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Off-Season Errors
by Dave
Thursday, November 12, 2009
I think we make a huge off-season error when we ignore the value of rest. Some folks force themselves to completely avoid anything even softball related when out of season and some folks consider the off-season an opportunity to practice even more than usual. I think the bigest error is to go to one of the polar extremes.
There is little question among trainers that rest is an absolute necessity. The very notion of exercise involves working muscles to the point that they get sort of "injured" and then repair themselves while getting even stronger. The body needs time to heal itself. This is why even the most strident workout evangelicals usually advocate taking one day per week to do no exercise. They also tend to advocate taking extended periods of rest every so often, like 4 weeks every 6 months or something along those lines.
When you work out by performing repetitive free exercise, using devices to isolate muscles in motion or lift weights, you basically rip muscle fibers which are then replaced by new ones. Done properly, the athlete will feel pain caused by acid buildup in the muscles as well as increased blood flow to allow for healing as well as feeding the new, more numerous muscle fibers.
As an exercise program progresses, usually athletes feel very sore early on and then the soreness diminishes over time. This is usually not indicative of a reduced amount of soreness but an acclimati0on to the kind of pain caused by the exercise. There is a different kind of pain caused as muscles become more and more exhausted and the body needs more rest and time to repair itself.
It is often difficult to differentiate between real injury and the sort of soreness one experiences when engaguing in an extended period of exercise. Particularly young athletes have difficulty distinguishing between the pain of injury and that of soreness. Worse, their parents have even more trouble evaluating their dhildrens' complaints.
Every kid is different even within a single family and each has his or her own threshhold of pain. One kid complains as if she has a broken body after a single day of exercise. Her sister speaks as if she is just a little sore when in reality she has a broken bone or a partially torn muscle. There is every sort of pain threshhold in between the two extremes and parents are left guessing when they hear their children register complaints.
What makes it even more difficult to evaluate complaints is athletes learn to deal with pain. Their pain threshholds do not remain stangnant. As they age and gain more experience training for sport, they become better able to cope with ordinary soreness. And sometimes when they are actually injured, they mistake the pain with soreness.
I know this to be true because I broke my arm during a football game and did not leave it until a quarter later when I was knocked out. I returned to practice a couple days later and lasted 2 or 3 more practices before my arm swelled so badly from the break that I could not put my shirt on. My brother broke his arm but didn't learn about it until a few weeks later when he was goofing around and dislodged the bone at the point of break. Ouch!
My daughter broke her foot once and complained briefly about it. Two years later she hurt the same location and when we took her for an xray, we learned that the bone had been broken quite some time earlier - when she originally complained about it. Whenever she complains now, we take her immediately to the orthopedic doctor!
Her sister used to complain of pain when she felt any sort of comfort. That kid had some quirks early on particularly related to any sort of sensation. It is difficult to explain precuisely what I mean by quirks. Let's just say that during the winter, she would complain about the cold and then start removing clothing. During the hot summer months, she wouold complain about the heart and start putting clothing on! In any event, we used to refer to her as the "princess and the pea." If she felt any soreness at all, she would complain as if being attacked by a hord of stinging bees. But as she aged, this changed. When, several months ago, she complained about some sort of pain, we ignored her. When the pain got worse and worse, we took her to the doctor and learned she had a very real injury which kept her out of action nearly two months.
So pain can be a little tricky. But regardless of any complaints or lack thereof, athletes need regular rest and extended periods of rest every so often. If they do not get it, their bodies do not stay as fit as they should and the chance of injury becomes greater, particularly in a sport in which tendonitis and related kinds of repetitive motion disorders are so common. Every athlete needs an off-season for their bodies to heal.
Our world has become very competitive. You do not need me to tell you that. You know it to be true just by comparing your own experiences with those of your children. When I went to school, I put out little effort, pulled Bs pretty easily, and was content with my results. My kids don't get off that easily and with good reason. My grades today wouldn't get me into the colleges I was accepted to then.
When I took the scholastic aptitude test, I basically behaved myself for several months and got a good night of sleep the night before sitting. It is rare for kids today not to have some sort of tutoring, a fdormal class, or at least performing test preparation drills regularly before taking a college prep test. Academics are absolutely critical these days.
Sports are even worse. When I was in high school, I knew some kids who played 3 sports. They did football only from August to early November, played basketball during the winter, and then picked up their mitts and bats from March through early summer. There were some sports which involved year-round training but very few of them. Nowadays, the football player is expected to remain in the weight room and agility clinics during just about the entire off-season. Travel soccer, field hockey, basketball, softball, etc. players typically are involved in something team related for at least 10 months of the year. I know of one girl, just a middle schooler, who plays travel softball, soccer and basketball, each requiring practice and competition for about 8-10 months of the year, and the combined three providing absolutely no extended break from sport at any time.
Often kids today find out that such travel or club play is about the bare minimum required to eventually make the HS varsity team, let alone be a starter. Not every school is the same but some pack their entire starting teams with travel players. The kid who tries to play 3 sports at the rec level, maybe one at travel, is often disappointed by her inability to crack into the starting rotation in one of her lesser sports. So, on the one hand, you can't blame the kid trying to play travel in 3 sports. But on the other hand, you know she cannot possibly be getting the kind of rest she needs.
Physical rest is critical but what about mental rest? I think this gets the least attention due to our society's priorities of hyper-competitiveness. I recently learned of some kid playing travel ball on a team which played something like 120 games. 120 games? How do you fit that in? And this team was 12U!
When we teach and train athletes, one of the elements we want to instill in them is a sense of being able to turn on and off the element of focus - extreme mental attention. We want the third baseman to remain hyper-vigilant on every pitch. We want her reactions to be on high alert. It is not acceptable for any player on the field to allow her mind to drift. When I was a kid, that was easy because I longed to be out on the field for each and every one of our 20-35 games including all-stars. It was no effort at all to conjure up adrenaline. But even professional athletes have difficulty remaining up for 120 games. The only comparable experience is that of the major league baseball player. And those guys have great difficulty maintaining focus for the entire season even when paid millions of dollars for precisely that.
