Pray for Rain

“Angels!”

This year I’m coaching T-Ball again. I forget where I read it, but one of the baseball books I read during my first year of coaching reported that 5- and 6-year olds have a three minute attention span. This is important to remember during the slow parts of games. Here’s an easy trick I adopted to bring them back to baseball.

Before every practice and game, and at the end of every practice and game, I ask the team “Who are we?” And the kids shout the name of our team. After a few times, they grow accustomed to the question and know what to do what I say “Who are we?”

So now during the games, when I want to keep the kids from catching bugs or building dirt castles in the infield, I ask the question “Who are we?” It’s better than shouting instructions or reminding them to pay attention.

The first year I coached 7- and 8-year olds, I ran many of the same pre-season drills I ran when I was coaching T-Ball. Then at our first game, I noticed that almost all of the outs recorded against our team came on base-running errors. Or, to be fair to the kids since I had not actually coached any base-running yet, pre-season coaching errors.

“Run or Hold” is one of the games I implemented at our next practice to correct our early season problems.

Run or Hold? You can play this game on the regular baseball diamond, but to get everyone involved at the same time I like to lay out as many bases as I have players into a giant circle. Since most practice fields don’t have an unlimited number of bases, you’ll probably need to use paper plates, rags, cones, or some other marker to be the “base.” One coach/parent stands outside the circle and another coach/parent stands in the middle of the circle, and each player stands on a base.

The purpose of the game is to teach the kids when to run and when to hold on a base. Players run on a grounder or a missed fly ball, and they hold when a fly ball is caught. The coach/parent on the outside of the circle is the “batter” and the coach/parent on the inside of the circle is the “defense.” If the “batter” rolls a grounder to the “defense,” all players run to the next “base.” If the “batter” throws up a pop fly and the “defense” misses it, all players run to the next “base.” If the “batter” throw up a pop fly to the “defense” which the “defense” catches, all players hold on their base.

‘Musical Chairs’ Variation. After your team gets used to this drill, you can vary the game by making it like “Musical Chairs.” Any player who makes a mistake in running or holding picks up his base and leaves the circle. How many players will be left after five minutes?

Details here from Little League International. Week-long camps run in July and August, with sign-ups currently underway.

One of the hardest things to teach young players is to run through First Base instead of stopping on the bag. Even for young kids who routinely watch professional baseball — and see every player run fast through and past First Base — their initial instinct is to slow down as they approach the base and gently touch the bag. I had some extra time at last week’s practice, so I improvised this quick drill. It worked well, and I plan to make it a regular part of my practices.

Running Through First. This is easy to set up. The team lines up at home plate, while I set up two orange cones (or you can use a brightly colored rag or any other “target”) about ten feet beyond first base. I stand to the side of the cones. When I clap my hands, simulating the sound of the bat hitting the ball, the player runs along the first base line, touches the base, and runs past the “target” marked by the cones. Since the kids’ natural inclination is to slow as they approach the base, I’ve simply given them a different target, well beyond the base, at which to aim. It works.

Our T-Ball team played its first game of the year today. The play of the day came in the third inning, when our team was at bat. We had a player on Second and a player on First, with nobody out. The third batter of the inning hit a hard infield grounder up the middle, between Second Base and Shortstop. Our player on Second Base started to run toward Third, saw the ball cross his path in front of him…and immediately chased the ball into the outfield. He fielded the ball, threw it back into the infield….and then ran on to Third Base. Everyone was safe.

A permanent marker, for writing the kids’ names on their hats, gloves and equipment, and a bottle of sunscreen are two indispensable items for every coach’s bag. You never read this in any of the coaching manuals though.

This week is all about getting the kids ready for their first game. Half of the team played, those experienced 6-year olds, played T-Ball last year, but for the other half, this may be their first time in a game situation of any kind. So far, our practices have consisted of drills, but no game simulations. That changes today.

Here’s the schedule for Week 3’s Practice….

4:00-4:10. Name Game, Stretches, Warm-ups and Base Run. This is the last week we will run the “name game” at the start of practice. Most of the kids know each other by now, so we’ll make this time shorter than usual. We’ll follow the name game with a few minutes of stretching, some light calisthenics, and a “snake run” around the field. (In the snake run, I run in crazy loops and turns, and they run behind me, following my path. At this age, the “snake run” is a game; they don’t realize they’re running laps and exercising!)

4:10-4:30. Simulated Game. We have ten players on our team. For this session of practice, I’ll divide the group into two equal sides, 5 and 5. On the defensive side, we’ll have a pitcher, first-base, second-base, shortstop, and third-base. No outfield. I’ll use some of the older siblings or parents who attend practice to shag balls hit to the outfield. The other five will bat around twice and run the bases. In this simulated game, I only ask the defensive players to do one thing: field the ball and throw it to first base.

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

4:35-4:40. Base-Running Tag / “Monster” Game. This is a repeat from last week, but the kids always love it.

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.

4:40-5:00. 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.

Anytime I coach one of the instructional divisions of Little League, I try to make sure that each child plays every position a couple of times during the season. At the beginning of the season, however, I only play the most experienced players at First and Second Base. This isn’t a competitive issue; it’s a safety issue. Children who haven’t learned to react to a quick throw to the base are just as likely to have the ball hit them in the face as land in their glove. By the fourth or fifth week of the season, everyone is usually ready to play any of the hot positions of the infield. Over the course of a season, it all evens out.

I’m sure there are many alternatives for creating online team calendars, but for the last couple of years, I’ve used Trumba. I create the calendar and update it as necessary, and the parents can subscribe to it and receive email alerts about upcoming events and schedule changes. It makes the life of the coach or team parent much simpler.

Last week’s practice went really well. We didn’t have time for the last batting drill, so I’ll have to revise my time estimates a bit. Otherwise, the kids did well and seemed to enjoy the hour. This Saturday is our first game. If you’ve looked at our practice schedule (first practice / second practice), you can see that we haven’t had any game simulations. Our T-Ball team’s first game is Saturday, so this week’s practice will have to have some game time simulations.