What Were Your Best Bang For Buck Purchases

Welcome to Discuss Fastpitch

Your FREE Account is waiting to the Best Softball Community on the Web.

Dec 11, 2010
4,713
113
Wanted to start a thread that might help some newbies spend their softball budget wisely. Maybe even create a sticky worthy thread that could answer the same questions that get posted here a lot.

New people come to this site every day trying to figure out how to get started on their softball journey. Let's try to save them some money and get them started right. Most of the stuff I bought was for hitting. Most of it was expensive and most of it does not get used.

What equipment did you buy that was money well spent? Tell us what you bought and why it worked well.

If a tornado hit my shed and it was all gone, here are the first things I would buy in this order: (again, I am going to post and edit as I have time).

1) Bownet bucket mouth. Not the soft toss net. $149. I also have an extra Bownet replacement net that has a pitching hole I can pitch through that fits on the same Bownet frame. I have used both nets quite a bit. You have to be careful though, a hard hit can still hit you as this system is designed to flex.
Economy alternative: buy a $5 blue tarp at a home store, hang it in garage or basement a few feet away from wall and hit into it. ***Bownets still going strong 11/16.

2) Make or buy a Tanner tee or equivalent. There are plans on the internet or you can buy just the stem or the whole tee from Tanner. Eventually you will want two. It will disassemble and fit in your bow net bag. When you start hitting every week then twice a week and then three times a week, those rubber tees will break and it will be money you wasted. DO NOT buy goofy expensive tees with arms and gadgets hanging off them. Champro Equitee and Utilitee are great examples of what not to do not only because they are expensive but because they will not be good for your hitter. Keep it simple, hit off of regular tees. *** 11/16, Tanner Tees going strong.

3) 1-4 or more dozen synthetic cover, poly core, Dudley Thunder or Baden or the equivalent balls to hit. (We have had really good luck with Baden poly core for hitting balls.) We scrounge balls whenever we can and I cruise craigslist all the time for used softballs but if you have to buy some, get the synthetic core. I always put the railroad tracks up and down on the tee and the girls beat the balls oblong and until they are mushy in a few months so IMHO it is worth buying decent ones. Buy 7 gallon buckets with lids at a winemaking supply store or buy 5 gallon buckets at a Home Depot etc. to put them in. Don't buy those junky balls already in a junky clear bucket at Dicks or Dunhams or whatever. They are expensive and don't hold up.

4) Batting cage net. I have a shed on my property. It has a 10' ceiling in it which is about as low as it can be. I spent $300 on a 10' by 10' by 40' batting cage net on eBay. It was by far, hands down, the best money I have spent on softball. If you have room for it, do it. I strung mine from cables I bought at a farm store. Not everyone has a place for a cage but if you have room, do it. My batting cage would be much better if it was 12 or 14 feet wide and at least 12 feet high and at least 50' long because then I wouldn't have to move home plate for righties and lefties, it would be long enough to practice pitching in and tw extra feet hitch would make throwbacks to pitcher easier and throwing drills possible.*** 11/16, after 6-7 years of hard use, my lightweight cheap batting cage is starting to develop holes. Good purchase, will need to replace eventually.

5) Pitching screen. This is a pipe style metal frame with a heavy net over it and a square hole you can pitch through. We hit against it sometimes too. I use this in the batting cage to pitch to kids from about 20' away so they don't brain me with a line drive. I got this as part of an eBay deal for a Jugs pitching machine. I didn't know I needed it until I had it. We use the screen much more than the Jugs machine.

I could probably get by pretty well with the above purchases. My next list will be a "nice to have" list.

***edited to remove Total Control heavy balls. Like the TCB's whiffles, not the heavies.
 
Last edited:
Hard to argue with any of the items listed, although I'd suspect most might not be able to do the cage thing at home.

The best money spent is on a Tanner Tee, two if you can.

Get a Bownet Big Mouth.

Get some sort of portable pitching screen for front toss. My 12-year-old DD can hit a ball over a 220' fence ..... just think of what that would do to me at 15-20'!

Get one dozen TCBs and two dozen TCB wiffles. Mix them in with your regular softballs for front toss.

Get 3-4 dozen good softballs. I like the Dudley Thunder Heat the best.

Get yourself a nice fielding glove. One with good, stiff leather. If you used to be an outfielder, get a big glove. Middle infielder, get a small one with open web. You need to be comfortable when you're demonstrating technique and playing ball with DD.

Get at least one 7-gallon bucket that has a padded lid, then get a bucket bag that goes over it that offers additional padding and storage pockets. That is perhaps the single greatest thing you can do for yourself.

If DD pitches, get shin guards and a mask the day she starts learning a drop ball.

A throwdown home plate is a decent enough idea. I like the ones for pitchers that have the red, green and yellow segments (for pitch placement) because they remind me of Bob Marley.

Depending on age, I like to have a dozen softees in at least one bucket, just in case.

Have at least four more buckets. They'll come in handy. At least one more should be a 7-gallon bucket with a padded lid.
 
Last edited:

JAD

Feb 20, 2012
8,231
38
Georgia
If your DD has ever been hit in the face by a line drive or bad hop, a $40 Rip-It face mask will be the best money you ever spent......
 
Oct 10, 2013
116
0
A nice sturdy wagon for equipment. Easy pull from parking lot to field. Very nice for a coach with Parkinson's disease. :cool:
 
May 7, 2008
8,506
48
Tucson
I am leaning towards less equipment. Even my large rolling back seems like overkill. I have a garage full of "stuff." Yes, to Tanner Tee and TCB whiffles and I throw down a rag or something for a home plate. I need to par down, I think.
 
Aug 29, 2011
2,581
83
NorCal
I've bought a lot of crap that gets little use but a few that I feel I have gotten my money's worth are -

Bownet - large mouth plus throw through screen

Tanner Tee - first tee that looks like it will last more than 2 seasons

Nail down pitching rubber - yes these break but I feel I got my $15 - $20 worth out of them and fields that don't have a bullpen for warming up pitchers or for setting proper distance at practices.

Throw down plate

TCB balls

A good set of whiffles. Oddly enough the best set I ever got was at wallmart about 8 years ago fopr a few bucks and several of them are still not cracked. I'll probably buy TCB "whiffles" next time since I can't find the good hard whiffles.

Used softballs - cheap and great for practice.

5 gallon buckets from home depot for carrying balls and sitting on for catching.
 

Greenmonsters

Wannabe Duck Boat Owner
Feb 21, 2009
6,168
38
New England
best value hands down - $40 for the NECC "Coaches Guide to Training Catchers" DVD.

Indispensables:
a tee
a dozen TCB balls (baseball sized)
a $79 Kodak Playsport camera
 
Dec 11, 2010
4,713
113
Great stuff by all.

Couple things I thought of- I always like to bring a couple empty buckets to wherever we are practicing. Get a few extras.

For throw down plates and pitching rubbers, I found that a local farm store has big pieces of rubber mat. They are called livestock mats I think, they are 4' by 6', 3/4" thick. I cut them into plates and rubbers and use tent stakes to hold down pitching rubbers. Cheap, heavy and durable. The plates are not so great for bucket dads, they are thick enough that the drop balls etc will take a nasty hop off them so I use the above mentioned Bob Marley pitching plates for that.
 

Forum statistics

Threads
42,830
Messages
679,477
Members
21,445
Latest member
Bmac81802
Top