The Three B’s
Image via WikipediaThe Three B’s
I learned this from my assistant coach this year, he learned it from his travel coach. On defense, you need to take care of the three B’s! They are:
B1 – Ball
B2 – Bag
B3 – Backup
The Application
What does this mean? It makes total sense. First you have to catch the ball, second you get the bag, third you backup. The practical application of this is very cool.
With a perfect throw, they really don’t come into play. But when the throw is off line, you must leave the bag and take care of the ball first. If you still have time to cover the bag so be it, but take care of the ball first. Of course, you should always be backing up.
The Process
On every play, each player should make this three step decision process . First they should go for the ball, if they have no play on the ball, they should go to their appropriate bag, if they have no bag to cover, they should backup.
How great is that???!!!!
We are using this on all our teams now and the kids understand the simplicity of it and react appropriately.
You are never too old to learn a new trick!
Variation of the Around the Horn Drill
Tonight we did a variation of the “around the horn” drill. Everyone has thrown the ball around the horn. While it seems pretty boring, if you get the ball moving fast enough, it can be very effective. We like to usually do it like this:
- Straddle 3rd, 2nd, and 1st base.
- Pitch to the catcher.
- Have her whip the ball to 3rd, then 2nd, then 1st, then home.
- Catcher whips to 3rd and you start all over.
It is fun to see how many times you can get around without an error.
For variety we advance to “making a tag” when they receive the throw at each base.
Tonight we switched it up a bit. We had the following throwing pattern:
Catcher —> 2nd —> 3rd —> 1st—> home.
I feel that the catcher to 2nd is a more effective practice for the catcher. Likewise, 2nd to 3rd is a good practice for “pickoff” once the out is recorded at 2nd. Third to 1st is a throw that is often made and almost always the 1st baseman has to catch for the out and immediately fire home.
This went very well, and while it didn’t move quite as fast, it was much more “game friendly”.
Throwing and catching are simple skills that are often overlooked. It is usually boring to practice them, so coaches sometimes neglect them. They are too important to neglect, finding fun drills that hone those skills w/0 the kids even recognizing they are practicing is the key.
Have you used a modified drill before? Post a comment below and let us know about it.
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Tonight I spent most of the night preparing my resume for submission to the SmartMoney Magazine reporter to help her understand my qualifications for the interview she is doing the story on me about. This is after we got back from a 19-5 trouncing of one our our softball competitors. Not that we are that great, just the way the game worked out.
I preach and preach about how pitching is the most important part of the game, and without a doubt, it definitely is. But, unfortunately, we have very little of it. Well, that is not entirely true. We have quite a few girls that can throw plenty of strikes, we just have no dominant pitcher. This is causing us to develop quite a few.
I guess in the long run this will be better. We shall see. We had three home runs, a triple, and two doubles today, so hitting is not an issue. We can post runs, and we are starting to gain confidence. Our fielding is great and we can really whip the ball around the field for outs, hopefully our pitching will be “just enough” to get us by. We shall see.
How do you work your pitchers if know you have no studs? Post a comment below and let us know about it.
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