Must Wear a Cup
One of the most overlooked rules in the rulebook is that every male player SHALL wear a cup. The shall means this is not an option! Why would you want to send your male players out there w/o a cup? Don’t you want grandchildren?
When I was playing on my over 30 team I used to occasionally forget my cup for practice. Not having it made me tentative when approaching ground balls from first base. When I had my cup, I was fearless. This is the mentality we want to program into the kids heads so they want to wear a cup. They should get used to playing w/ it at all times.
Today they have really cool slider pants that hold the cup. You don’t need the old school jock strap, though there is nothing wrong w/ that. The sliders serve a dual purpose, no strawberries, and a cup! Beautiful!
All coaches must demand that their players where cups and their parents must enforce it. (Hard for the coach to enforce w/o getting arrested!) I advise against that….lol.
I remember in a Pony League scrimmage game we played against the hardest thrower in the league. A player on our team squared to bunt old school style where you square all the way around. He was fully exposed, he took a direct hit, he did not have a cup on. Sounds funny, but he was on the ground convulsing and needed a blanket to keep from going in to shock and an ambulance to carry him off the field.
Think you don’t need a cup? Anyone have any good cup stories?
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Play To Tie or Win? That is the Question.
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The other night I heard one of the manager’s of one of the teams in the Little League World Series say, "we are down by one so strategy says to bunt here". Or did it? Yes, he was down by one, yes, he had a runner on first that he needed to get into scoring position, but, he left out one minor detail, his team was the visiting team.
Conventional Wisdom
Why wouldn’t the visiting team want to tie you ask? Because conventional baseball wisdom dictates that the home team plays to tie, and the visitors play to win. Why? You might ask.
It is fairly simple. The visitors only get one chance to win the game. The home team gets a chance to tie or to win the game. They essentially get two at-bats for every one the visitor gets. Huh? You ask? How can that be? They both bat the same amount of times.
Well, this is true, but, in reality the home team has a huge advantage in a tie or one-run game. Think about it. The visitors get a chance to win the game in the top of the sixth. If they score, the home team gets a chance to win or come back. The visitors are not afforded the same opportunity. If they score, they have to defend their lead. If the home team scores then they win, game over.
Two for One
Therefore, the home team gets to bat twice for every one time the visitors get to bat. Once to catch up, once to win. It is a very advantagous position from which to play. And also the reason you should always pick home when you win the coin flip.
The Proper Strategy
So what is the strategy when down by one? If you are the visitiors, you must play for 2 runs. If you are tied, you must play for 1 run. Play to go into the bottom of the sixth with a lead.
If you are the home team, play for the tie. You will be guaranteed another at-bat no matter what the visitors do. They don’t have that luxury. So down by 1, play to get one, all tied up, play to win.
What are your favorite strategies to employ in this situation? Bunt? Hit and Run? Steal? The list is endless.
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Concentration is Key
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Great thing happened in our clinic today. We had an end of practice drill where we had to bunt off of a very fast pitching machine . If the batter put the ball in play fair, they got back in line, if it went foul or they missed, they had to run the bases. Only to third, next time I think I will have them slide into third when they get there, left that out this time.
Anyway, apparently the threat of running was not enough to focus them on bunting properly, because they missed quite a few and had to run a lot. I stated they had to get five in a row before we stopped. Once it was apparent this wasn’t going to happen, our coach said he was changing the rules, if they got a bunt down, they were allowed to go to the dugout and pack up their gear.
10 out of 13 got their bunt down. The motivation of practice being over made them focus! Focus was the key, concentration was the key. This was a great learning experience for them and very enlightening for me as well! A fantabulous teaching opportunity, and I know they got the message as well.
Every pitch , focus, concentration, every pitch.
What is the best teaching opportunity you have ever had on or off the field ?
Quick Play Drill
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Quick Play Drill
I found this pretty cool "quick play" drill at the Ohio Fastpitch Connection. They have a ton of drills on there, but most of them are not my style, too slow. I prefer drills that keep all the kids active and moving and simulate game situations. The "quick play" drill almost does this, so we modified it slightly. Follow is what we did.
Original Was Slow
The original quickplay drill had 2 lines of players w/ 5 balls lined up, grab one, throw to first, grab the 2nd, throw to first, etc. This is a great drill in and of itself, and if you only had 3 or 4 players max working on it, that would be fine. We have 12 to keep busy though and I hate to see kids standing around!
The Fix
To counter this we modified the drill. I added a catcher to the mix. Then had the 3B throw to 1B and 1B throw to the C. The problem with this was it slowed down the "quick play" portion of the 3B. So we added a "suicide" effect to it to help w/ conditioning also! Likewise, we set up a bunt station just outside of 3B. We had the kids leave their bats and hats at the bunt station and carry their gloves with them. (Of course we had a pitcher/catcher combination working at all times!)
It worked great! One of the best practices we had!
Here is the rotation:
- Coach places the 5 balls in a line from 3B to home plate
- 3B runs to the first ball and throws to 1B
- 1B throws home and catcher simulates a tag
- 3B backpedals (very important skill) to the 3B position and then charges back up to the 2nd ball. (This gives the 1B time to throw to the C)
- This is repeated until all 5 balls are thrown to 1B and C
- After the 5th ball, the 1B runs to 2nd and slides, then gets in line at the bunting station.
- The C runs through 1B and gets in line there.
- The 3B moves to the C line
- The bunter goes and gets in line at 3B. (now that I think about it probably would have been better if we had our bunt station behind 3B, but we will update that next time)
Having at least one extra player at each station gives the players a chance to catch their breath and get all of their things in order for when it is there turn to perform.The coach has plenty of time to place the balls while the girls are moving up, but he has to be quick. Keeping this thing moving is the key to its success and increases the "fun factor" for the kids. They are moving and conditioning and don’t even know it!
Don’t be afraid to take things you know and modify them slightly. The kids love the variety and it keeps them focused at practices. This is very important as it is easy to lose them and then everyone is wasting their time. Do you have any cool drills that you modified to make them more exciting? Let’s hear about them!
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