No matter how you slice it, 120 games is a bit much for 11 and 12 year olds. You have to figure in the amount of practices on top of that. The team must have conducted 20, 40, perhaps 80 practices in addition to its 120 games. You think the coach was tolerant of any lack of focus the team might exhibit during those? What about the countless private lessons and practice sessions the pitchers most certainly went through. Do you think those were good times for rest and lack of focus? So the pitchewrs on this team must have been doing games, practices, or lessons maybe 300 times a year? Perhaps they did more than that? This is most certainly a formula for only one thing, mental burnout.
I think coaches and parents forget about just how much of a mental burden sport can really be. Personal sessions require focus. Formal practices require more. And games are a whole different level onto themselves. players and teams which do this kind of program probably play really amazingly, at least for some of those games. But at some point, they are going to collapse.
I know a team that was very good at a young age. They played a bunch. After a few years of having a real off-season, players, parents and coaches found they were getting itchy in the off period. As they aged and competing at a high level became more and more important and more and more difficult, they all decided to find someplace to play during the historically off months. They found an indoor league where they could play double headers once a week. the kids did pretty well in this winter league. When they came outdoors for the early tournament season, they were well primed and played very well. As spring turned into summer, however, several instances of tendonitis popped up. If you've ever had tendonitis caused by throwing too much, you know what that does to your swing. The kids stopped hitting. Next, the historically reliable defense began to sputter as the whiole team became flat. They began to lose games against inferior teams.
The lesson is that there is nothing wrong with being itchy in the off-season.
In fact, that's what you are supposed to be. If you turn this positive into a negative and then try to resolve it, you are going to end up flat, men tally shot and injured. Instead, embrace the itch.
Think of it this way, pick something that you are very fond of. I'll make it easy. Let's say you love chocolate (please feel free to replace chocolate with whatever you want but remember, this is a family show). Think of the most chocolate you have ever eaten in a single sitting. Now, get yourself primed because you are going to have to eat that much chocolate every day for the next year.
Let's ignore what will happen to your body. Just think of the mental side of it. It is going to be Halloween every single day for the next year. In the last couple of days leading up to the end of that year, how do you think you'll feel about chocolate? Will you have uncontrollable cravings for the stuff as the hour of your daily "meal" approaches? Or will the thought of anything even slightly chocolatey make you wretch and gag? At the end of the year, will you want to follow it up with another one? That is burnout!
Lest I forget, I'm not here to pretend to be a physical trainer or to evaluate the practices of certain teams. What I do want to say is that rest is an absolute necessity for physical training, to avoid injury, and perhaps more importantly, to provide the level of focus required to be successful in this sport for an extended period. A softball player must have rest. She must have regular rest during extended periods of play. And she must have extended rest for a period of off-season. If she does not, she will not be at top physical condition, she may get hurt, and, worse, she will probably burnout sooner rather than later.
The extended periods of rest can be problematic. What should one do? Should you sit around and do absolutely nothing but watch TV, play video games and eat bon-bons? No, by no means. Some of that is probably advisable but anything done to excess is bad. You don't want to put on 15-20 pountds in the off-seaon, allow your muscles to weaken significantly, or develop back problems from becoming a couch-potato. If you allow yourself to become a complete non-athlete in the off-season, you are going to pay during the season and that's not much fun.
What I do suggest you do during an extended period of rest is 1) first make sure you get rest, probably 4-6 weeks worth of relative inactivity; 2) work on muscles that generally don't get worked on during the stress of the season but which are required for successful play like core muscles, quads, etc.; and 3) work on mechanical issues with professional trainers/instructors in the rarified atmosphere of the off-season when you have few worries about in-game performance.
When I say 4-6 weeks worth of relative inactivity, the emphasis is on the word relative. If your regular regimen consists of 4 one hour pitching sessions plus an hour of lessons, 2-4 hours at the tee and during batting practice, 4 hours worth of defensive practices, a couple hours of speed, agility, baserunning, etc., plus 6-10 games per week, you do not have to be placed inside a comfort chamber to get relative rest. You can go out and play whiffle ball games. You can engage in a neighborhood soccer or football match. You can even perform some sort of regular exercise program. But you just must do a lower volume and intensity of heavy exercise.
For catchers, I think doing anything that builds up the quads or hand strength is a good idea. You can purchase a special squeeze ball or device, or just use a tennis ball to build hand strength. You can do all sorts of free exercise to build up the strength and endurance of quad muscles.
Pitchers know which muscles are important to them. I suggest the ones that the parts of the body most forgotten are the forearm, wrist and fingers. A pitcher can dramatically improve her in-season performance by strengthening her pitching wrist in the off-season via exercises performed as little as a half an hour per day, four times per week. She does not need to throw and throw a lot during the entire off-season. Core muscle strength and overall flexibility are very important for pitchers. The off-season would be a great time to enter a core muscle exercise program or sign up for that yoga class offered at the school or community center.
Everybody on a softball field understands that there are certain skills and muscles which if strong, will improve performance. I can't go through all of this. The off-season is the time to work on those things. I think you can handle this yourself.
As the season approaches and presumably your 6 week period of relative inactivity has ended, you can begin to prep for the coming season. Get out and throw but start slowly. Pitchers should pitch and catchers should catch them. Batting lessons should start up now, before the first practices. Running should become proogrammed and gradually increase in intensity. 60 foot sprints and running all bases is a good way to prepare for practice. Otfielders want to get out and run in fields, track down flyballs if you have someone to hit them. Infielders need to begin doing intense side to side short sprints. It is time once again to really prep the body for the stresses of the season.
By the end of this off-season period, I hope that you will experience a few manifestations of this period of rest. For one thing, your mind should be refreshed and should actually be a little impatient about getting back onto a real softball field to play a real softball game. The muscles you begin working when you start throwing a ball, taking swings, etc. every day, should be completely rested. The muscles you need but which get little real workout during the season should be stronger. Your core muscles should be in better shape from correct use rather than abuse. Your body, mind and soul should be ready to go. You should be itching both physically and mentally to play ball.
