Backspin Blogger

Driving on I-25 towards Denver in the early summer of 2004, I was on top of the world! I was to test my new found "Facts of Hitting" teaching program on one of the best American Legion Teams in the country and do some fly fishing! Heaven!!! With the 107 degree Arizona heat in my rear view mirror, so was my inferior, theory-based coaching style!  But I was nervous as a fish out of water! How was it going to work? How would the kids and coaches receive the information that was so foreign to me, a baseball lifer, just a few months earlier? Am I walking into a perpetual mine field called baseball tradition? Would they like me as a coach? Would they respect me? But most important of all... would it truly make each one of them better?!? And would there be an explosive hatch while I was their so my fish stories wouldn't be fish stories. The whole trip, I had fished thoroughly through my mind for answers to try and be prepared for any and all questions. Arriving ea...

I would venture to say that just about all parents of young athletes want the absolute best for their kids. That is not something I believe could become a legitimate debate. The debate begins when the subject of how to be a good parent gets mentioned. There are an almost infinite number of scenarios and angles to look at this topic... but just like in Hitting Mechanics, there are absolutes in being good parents of young athletes. Smiling Young Athletes 1. Remembering that it is their life, their likes, their "want to's" , their time, their dreams... not your life, your likes, your "want to's", your time or your dreams. We all want our kids to be good at what they do, enjoy what they do, learn from what they do and have and chase dreams. But here is the hard truth from 40 years deeply entrenched in youth athletics.Too many parents are living their own dreams through there kid. I'm not going to write a report on the psychology of this but by observation, i...

I would venture to say that just about all parents of young athletes want the absolute best for their kids. That is not something I believe could become a legitimate debate. The debate begins when the subject of how to be a good parent gets mentioned. There are an almost infinite number of scenarios and angles to look at this topic... but just like in Hitting Mechanics, there are absolutes in being good parents of young athletes. Smiling Young Athletes 1. Remembering that it is their life, their likes, their "want to's" , their time, their dreams... not your life, your likes, your "want to's", your time or your dreams. We all want our kids to be good at what they do, enjoy what they do, learn from what they do and have and chase dreams. But here is the hard truth from 40 years deeply entrenched in youth athletics.Too many parents are living their own dreams through there kid. I'm not going to write a report on the psychology of this but by obser...

Driving on I-25 towards Denver in the early summer of 2004, I was on top of the world! I was to test my new found "Facts of Hitting" teaching program on one of the best American Legion Teams in the country and do some fly fishing! Heaven!!! With the 107 degree Arizona heat in my rear view mirror, so was my inferior, theory-based coaching style!  But I was nervous as a fish out of water! How was it going to work? How would the kids and coaches receive the information that was so foreign to me, a baseball lifer, just a few months earlier? Am I walking into a perpetual mine field called baseball tradition? Would they like me as a coach? Would they respect me? But most important of all... would it truly make each one of them better?!? And would there be an explosive hatch while I was their so my fish stories wouldn't be fish stories. The whole trip, I had fished thoroughly through my mind for answers to try and be prepared for any and all questions. Arr...

"What is a good athletic position?" I ask that to every kid and coach in every clinic I put on? The most common answer is ridiculous!!! But wait... we don't know what we don't know... so how can the hitters or coaches answer the question correctly if they don't know the REAL answer? Rhetorical question? Maybe, maybe not. Let's address the problem baseball and softball, along with other "industries" have and don't deal with it well enough. We TEACH WHAT WE KNOW without sometimes stepping back and analyzing it and CONFIRMING what we teach is good stuff? Sometimes when I say this in a coaches clinic, I get the look a dog gives you when it gets curious about something... a turn and lean of the head implying, "What are you talking about?" OK, answer this as an example of possibly teaching something without thinking it MAY be not really a good technique to teach... 1. Hitters should squish the bug... I SAID IT FOR YEARS!!!! Dead wr...

I was at a youth baseball tournament in late March 2009 in Scottsdale Arizona. My good friends threw together a team of kids from Montana and Idaho and entered the tournament. Excellent vacation idea: sun, palm trees and green grass everywhere! On a secondary note, the kids got to play somebaseball in the 12U division. Winner, winner!!! Everyone was loving it...players, parents and coaches. Their first couple games were competetive playing a Colorado and an average Arizona team. Spirits were high as the climate and diamond were the focus of a beautiful trip. Getting some some swing instruction in local batting cages, doing batting drills in the warm Arizona sun... these kids and coaches were loving it! The next morning, the northerners squared off against a southern California team. They looked slick in their pregame routine and the boys knew it was going to be a challenge. They were wrong... in the second inning the Socal ball club dropped 13 on a talented but raw t...