expected them to earlier in the year. A few folks wondered aloud how it was that we came out of the winter season in such bad shape. "Why couldn't we hit like this in April?" Someone suggested that maybe all that expensive off-season hitting was a waste of time. Someone suggested that hiting off machines maybe isn't such a good idea. Nobody ever uttered anything about the fact that the machine we used was an overhand, baseball machine regardless of the size of balls it threw.
Over the past couple of years, I have discussed the issue of a girl moving from baseball to softball with quite a few fathers and mothers. The conversation usually goes something like: "You know, she's a really good baseball player. She's made all-stars ... she's actually the team's shortstop, catcher, pitcher, etc. She bats fourth. She should have no difficulty moving to the girls game." Sometimes a baseball playing daughter's parents mistakenly happen to find themselves at a fastpitch tournament of some level or another. They get intrigued and wonder if maybe their daughter, now sort of dropping from the lead pack in baseball, might not be able to jump over and dominate this game completely.
I usually tell such people that if they think their daughter might enjoy playing fastpitch, by all means make the move. I generally tell them to move as soon as possible. Then I suggest that making the transition may not be quite as easy as they think it will be. The play is quite a bit different. rather than recounting these discussions, let me just list a few of the differences I usually bring up in such discussions.
First of all, the ball is bigger and heavier. If you;ve ever moved from throwing an 11 inch ball to the 12, you know that ball size changes your throwing motion. If you don't have very good mechanics, you may struggle quite a bit. Moving from a baseball to a standard softball or vice versa, for that matter, is doubly difficult.
Secondly, depending on age and type of baseball played, the bases are closer together. This changes infield play quite a bit. To the inexperienced eye, it may seem like softball is played at 60 feet whereas baseball is played at 90 because girls are slower runners. I asure you that girls in softball do not run 60 feet in the same amount of time boys run 90 in baseball. A good major league running time to first is something like 4 seconds. In fastpitch softball, a good time to first is at or under 3 at high school levels and more like 2.8 in college. To put it succinctly, girls softball is a faster game than baseball. The softball SS bobbles the grounder and the usual result is SAFE. Most of the time in baseball, a SS can stay with it and get an out at first.
Third, hitting the pitching is quite a bit different. There are many elements in softball which are different from baseball. Here are just a few. Pitch speed, defined by the amount of time from release to contact, is faster in softball. Pitch selection is often more varied in softball. And the trajectory of pitches is quite different.
A pitcher throwing 55 mph is fairly common in 14U softball. 60 is about as common as 50 and you rarely see anything below 50 except in all-stars or weak tournaments. With a five foot leg drive, a 55 mph pitcher gets the ball to the plate in .44 seconds. A baseball pitcher gets it there in the same amount of time only if he can hit 85 on the radar gun. At 50 with a similar stride, it takes .48 seconds. That equates to a just under 80 mph fastball in baseball. How many 14 year old 80 and 85 mph pitches has your baseball playing daughter faced?
The ball is bigger so presumably a batter has an easier time making contact. It is also heavier and the bats lighter so the question really is, not so much can you make contact but how well can you drive it. Many of us have seen the "Sports Science" show in which the total force of a baseball pitch vs. a softball pitch was calculated. Thier conclusion, precisely valid or not, was that a softball is thrown with greater total inertial force. Ergo, it is more difficult to drive a windmilled softball than an overhand fastball.
As a girl ages out of 12s into 14s and upwards, the incidence of your standard fastball drops markedly. You do see some girls in 14U who throw mainly fastballs but that is a minority of pitchers. For the most part, softball pitchers throw a larger repertoire of pitches than their baseball brethren and many use the fastball only sparingly. A screwball in baseball is a rare phenomenon and with good reason considering the deleterious effects on the shoulder. In softball, many pitchers throw screws. The same can be said for curves and, further, while usually a baseball pitcher has one kind of curve, it is not uncommon for a softball pitcher to utilize several types.
Finally, the trajectory of the ball is quite different and that's where I began this discussion - with my overhand batting practice nightmare. A softball pitcher throws the ball underhand, from about a foot or two off the ground, and in order to keep it from being bowled, her trajectory must be upwards. By contrast, a baseball pitcher throws the ball overhand and downwards. If thwe softball strike zone spans about 2 feet to about 4 feet off the ground, and the ball is relased from a foot off the ground, that tells you almost everything you need to know about trajectory. By comparison, a 5 foot tall baseball player is throwing at approximately the same strike zone from a point about 5-6 feet off the ground. One ball goes up and the other goes down - at least from an absolute starting and ending point of view.
This difference in trajectory, when added to the different release point at which the batter must pick the ball up, makes hitting in the two sports rather different. It makes transitioning from one style of pitching to the other a bit difficult. We can save a discussion about swing mechanics for another time but the fact is the vision aspect of hitting is more different in the two games than perhaps any other aspect.
This is why my nightmare involved a father throwing overhand to my daughter. I don't want to ever see that again. I'd rather that my daughters and anyone who plays for me swing at nothing than swing at overhand pitches. I'd prefer they swung at the Hit-N-Stik or a ball placed on a tee. But I'd take nothing over a slow or overhand pitched ball. And I'm not all that fond of machines either.
This brings me to a comment Michele Smith made while broadcasting the Olympic softball games. She said the most under-utilized piece of equipment in softball is the batting tee. I'd have to agree. When we work on swing mechanics, when we make sure some kid takes 50 swings in order to develop her strength, it is unimportant that she does so with a ball moving at the appropriate speed. There will be time for that later, in scrimmages or other places. When we conduct batting practice, particularly during the off-season, the batting tee, a ball, and a net is really all we need.
To the extent we want to change things up a little, we can and should do some soft-toss. Soft-toss allows the batter to time her swing and make contact at a desirable point without getting into the redundancy of the ball being stationery in the same place for all 50 swings. You can and should move the tee around but soft-toss allows the coach to emphasize different points more quickly than with the tee. Still, don't ignore the virtues of the tee.
Several years ago I watched and told you about an interview I saw with the head coach of then NCAA baseball champion Texas team. They shot film with all sorts of practice situations as backdrops. But more than any other circumstance, the coach was interviewed while his players took hacks in cages at tees. I don't recall ever seeing machine pitched balls used. I did see some soft-toss sessions. But these highly trained athletes were very definitely hitting off tees.
I am, of course, baseball obsessed like most red blooded Americans. I sometimes will watch batting practice before games. I've heard baseball TV commentators often talk about some hitter making his way back from an injury. I believe I have seen and heard more references to hitting off the tee than anything else. And while pre-MLB-game batting practices do not usually involve the tee, it is my understanding that these greatest hitters in the world work off the tee underneath the stands before going out to hit a few pitched balls. Most high school hitters hit more balls off the tee before a season gets going than they ever see live at-bats. The same is true for college players. many schools do own and use machines but they still spend significant time hitting off the tee.
Michele Smith is right. The Olympians and most other top hitters in both games hit off the tee much more than they ever utilize machine pitched balls. Machine pitched balls may have some place in the overall practice regimen but that place is well behind the standard batting tee. I don't know why we tend to ignore the tee in favor of dad-pitched batting practice. One is almost invariably a waste of time.
I will note that one girl I remember watching was maybe the best hitter I have ever seen. She learned to hit with her father pitching. She went through her whole high school and college career taking dad-pitched batting practice. of course, her father could throw sixty, hit his spots, and move the ball around. He had four different types of change-ups including a great knuckle ball. I believe he had command of three distinct curves and two different screws. He also happened to throw a killer rise! I can't do that.Labels: batting practice, coaching
Permanent Link: Dad, Don't Throw Batting Practice!
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