You can decide for yourself what to do and how much, of course, but I suggest to you that if you decide that the offseason is going to be a time when you play all out or pitch twice as much as usual, or engage in some sort of extreme physical conditioning while not taking any down time, you may be sorry. It may not be this season. It may not be for quite a while. But if you get in the habit of eating chocolate every single day in large amounts, you most certainly will get sick of the stuff.Labels: attitude, injuries, pre-season preparation, relaxation
Permanent Link: Off-Season Errors
 
Hearing Voices
by Dave
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Lollipop, lollipop, oh Lollylollypop!
A Philadelphia Phillies fan who had long ago relocated to the New York area for his employment was up very late watching the baseball World Series recently. He was rather depressed because his team was down three games to one. The next morning he made his way to the primary care physician for his annual physical. The doctor, not at all a sports fan but aware that his patient had a family history of certain mental disorders asked his patient the question he always did on these visits.
The doctor inquired, "How are you? Have you been feeling down at all lately?"
The patient replied, "Actually I'm very depressed today."
The doctor inquired further, "Are you experiencing any confusion?"
The groggy patient answered, "I'm a bit confused this morning but nothing out of the ordinary."
The now concerned doctor continued, "How would you characterize this confusion? How deeply are you depressed? Have you thought about killing yourself? Have you had any other violent thoughts?"
The patient, irritated, joked with a somewhat wicked smirk, "Suicide? No, but I can think of a few people I'd like to punch in the face like Ryan Howard or Brad Lidge, maybe ARod."
The doctor, now extremely concerned, dug in, "Who are these guys, co-workers? What did they do to get you so angry, particularly this Rodney fellow? You made such a face when you said his name. Would you ever actually engage in violence against one of your co-workers?"
The patient, now rather amused with the doctor, exclaimed, "Look doctor, it doesn't matter, OK? Let's get to something more serious. I don't have cancer or anything, do I? I'd like to get this visit over before much longer so I can go home and take a nap. I took the day off from work today. I called in sick this morning so I don't have to deal with the NY fellows."
The doctor, now extremely concerned and strongly considering institutionalization for his obviously deeply depressed patient, made a final inquiry before pulling the trigger, "Have you been hearing any voices?"
The patient, now fully awake and finally realizing what was going on, said, "Doctor, I'm depressed because the Phillies are going to lose the World Series. Lidge and Howard are on the team. ARod is a Yankee. Don't you watch baseball at all? I'd like to ring the necks of all three but I'm not violent and, you no-sport-idiot, I am not hearing any voices other than perhaps Tim McCarver's - that's the TV announcer calling the games. So can we please move on if I promise to tell you when I am actually suffering from depression?"
The doctor, now a little more in step with his patient, replied, "OK, you scared me for a moment. You need to lose weight, take your cholestrol drugs more regularly and stop staying up so late watching baseball."
Do you hear voices? I do. I think we all do. If I am not listening to someone; if I am not speaking; if there is no talking going on around me, I generally hear that little voice inside my head, my voice. It says, "don't forget to go to the bank," "put out the trash tonight," I have to catch one of the kids after dinner tonight, I hope I can make it," or some such. Most of us hear our own little voice in our own little head telling us whatever it is that our brain wants us to focus on. Or, am I alone in this? Maybe I should be institutionalized!
All kidding aside, there is a very important, difficult to discuss, point in all this.
When I am learning something, I generally "hear" the voice of the person who has been instructing me. When I played sports seriously, I "heard" the voice of my coaches inside my head. After a while, I suppose the voice of the teacher, instructor or coach is converted into my own voice but my experience is one of hearing the voice, not merely thinking about something they said or I am saying in their stead.
If you are of my generation, you can think of an example of this being portrayed in comedy. There is the Little Rascals episode in which one of the characters must memorize a poem and he is procrastinating about it. &n bsp; As he drifts off to a daydream, he hears, "learn that poem, learn that poem, learn that poem."
The problem that arises in this hearing of the coach, teacher, mentor, etc. is I can be interrupted by others speaking. If I am attempting to do a difficult activity, I am listening to something my mentor has told me and if there is too much talking around me, I lose focus and the voice goes silent. When folks interrupt me, I lose the voice, I lose focus, I cannot continue.
Obviously a ball player can never be very good unless he or she learns to tune out other voices or push them into the white noise background. With pitchers, this is particularly true. You throw a ball and the other teams starts in immediately with "too low to make it go" or "too high to make it fly." If you can't get past that, you do not have a future in pitching. If you are batting and hear anything that the catcher or other fielders has to say, well then, somebody is going to recognize your rabbit ears and really start giving you the business. Ball players must learn to tune out irrelevant voices.
Too bad umps aren't accomplished at this skill!
The typical softball player has a lot of voices going on in her head. There is the hitting or pitching instructor, perhaps somebody who has given her pointers on fielding. Her speed and agility guy or gal is also trying to speak inside her head. Then, of course, there are the team coaches. If a team has 4 coaches and each has something to say, well, in this case, there are 6 or more voices competing to be heard whilst she pushes the other team's and their parents' cheers out of her head.
You think this is easy? Try it at your workplace or at some social gathering. It is nearly impossible to push 30 people's voices out of your head while listening intently to a half dozen others and keep your sanity in the process. Yet ball players do it all the time. It is a matter of survival. But it takes a tremendous effort and a huge volume of psychic energy.
If on top of all the coaches and myriad instructors, your kid must also listen to you, she is being set up for failure. And if she has rightly concluded that she must block you out while continuing to focus upon the words and voices of the good instructors you paid money for, her job is much tougher than it ought to be. If "you" means both parents, that's worse. If "you" means both parents, estranged from each other, plus their new significant others, look out!
