Pray for Rain

Last week I wrote that the The Berenstain Bears Play T-Ball (I Can Read Book 1) was the only book about T-Ball I had ever come across meant to be read by T-Ball-aged kids. A reader reports that another books is in print also: Froggy Plays T-ball. Thanks for the recommendation!

Rich Carter, pitching coach for last year’s Little League World Series champions: “I would never try to win a game at the expense of a 12-year-old kid.” He’s talking about the new pitch count rules.

If you’ve been involved in youth baseball in the past, you’ll greet the new Little League rule restricting pitchers to a certain number of pitches each game as great news. A new Little League pamphlet — “Protecting Young Pitching Arms” — explains the new rules and also provides several terrific pages on pitching fundamentals, with pictures.

In our league, each coach is responsible for creating a team banner. For most teams, it means collecting money from the parents and ordering a banner from one of the many online shops. (I’ve used both Banners USA and Zaavy.com in the past, with good results.)

One year though, I didn’t get my act together in time for opening day and ended up buying a large canvas tarp from Home Depot and a set of brightly colored water-based paints. I painted the team name in the middle. Then each child painted his hand, made a hand print on the canvas, and painted his name below the print. It may have been the best banner of all. The kids had a great time doing it, and the costs came in substantially below the cost of a ready-made banner.

Parents usually like to buy a baseball or two to play with at home, but when they go to the Sporting Goods store they see a wide variety of baseballs on the shelves. So, as a coach, one of the questions I often get is “which baseball should I buy?”

In my local league, we play with the Worth RIF Level-5 in all divisions T-Ball through Minors. This ball is slightly softer than a real baseball.

While it’s nice to practice with a real game ball, at the beginning of the season, especially for kids 5-8, I prefer practicing with Easton’s Incrediball. The Incrediball is significantly softer than a real baseball. I don’t worry as much about kids injuring each other when we’re playing with the Incrediball.

These aren’t the only brands by any means. I encourage parents to feel the baseballs at the store and see which ones they think are best for playing at home.

The National Association of Sports Officials has a sampling of what it calls “Poor Sporting Behavior Incidents” from recent years. You have to read it yourself. It’s pretty unbelievable how people will work themselves up over youth sports….even over T-Ball.

This week is my team’s second official practice. As I did last week, I thought I’d blog my tentative outline for tomorrow’s practice. For the parents on my team, this should help you follow what we’ll be doing, and for those of you reading from elsewhere in these United States, I hope it gives you some ideas for things to do with your own children.

Here’s the schedule for Week 2’s Practice….

4:00-4:05. The Name Game. The kids are still learning each other’s names. In this game, the kids gather in a circle, facing each other. I move around the circle and, in turn, place my hand about six inches about each child’s head, who then jumps up, hits my hand and shouts his or her name. Two or three times around the circle, sometimes in order, sometimes at random, and the kids usually have learned their teammates’ names.

4:05-4:10. Stretches, Warm-ups and Base Run. Little League emphasizes the “Three Fs”: fun, fitness and fundamentals. We’ll try to get all three in during this short set of stretches and calisthenics.

4:10-4:20.”Goalie.” In the “goalie” drill, I’ll place two orange cones about ten feet apart and ask a player to stand between them, as “goalie,” while I roll balls toward the space between the cones. The job of the “goalie” is to block the ball with his or her glove, or body, and keep the balls from going through the “goal” framed by the orange cones. Each player will be asked to block 10 balls. If we have extra volunteers from the ranks of the parents, we’ll run two “goalie” stations at the same time, so the kids can have extra repetitions and won’t have to wait as long for their turn. This drill teaches the player to keep the ball in front and not let it pass, even when the ball isn’t fielded cleanly.

4:20-4:30. “Alligator” / Fielding Ground Balls. Just like last week, I’ll teach the kids the proper technique for positioning themselves to receive and field a ground ball. Most of the training manuals refer to this position as “alligator,” where the glove hand is the bottom jaw of the alligator and the bare hand is the top jaw. Bring the jaws together on the ball. We’ll break up into teams of two and have the kids roll and field the ball in pairs.

4:30-4:35. Water and Bathroom Break.

4:35-4:40. Base-Running Tag / “Monster” Game. During the games, we want the players to move from home plate to first base, and base to base after that, as fast as they possibly can. This game of “tag,” or the “monster game” as we sometimes play it, uses home plate and the bases as safety zones and everything in the base paths as places whether the player can be “tagged”…or gobbled up by the monster. I’ve found that this game is fun for the kids, regardless of their ages or abilities, and teaches the youngest kids the principle that they need to get to the base, their safety zone, as soon as possible.

4:40-4:50. Hitting. We’ll review the proper batting stance, how to select an appropriate bat, and safety rules for using bats in games and at practice. Each player will hit 10-15 balls off the T.

4:50-5:00. Hitting Game. I’ll place cones at various distances away from home plate. The closest cone will be 1 point (to play with older kids, call it a “single”), the second cone will be 2 points (”double”), the third cone will be 3 points (”triple”), and the fourth cone will be 4 points (”home run”). Each child will hit two balls off the T, and we’ll keep score as a team, week to week. I like this game because the only thing we track is the team’s point total. As we play this game again at various times during the season, the kids can measure their progress. We usually double the team’s first score within 6 weeks.

5:00. End of practice. As we do every week, we’ll end each practice with a short review of what we learned and some things to practice during the week.

After Practice Note: Most weeks, whenever I’m not pressed to get home or head back to the office, I stay around practice an extra 15-20 minutes to let anyone who wants to do so take extra batting practice.

Rain is forecast for this Thursday’s practice. If I have to cancel practice, I plan to email these three pictures to the parents of the 5- and 6-year old T-Ballers on my team: (1) man fielding ground ball in proper form; (2) girl holding bat; and (3) parent teaching child to hit ball off of T. The pictures can be printed at home for the children to color with crayons. Picture (1) is perfect because fielding the ball in this position is one of the things I taught last week at our first practice of the year.

One of the most common concerns raised by parents is about playing time. Fortunately, Little League has a firm rule that everyone plays in every game.

Exactly what “everyone plays” means evolves as kids move from division to division, up the age ladder from T-Ball to “Majors” and beyond. Regardless of the age brackets, you can think of Little League as having two divisions: instructional divisions and competitive divisions.

The instructional divisions are “T-Ball” (5-6 year olds), “Coach or Machine Pitch” (7-8 year olds), and “Minors” (9-12 year olds). In the instructional divisions, “everyone plays” means everyone plays an equal amount of time and typically shares an equal amount of time at each position.

The competitive divisions are “Majors” (10-12 year olds), “Juniors” (13-14 year olds), “Seniors” (14-16year olds), and “Big League” (16-18 year olds). In these competitive divisions, “everyone plays” means that each team must adhere to Little League Regulation IV(i): “Every player on a team roster will participate in each game for a minumum of six (6) defensive outs and bat at least one time.” So in these six inning games, every player plays for at least 1/3 of the game.

Sadly, some über-competitive coaches try to game even this Little League rule. The “How To Manage” books about Little League devote entire chapters to implementing Rule IV(i) and catching cheaters who don’t play all their players enough….or at all.

I know it’s a little like preaching to the choir, but here’s a happy, feel-good Public Service Announcement from Little League that will start running on ESPN this week.