One coach in our area tells his girls to always run to 1st on a dropped 3rd strike, even if 1st base is occupied (with less than two outs), or even if the ball isn't really dropped. He knows the rule, he's just trying to create chaos. It's cheap, it's annoying, but it's also helpful as I think...
12U tournament. I'm just watching waiting for our game.
Runner on 3rd. The catcher -- who had picked a runner off at 3rd earlier in the game -- had one bounce away from her. She spins around looking all over for it thinking it had gone back to the screen, but it had bounced off the umpire's...
There have always been hitters who do everything "wrong" and still succeed. Remember Carney Lansford or Tony Batista or Jeff Bagwell... or if you go way back Mel Ott!
Bases loaded, nobody out, girl pops the ball straight up between the pitcher and the catcher. Umpire immediately yells "infield fly!"
Here's the problem... it was a 10U game, no infield fly rule. Coaches had specifically talked about it with the umpire before the game started, but I get it --...
Assuming you're playing with three outfielders, or you're doing four across instead of shortfielder:
I tell my 3B to get to every ball she can going to her left. It's an easier throw as she's moving to her left, toward first base, than to expect a SS to backhand a ball going to her right and...
My 12-year-old pitcher is looking for a pitchback -- she'd rather have the fielding practice of a ball coming off the net, than pitch with a bucket of balls and fetch them out of the Bownet when she's done. There's Rukket, Champro, Skilz, etc. A lot of these are sold as "baseball" or...
DD and I were watching a game waiting for ours to start. No one on base, 0-2 count, ball squirted out of the pitcher’s hand. It rolled slowly on the dirt and eventually crossed the third base foul line. The fielders just stood there looking at it. The umpire very theatrically squinted at the...
One thing I hate about the 3-0 take sign at the lower levels is if it's close at all, the umpire is going to call it a strike. I wish it were true that the strike zone is the same regardless of the situation, but we know it's not true.
I teach my girls to look for a pitch in a certain spot and...
A great idea I am shamelessly ripping off from www.coaching-fastpitch.com (I have no connection to that site, just came across it one day).
There's a statistic that we only remember 10 percent of what we hear, 50 percent of what we do, and 90 percent of what we teach. I'm sure you have seen...
I was watching a YouTube video with Kristine Himes (University of Kentucky softball coach) and she said, "all your athletes are good at something -- and if they're not, you have to make them good at one thing."
This has really stuck with me... particularly in Rec, where there's no cuts and...
She's usually batting in the bottom half of the order. This way if she comes up in the 1st my thinking is we have scored a few runs.
I started doing it last Fall when I had a pitcher batting 6th. We were in a big game and had bases loaded and two out, my 9-year-old pitcher took a pitch down...