There is little which amuses me quite as much as parents attending to their kids at some clinic or private instruction. The instructor is telling them what they need to focus on. After a few months of instruction, maybe a year or more, the parent becomes steeped in what the private, paid coach generally emphasizes to her. Do this, do that. Your not ... You are ... The coach knows his or her trade because they have spent 40 years working this scene. The parent knows what they know from a handful of hours spent observing the coach work with their kid. Why on Earth would you take up a single millisecond with your own opinion during time which might cost you $50 to $100 per hour?
And yet, I have observed private pitching sessions in which a parent who is there merely to be the practice catcher because nobody else, nobody better could be found in which the parent instructs the kid to do this or that or not to do this or that. I understand the urge to speak when your kid is not doing things right. Heck, she did things right yesterday. The coach is going to think she is an idiot. The coach is going to think I'm an idiot. And he may think you're an idiot whether you open your mouth or not. But, remember it is better to keep one's mouth shut and have everyone think you a fool than it is to open it and remove all doubt.
Seriously folks, I am speaking from experience. A player benefits quite a bit when her parents remain along the sideline completely silent. I am teaching what I have learned through many of my own mistakes. I have learned this from many others. Go to all the games. Cheer for the good stuff and when everyone else is cheering. Don't correct. Don't stand in as a surrogate coach along the sidelines in an attempt to make your kid perform better. It does not work.
Some time ago, I noticed the father of a top level pitcher almost constantly had a tootsie pop in his mouth. I figured the guy had quit smoking. That is a demon with which I have struggled. And if you are addicted to tobacco, there is nothing worse than a ball game to bring on the urge to smoke. I imagine that even if the father of a pitcher were to quit tobacco for a good two years, he might be overcome with the desire to smoke while watching his kid pitch.
Yet, there was something else at work here. I do not believe the guy had the tootsie pops in the place of tobacco. If he had been using them as a pacifier in leu of tobacco, I believe I would have heard some crunches. Smokers don't do well with lollipops. They are more like the owl in the old commercial. How many licks does it take to get to the middle of a tootsie pop? One ... two ... three ... crunch, it takes three licks!
At a fairly recent game, I was patrolling the sideline, watching competition in which my daughter was not involved. I noticed that everybody on one side of the field had these little white sticks protruding from between their lips. I watched as one guy chucked a stick into the garbage, turned towards the other parents and asked where the pops were. One women turned towards him with a bag in her hand and said, "that's my job this tournament," reached into it and inquired as to which color the father wanted. She had a very large bag of the pops. It was a little peculiar.
More recently, my daughter guested with a team of very well experienced players. Their parents sat quietly on the sidelines with those same darn sticks poking out of their mouths. I was a newbie to the group so there were not a lot of conversation with which I was a part. But before the first game got going, I saw somebody handing out tootsie pops just like I had seen at that other game. The woman who had them joked that this was her week. And after she had handed out a bunch of them, she turned to me and said, "I'm sorry I don't know your name but would you like a pop?" I declined because those things pull out my fillings - I cannot lick or suck on them, I have to chomp.
The woman looked at me with some sympathy and concern, and inquired again, "are you sure?" I declined again and she said, "If you change your mind, please feel free. They are right here." It did not occur to me then how strange it was that she had such a large bag of tootsie pops just like the lady at that other game. But this time, something clicked. The coincidence was just a bit too strange.
Who, when given a choice of a snack to eat while watching a ball game, would choose tootsie pops? Personally, I would go with nuts of some variety, likely pistachioes. I wouldn't choose to eat candy when I know I'm not going to be able to brush my teeth for hours. And I wouldn't generally choose any sort of hard candy, let alone lollie pops.
I finally came to understand what was going on with my wife's help. She pointed out to me that all these softball people were sucking on tootsie pops for only one reason that had little to do with a sweet tooth, smoking, or any kind of hunger. She said they are sucking on these in order to remember to keep their mouths shut! And I knew instantly that she was right.
If one were to metaphysically walk through the entire world of softball, one would instantly recognize the value of the tootsie pop. As one strolled through 8U rec ball, one would take note of the loud voices imploring children to do this or that. As one progressed to 10U and 12U, the voices would become fewer but far more adamant and serious. Enter 14U and 16U and there are still those annoying parents providing essential advice to their sires as the sires made all manner of mocking faces (outside their parents view) towards their friends whose parents were also providing useful advice. But as one got closer and closer to the highest levels of the game, the sounds from the sidelines would diminish to nary a whimper and be replaced by the girls themselves talking more and more frequently to each other, offering encouragement rather than advice, cheering on their teammates, etc.
If you were to take a close look at the parents of the highest level players, they are merely whispering amongst themselves. They almost never talk to their kids, the coaches, and especially the umpires. Sure some do. But the most well seasoned among them do not. The most well seasoned are almost totally silent and devoid of emotion. The newbies continue to offer encouraging words of advice. The in-betweeners are sucking on tootsie pops.
As I said, I am not a huge fan of the tootsie pop. It wrecks my teeth. But when I think hard about it, having wrecked teeth is better than having wrecked children who no longer play softball. Players need to hear voices in their heads. Don't compete with them. You paid lots of money to install those voices. Save your money for the dentist. Let your kids hear those voices. Get your fillings replaced. Better yet, have your dentist fuse your mouth shut!Labels: parents
Permanent Link: Hearing Voices
Flip A Coin
by Dave
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
The following bit of minutiae is not posted merely for entertainment value nor because your intrepid author has nothing of value to say this fine day. The issue concerns a matter of huge importance in somewhat limited circumstances. A question regarding it was posed at a very important coaches seminar recently and answered by a Hall of Fame college coach. It may be a trivial point but I believe that, like many fastpitch softball issues, it is worthy of your concern and careful consideration. You should not merely flip a coin and determine your choice based on chance. The question concerns the choice of "home or away."
Recently, at a coaching seminar, a travel ball coach asked a college coach for his opinion regarding the choice of home or away when a team wins the pre-game conference coin toss. The college coach replied that he would always, absotively, posalutely, always, always always choose home. I suppose it is relatively easy to guess at what his motivation might be. It is also easy to follow suit. But I'm going to have to disagree with this coach despite his being far more well seasoned than I.
In football, the winner of the coin toss almost always chooses to receive the kickoff. I say almost always because under certain weather conditions, it is more advantageous to be able to choose the side of the field you have to defend in which quarter of the game. Each team gets basically the same number of posessions. Each team gets basically the same number of quarters defending each side of the field. But given strong winds in a certain direction, sometimes teams want to be pointed away from the wind in the final quarter. So, when they win the toss, they choose to trade the privilege of receiving the opening kickoff and being on offense for the ability to have the wind at their backs in the final quarter of the game. Those are rare circumstances but they do happen enough to take note of them. The rest of the time, the "winner" says, "I'll take my chances to score first."
In baseball and softball, the most frequent choice in the home vs. away debate is home. We won the toss and we would like to bat last so that if the game is tied in the final inning, we at least have the opportunity to walk off with the win. I do not recall many instances in either baseball or softball in which the winner of the toss has chosen to be "visitor." But think about this, when comparing football and softball, why does the football coin toss winner always elect to go on offense first while the softball winner chooses to play defense?
Of course, this issue does not show itself in all types of play. In rec league, it is customary for the schedule to show home and away teams except, possibly, in the playoffs. In high school, with limited exceptions, the home team is always, well, the home team. In high school playoff tournaments, generally there is a seeding and the better seed is the home team or has the choice of being home or away - and I do not recall any teams choosing away although it probably has merely escaped my notice. A similar situation occurs with college ball. The home team is the home team except for those early season tournaments in warm climates or, presumably the post-season tourneys. Even in travel ball, elimination play is generally conducted in accordance with seedings. Preliminary rounds are a different story, of course. So I offer up this analysis for anyone who must make a choice after winning a coin toss, be they rec contenders, high school or college teams in some sort of tourney, or travel ball teams on the first day of play.
The first consideration of batting or fielding first involves the football analogy. Footballers almost always choose to go on offense first because the first team to strike is in a better position than its opponent and because playing ahead opens opportunities while playing from behind limits your game plan. It is my belief that while the two games are decidedly different, this aspect, for the most part, holds true in both.
If you are about to decide whether to have your runner at first base steal, the decision will be different if you are ahead by 4 runs than if you are trailing by the same amount. The fact is, when you are winning, you can and should be more aggressive, particularly on the bases. You get to force the play and put pressure on the defense to get you out. Most errors occur under pressure, ergo, you force errors more when you lead than when you are behind. When you are up first and score, you have opportunies to steal or try to advance runners on hits. When you are behind, you may not have that runner steal. You may not try to score from second on a basehit to right. &nb sp; You are playing more conservatively.
Secondly, when a team gets out in front of another, the objective percentage of winning vs. losing tells us that the team which scores first wins more often than not. I can say nothing to convince you of my "fact" on this so please check it out for yourself. If I am wrong, I suppose you can chuck the rest of this. But I'm almost positive I have it right. The friend who wrote me with the issue pointed out to the coach who answered it that his team won at a ratio of 4:1 when leading after 1 inning and lost at a rate of 1:3 when losing after one inning. Of course, "after one inning" assumes both the home and away team have batted. But the inference is clear. Getting off the schnied helps a team to win.
To me, the getting-off-the-schnied argument is fairly powerful but I can see how it can be refuted by what I noted about both teams getting up by the "end of the first inning." That's OK with me - I have other arguments.
In games in which there is a "drop dead" time limit, being the first to bat has other advantages. For example, a team which is up first generally uses its pitchers less than the home team. If they are batting when the ump's alarm goes off, their pitcher has seen about one less inning. If they are in the field, she has again seen about one less inning. In the tournament game in which a team may play as many as 5 games in a day, this has huge advantages. You could theoretically require 5 less inning to be pitched in one day!
Also, if a team loses a full-length game not ending with a home team walkoff, it usually doesn't have to play the bottom of the 7th, ergo, one less inning pitched. The home team has to pitch to seven sides, 21 outs, regardless. And the visiting team gets 3 more at bats for its hitters which is usually a good thing in a game where no amount of batting practice can replace facing real, live pitching.
In addition to the benefits of batting more and pitching less, I don't know about you but there are two realities of tournament ball which often irritate me. The first one is that every team I have ever been associated with carries the same curse - the first game of the day curse. That does not mean we play poorly our first game of the day. It means we always play the very first game of the day. Typically, that is scheduled for something like 8, 8:30, or 9:00. We almost always have our kids show up one hour to one and a half hours before our first game. Many of our tournaments are about one hour's drive from most kid's homes. So on the typical prelim day, that means everybody has to roll out of bed by about 5:00 am or earlier, before my pet rooster or his friend the sun awaken!
When it is finally time for the umpire to exclaim, "play ball," sometimes more than half our team has fallen back to sleep. I'd rather that we be woken up by some absurd cheer, the ump exclaiming "strike" or some other such happening while we are in the dugout rather than by a screaming grounder going through our SS', CF's, or both's legs. I'd rather get in the mood to play a long day of defensive softball while watching somebody else make errors rather than my team.
Many tournaments give teams travelling from far a one game hiatus, allowing for an additional hour or so of beauty sleep. But most everybody has to play at 8:00 am from time to time. Maybe this is a weak argument for batting first but the second reality is indisputable. In tournaments, teams often play back to back games with little time in between.
We always warm up at least two pitchers, usually all of our pitchers, before the first game of the day. But by the end of that game, the kid who is starting game 2 has generally gotten cold and needs to throw at least a bit before heading into the circle. We often counteract this problem by having the starter for game 2 relieve at the end of game 1 but sometimes that is just not possible. And, if given about 5 minutes for the top half of the first, we can usually have our starter good to go by the bottom half of the inning.
The final reason to choose to bat first after winning the coin toss is much more subtle. For this item, I need to use anecdotal evidence. I realized the importance of the issue one game as I sat in the dugout with the rest of the team and our game "captains" came back with hunched shoulders and downtrodden expressions. The girl who had called the toss for this game as well as the previous two games said sadly, "I lost again. I guess I'm no good at this. We're up first."
For whatever reason, the girl actually felt like their were winners and losers on the coin toss. Sure, there are in absloute terms but it should not make such an impact on a kid. Who really cares? Does the winning team start jumping about and cheering that they actually won something after winning the coin toss and chose to be home? No, they just yell to their teammates that "we're in the field first!" Everybody seems to choose to be home team. If you choose always to bat first, your team will become accustomed to it and never consider themselves to be "losers" of any kind merely because they lost the coin toss. Instead, they'll probably be amused about the fact that when they win the toss, they bat first and when they lose it, they bat first. Yes, some teams, especially those that see things the same way as I do, will choose to hit first. But most of the time, your team will be up to bat at the beginning of its games. And if that doesn't work for ya, you can shoot me.Labels: attitude, game strategy, relaxation
Permanent Link: Flip A Coin
California Dreamin
by Dave
Monday, November 09, 2009
I'm not really sure what I expected when we recently made our way across the country so that my daughter could guest pitch with a Gold team at a showcase in California. For my daughter, I wanted her to dip her toes into the vast ocean of high level softball as well as the relatively icy Pacific. For myself, I wanted to compare the OC Batbusters Early Thanksgiving college showcase tournament with others I have seen. In the end, I suppose we could have been anywhere in the country doing the same thing. She would have experienced about the same level of play. I most likely would have learned the same lessons. Yet, it was somehow better that this was in California, the epicenter of fastpitch softball on planet Earth.
For my daughter, the experience was invaluable. She is a high school freshman and the team for which she played was a couple sophomores, mostly juniors and one or two seniors. She knew one of the girls on the team and had played in years past against a few of the others. But she felt really alone for the most part. That is an experience in itself but she's been on enough teams made up of strangers to overcome any anxiety caused by the situation.
My daughter has pitched against high schoolers here and there for several years, since she was 12. So the idea of pitching against high schoolers was not particularly intimidating per se. But these hitters, these teams were some of the best in the country. There were serious college coaches coming to keep tabs on many of these kids. Some will undoubtedly play for some of the top 50 D-1 teams in the country. Now that should intimidate anyone heading into the circle. But she survived despite making a bad pitch or two. Her very first pitch was met with a determined swing that drove the ball sharply into left center for a clean single. Her second pitch was swatted to the left side of the infield and played smartly into a 6- (or 5-) 4-3 double play by a teammate at 2B whose college scholarship is signed and sealed. The next batter popped out or grounded one back to her. Inhale deeply!
In my daughter's second inning of work, she was much more relaxed. She walked a kid after recording one out and then got the next two without much happening. Her first GOLD outing was over with no runs allowed. She was a much more confident kid. I won't bore you with the details of her entire showcase pitching experience but I do want to share one little piece of it with you before getting to the heart of what I really have to say today. In her second outing, she retired the first 3 batters she faced and then got up 0-2 on the next hitter. She threw a pitch that was fouled off and then tried to get the kid on a drop curve. That was her first mistake pitch! I do not believe they have yet found the ball. The last I saw of it, it was going over the fence about a millisecond after it came out of my daughter's hand and caught the fat part of the plate about 6 inches above where it should have been.
That's what happens at these kinds of tournaments. A pitcher who has never given up a homerun before (my daughter has - that is not a new experience for her), can make one mistake and only watch helplessly as it clears the fence. There are often 9 good hitters arrayed against you at this level. I have heard the various pitching coaches talk about working lineups and throwing certain pitches to the 3, 4, and 5 hitters while going right after the 7 and 8, etc. You cannot do that when you are a rookie playing showcase ball against Gold teams. The guy with the book might just as well say "this is their number 4 hitter" before each and every kid comes to the plate.
I don't think my kid was mentally prepared for the speed of the players at this level. That is a difficult adjustment to make. I did tell her that this would be the case but it is difficult for anyone to expect speed to that degree. You have to experience it for yourself. When a ball was hit back to my kid and it bounced off her shin, she hustled to pick it up and make a throw to first but I think the kid beat it, though the ump exclaimed "out." She did not have the same degree of sense of urgency which the other kids who have previously played this level had. My hope is that she now knows what I meant when I said the kids are faster.
But enough of my daughter's experience. I can't speak for her. What I can tell you is my experiences were many and varied.
First of all, the reason to play showcase ball is not really to compete at the highest level. This is the business side of the equation and the business is college recruiting. There is competition to be sure but there is no tournament winner or loser. There was no bracket play, just pool games. And a team's result and record do not count nearly as much for anything as do the individual players' exposure to college coaches. The results of game play are more about team pride and, I suppose, about who does and does not get to play on premier fields in future events.
As I said earlier, my kid is but a freshman and we weren't very much concerned that she get tremendous college exposure. We understand how the process works. But all we were after was an opportunity to dip her feet into this level of play and see how she likes it. Not everybody who gets involved with Gold or showcase ball gets such an opportunity to test the waters. We were very fortunate to have the chance.
As we were planning to fly out to CA, we decided that we should fake it until we make it - go ahead and contact college coaches to see if any would come to watch her play. I expect that not everyone understands this so I'll go ahead and explain. When one seeks out college exposure, it is not enough to merely play or play well at some recruiting venue. College coaches do not roam these things looking to cold prospect. They don't watch a game, pick out the one or two or three best players in it and then contact them to offer full rides plus meals, dry cleaning and a car, if those players will deign to come to their institutions. Generally the way it works is a kid will 1) register with the NCAA clearing house, join a team that plays important showcases, sign up for NFCA recru8itment camps or some such, pick out a number of schools to target, fill out prospective athlete recruit questionnaires, make some sort of contact with the softball coach, and keep them apprised of any big tournaments they are playing. This is done with an eye towards getting the coaches' attention, making a favorable impression and hopefully being "followed" by that coach for a while afterwards. I've been told that many coaches will follow a kid for a year or two before making up their minds.
I have also been told that coaches will take a look at any unsigned seniors briefly, are really interested in any juniors they have been following, and will pay a good deal of attention to sophomores from whom they may find the new talent to follow over the next year. They are not particularly interested in freshman unless those freshman happen to be six feet two 70 mph throwers with great movement and impeccable command. They would also be interested in freshman who hit numerous homeruns or demonstrate gold glove level defensive skills. But I have overheard a college coach complain about some 8th or 9th grader being too good for her program because everyone else at bigger programs is likely to grab her too.
So we sent out e-mails to about 4 coaches expecting about a normal response rate - 0%. Typically, you need to send out dozens of contacts to get a few responses. And we went to our first game looking to see where coaches were from and never expecting to see anyone we had contacted. We were shocked speechless when at our first true game, there was one of the coaches we had contacted and he was asking about our daughter by name.
There are a couple lessons in this experience. You need to contact coaches if you are heading down this path. If you didn't know that before, now you do. You should target schools in which you are really interested - those that offer the sort of academic programs you want. And you should not be completely amazed when they show up to watch you / your kid play. If you are paying thousands of dollars for your kid to play showcases, you should not place all your chips on the remote possibility that some coach from UCLA or Arizona will just happen to walk up to the field as your kid rounds the bases after going yard.
One other thing almost slipped my mind. Our team played a couple "practice games" on the day before the tournament officially opened. Most big showcases afford the opportunity for teams to sign up to request such practice games for a charge which is about what umpires fees would be. If you are in a position to consider going to such a tournament a day early and playing "practice games," do it. Maybe not all the college coaches have arrived by the time you take the field but I can guarantee you some have. We saw as many coaches at our "practice games" as we did the regularly scheduled, official ones. Basically, so-called practice games are actually additional showcase games. If you're gonna throw a couple hundred bucks down for flights plus a hotel room, you would be well advised to go for an extra day just to get a little more exposure.
The most important lessons I took home from the left coast are more general in nature. I have watched elite, Gold level CA teams on numerous occassions before. But I have never seen so many all in one place at one time as I did at the Batbusters showcase. In years past I have had the opportunity to watch the Batbusters, San Diego Renegades, and several other top flight CA teams play showcases. This time I saw countless teams I had never heard of before. That was worth the price of admission (and flights, food, housing, etc.).
The teams we played and those I watched were not the absolute best ones in all of softball in general or CA in particular. They were merely good teams, with tons of experience, and with many bona fide college prospects filling a good portion of their ranks. The level of individuals' play was not anything new to me. I have watched the Shamrocks, great Texas teams, Gold Coast Hurricanes, and many top 10, 20, or 64 ASA Gold teams play in person before. The teams we saw at Batbusters were more of the run-of-the-mill CA showcase teams (if that's not too much of a contradiction in terms for you). They had good players and somewhat weaker ones. They made good plays and bad ones. They all shared certain characteristics which any team at this level shares. It was very interesting and worth going over in some detail.
The pitching was of particular interest to me going in. I was not overly impressed with it. CA pitchers are not mechanically superior to pitchers I have seen from Ohio, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, or anywhere else. They do not throw harder. Their pitches do not have more movement on them. But what was evident was pitchers with apparently more experience, better command, and the ability to grind through when they did not seem to have their best stuff. I saw one kid who threw no more than 50. I saw a few harder throwing types but nothing I have not seen elsewhere. I did not see many very good rise ballers. Most pitchers threw a lot of drops and curves. As I said, they had good command of almost eveyrthing they threw, aside from the rises which frequently struck the backstop. Most of all, and I want to give this as much emphasis as possible, almost every CA pitcher I saw had an above average change-up she was not afraid to throw and was able to throw for strikes.
I know I have tried to impress you with this before but I'll say it again at this juncture because I do not believe enough have heard me. The best pitch in softball is the change. I do not believe enough pitchers give it enough of a working in their throwing sessions. The most effective windmill pitchers have good, effective change-ups. If you do not spend as much time working on this pitch as you do on trying to break the 60 mph barrier, you're making a critical mistake. And, finally, if you want to be a successful pitcher, the correct pathway is via command.
You have to throw hard. You have to have good movement. You have to have a good change. And you have to be able to hit spots - spots, not approximate areas.
I have been told that CA pitchers are good because they face CA hitters all the time. I am sure that the pitchers from CA face good hitters a lot. As I said, these pitchers seemed to be more experienced than their age would predict. But I remain unconvinced that they benefit from facing all those great CA hitters because, quite honestly, I did not see many of those.
The hitting was fine but it was not anything which stood out to me. We saw perhaps the same percentage of well hit balls as we have seen in many other venues. There was not a single team which had a monstrous lineup of powerful hitters. A few teams had a couple very good hitters. But the average hitter was an average gold hitter, good but nothing to write home about.
What I did notice was, of the non-slappers, most of the kids hit rotationally. What I mean by "rotationally" is via the Ted Williams style. I d0o not merely mean girls who use their hips by "rotating" them. Almost every decent hitter does that. Ted Williams allowed his hips to fly open early in his swing. So-called "rotational hitters" open their hips before their hands come forwards. They also tend to drop the head of the bat as well as making a couple of other characteristic movements which can be fairly easily traced to Williams. The CA hitters I saw at Batbusters almost all used this technique.
I have to admit a bit of surprise at seeing so many rotationally trained hitters. When, in the past, I have watched top level CA teams play, I certainly have seen some rotational hitters but not a high percentage. There are certain weaknesses to the swing and top level hitters employ parts of it but are not easily characterized as "rotational." At Batbusters, I saw only two kinds of swings, rotational and slapping.
One major difference between the typical rotational hitter I saw in CA was all these girls crowded the plate tightly. I suppose the biggest weakness a rotational hitter has that can be exploiited is down and moving away - like a drop curve or outside drop. The CA hitters cover this weakness by going toes to the line and beyond. This allows them to see an outside, dropping pitch like one over the heart of the plate or even inside. One thing you do not want to do is pitch a rotational hitter inside and low or over the middle of the plate and down. Ofxcourse, this leaves them vulnerable to an inside and up screw but I did not see many, if any, girls who could do this. I have heard Gold coaches speak at length about going high and tight. Now I understand why. If you are going to be effective against these hitters, you must go up and in.
I think I also understand why pitching coaches continue to emphasize the riseball despite the movement down of the strike zone to the solar plexus from its historical upper location at the armpits. It is very difficult to develop a good riseball. Many lay claim to it but few can actually execute on the claim. Among the few who have a legitmate rise, even fewer can throw the thing for a strike under the old strike zone, let alone the new one. But umps at large do not seem to have altered their perceptions to conform with the rule change. Pitches above the plexus and at or slightly above the armpits continue to be called for strikes. If rotational hitters are taking away the down and out, coming up is the next best way to get them out. It is nearly impossible to hit even an average rise ball above the belly button with the bat head held beneath the hands as rotational hitters generally try to do. Rise balls can be dangerous as a bad one travels a great distance. But pitching coaches still consider the pitch to be the Cadillac because it gets rotational hitters out.
Now as a final commentary on CA hitters, oh the slappers, oh the slappers! I saw more well-schooled slappers in CA than I have ever seen in a single place before. In order to discuss this, I mus first define what I mean by a good slapper.
I have seen a high number of kids who hit with a style I would call "tapping" or "tap hitting." &nbsop; This is a technique where a kid who is fast but struggling at the plate, moves to the left side and tries to just tap the ball into play. I see this a lot in high school ball and at the younger ages of travel where the kids are just learning to slap hit. A girl takes up position deep in the box, runs forward as the pitch is delivered and sticks the bat out to make contact as she exits the batter's box. To me, this is not slap hitting. That is why I call it "tap hitting."
Good slappers strike the ball after just a few steps which are taken to build momentum in their run to first. The best ones are quite capable of hitting the ball beyond the infielders. The very best are able to hit the ball to the wall or over it. When good slappers come to the plate, the infield is usually shifted around with one or both middle infielders coming forwards to about the same distance from the plate as the pitcher. There are a variety of other changed fielder alignments so I won;t go into detail. But suffice it to say that if the outfield is pulled in too far, good slappers can take advantage of that but putting the ball over their heads.
The vast majority of CA slappers I saw were very good. In fact, most runs scored as a result of the efforts of the teams' slappers. There were only a handful of well hit balls, hit by non-slap hitters in several games. There were easily double that number in slap-hits of all varieties. What was worse was each team had more than two girls who could slap hit effectively. Some teams had as many as four kids in the lineup who were well-schooled slappers. That's a nightmare for most teams to defense against.
One result of so many teams having so many slappers was that the CA teams seemed much more capable of defending against the slap. Infielders, particularly middle ones, were Kobata quick. They fielded slaps on the ground or bounced and made quick throws to the bases. I'm a huge fan of defensive softball. These infielders played it flawlessly on the slap. My guess is that there are so many slappers in CA that players and teams simply must learn to defense against it. The result is the kind of defensive infield play I saw. And that is the major difference between teams from CA and those from outside the state.
To wrap up, going to CA was a great experience for my kid and for my entire family of softball crazies. We saw some pretty good play and learned a bit about the college recruitment process. We saw some average players including pitchers. We did not see the "great hitters" we expected but the slappers were well above what you see elsewhere. Pitchers had command but were otherwise indistinguishable from their counterparts around the country. Oufielding skills were also about what you see anywhere at this level. The catchers were no more impressive than those from other places. But the rest of the infield was very good. My guess is that when you see slappers all the time, you either learn to deal with them or take up soccer.
As an additional comment, going into CA, we were told that the umpires there favored teams from the state over those from outside it. I saw some pretty bad umpiring. My kid did not experience any sort of negative calls made against her. Actually, to be quite honest, I think she benefitted from most of the bad calls when she was pitching. Some pitches that were clearly out of the zone were called strikes. But I watched a lot of games and I have to say that the theory I heard going in held true. There were bad calls made for and against all teams but the worst ones I witnessed and those which made a difference in the outcome of games were those made against out of state teams. I never saw any game changing calls made against CA teams.
What's worse is there are certain bad calls you have to live with. There is no point to arguing balls and strikes, ever. The ump is not going to change the call and he or she is not going to change the zone. But it is hard to watch one pitch to an area be called a ball and another to the identical place called a strike. There was no strike zone to speak of with most of the CA umps.
Further, while certain plays require a call whether the ump sees it or not, certain others require a call only when the ump sees something affirmatively. For example, if a plate ump blinks on a pitch and does not see it, he still must make a call. He will call ball or strike based on what his gut tells him. Similarly, if there is a play at first, the field ump will call safe or out regardless of whether he is actually convinced one way or the other. He has to make a call. But umps should never make a call on other types of plays unless they see something absolutely. For example, if a runner tags up on a flyball and the ump is not sure he saw her leave the base early, he should not call her out on appeal. That is a seeing sort of call, not a required call where the gut will do. Similarly, an ump should not call a baserunner out for leaving too early unless he actually sees this occur. Also, an ump should not call a base runner out because the base coach touched her unless he actually sees the contact. He cannot think that very possibly these things happened so "I'll go ahead and make the call." He has to actually see the thing happen. In CA, we saw umps make many phantom calls. I say "phantom" because the acts called did not happen. That is rather unforgiveable.
Well that's it. I advocate showcase ball but planes, trains, automobiles, and hotel rooms are expensive. I suppose there are a few other ways to skin the cat of college recruiting but showcases are the best way to make contact and gain a following. CA showcases draw a high number of college coaches as do the NFCA recruitment camps, the Rising Stars stuff in Florida, the tourneys in Colorado, Texas etc. On the other hand, I suppose one's softball experience cannot be complete without hitting CA at this level at least once.Labels: coaching, college, parenting, showcase, Tournaments
Permanent Link: California Dreamin
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