Keeping What You See in Perspective
Guest post by Ken Krause, Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog
Softball fanatics love evaluating what those at high levels of play are doing. We may even watch the mechanics of some of the top players in Major League Baseball. As fanatics, we love to study those mechanics and try to learn from them in order to help our players, or our own children (male and female) become the best they can be.
There is a danger in all of this, however. Namely an inability to keep what you see in context.
While the mechanics of some of these great hitters make a good model and a good goal, it's important to be realistic in your expectations. Because like it or not, there is a huge difference between a 28 year old MLB player and a 12 year old girl.
Let's start with the obvious: a grown man is much stronger than a young girl. Not just in the upper body, but in every aspect. Take the strongest 12 year old girl you've ever seen and put her in a cage match with a 28 year old male professional athlete, and the girl is going to lose. Badly. So expecting a 12 year old girl to have the exact same swing mechanics, including the explosiveness, of a 28 year old MLB player is not very realistic.
Guest post by Ken Krause, Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog
The Rulebook Makes Good Reading on a Cold Winter's Night
Maybe I'm just too much of a fanatic, but every year I look forward to receiving the new ASA rulebook. When I get it, the first thing I do is sit down and read it cover to cover.
This is not just an intellectual exercise, however. I read it because I find the better you know the rules, the better chance you have of winning a dispute with an umpire — and knowing which things to dispute.
Understand that I rarely argue judgment calls. Something would have to be pretty blatant to get me out of the dugout or third base coach's box and in the umpire's face.
And even then, I know I won't win, but I will go there to make sure the umpire knows he/she blew the call, and knows I know, so maybe we'll get the next close one. It shouldn't work that way but it often does. That's human nature.
Guest post by Ken Krause, Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog
This past weekend I was watching a 16U game when I saw something that made me shake my head. With one out and runners on first a second, a routine ground ball was hit to the shortstop, who fielded it cleanly — and then proceeded to throw it to first for the out.
Never once did she consider throwing it to third to get the lead runner. Nor did she consider flipping it to second for a possible double play. In her mind, the play was to first, as though there were no runners on base.
In the meantime the runners on first and second became the runners on second and third. The next batter cracked a long single to left center and two runs scored. Final score? 2-1 in favor of the team that was at bat at the time.
I was shaking my head, of course, because the situation seemed pretty obvious to me. I couldn't understand how a 16U shortstop wouldn't just know instinctively where the play was. Apparently, however, no one had taught her game sense.
Guest post by Ken Krause, Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog
Over the weekend I had the opportunity to see the movie Moneyball starring Brad Pitt as Oakland As GM Billy Beane. If you're not familiar with the original book — which is a great read by the way — it chronicles the story of how Beane changed the game of baseball by focusing on a few key statistics rather than the conventional wisdom of the time, which was (and still is in some cases) whether a player "looks" like a ballplayer.
Of course, Beane didn't do it alone. He was assisted greatly by Paul DePodesta, a young Harvard graduate (here played by Jonah Hill and using the pseduonym Peter Brand) with a fondness for Bill James' Baseball Abstract, computers and a love of stats.
You can read about the values of the movie from countless professional movie reviewers. What I found interesting was Beane's reasons for taking such an interest in this radical approach, and the differences between his public and private faces while doing it. Those are things I think most of us can relate to.
Guest post by Ken Krause, Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog
In one of the forums at Discuss Fastpitch there is an ongoing discussion about the credentials (or lack of same) of people who call themselves instructors. Essentially, it talks about how anyone who wants to can call themselves a hitting, pitching, catching, throwing, whatever instructor. There is no National Board of Certification or other set of qualifications you have to pass before hanging out the ol' shingle.
The same can be said for many of the so-called "Elite" or "Exposure" teams that are cropping up all over the country.
It's understandable of course. Calling yourself Elite is a great marketing tool. After all, what parent doesn't want their daughter to be on an Elite team, one that promises to bring in the best of the best from around the area and play at "the highest levels of competition?"
Yet it takes more than appending the name Elite to your team name to make you an Elite team. And that's where it often falls down.
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RECOVERY AND REGENERATION
Ice Therapy
by Laurel J. Freeman
Ice, anyone? Ice isn't just for cold drinks. In the past eight to 10 years, many studies have shown the benefits of ice as therapy. Here are the answers to some common ice-related questions.
What does ice do?
Ice is one of the simplest, safest, and most effective self care techniques for injury, pain, or discomfort in muscles and joints. Ice will decrease muscle spasms, pain, and inflammation to bone and soft tissue. You can use ice initially at the site of discomfort, pain, or injury. You can also apply ice in later stages for rehabilitation of injuries or chronic (long-term) problems.
During an initial injury, tissue damage can cause uncontrolled swelling. This swelling can increase the damage of the initial injury and delay the healing time. If you use ice immediately, you will reduce the amount of swelling. Ice decreases all of these: swelling, tissue damage, blood clot formation, inflammation, muscle spasms, and pain. At the same time, the ice enhances the flow of nutrients into the area, aids in the removal of metabolites (waste products), increases strength, and promotes healing. This "ice effect" is not related to age, sex, or circumference of the injured area.
Guest post by Ken Krause, Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog
Over the weekend I was working with Erin, one of my former players (who is still a student) on her baserunning skills. Actually, that's a misnomer.
We weren't really working on skills. We were working on the mental side instead — knowing what to do, and working on her opening up her game on the bases.
You see, she has legitimate speed. Not sure where she is now, but I know she was 3.0 home to first a year ago, and probably faster than that now.
Yet once she got on base, she tended to shrink into a shell. Most of the time she would think station to station instead of realizing just what her speed could do on the rest of the bases, so we went out on a field to try and change that thinking.
A big part of her "conservative" running was a fear of making an out. She'd take the easy base, but was reluctant to push the envelope even a little bit despite my encouraging everyone on the team to always "think two bases" when running.
Guest post by Ken Krause, Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog
Now that school is back in full swing time is at a premium for fastpitch softball players. Especially high school age players who are either in-season right now or playing other sports.
The demands of schoolwork and/or other sports/activities make it easy to say "I don't have time to practice." And that's true to an extent — it really is difficult to find the time in the midst of everything else going on.
Yet the fact remains if you're a pitcher, come next summer the hitters you're facing won't care that you had volleyball practice after school or that you were taking three AP classes in the fall. The only thing they'll look at is how fat that pitch is and how hard they can hit it.
On the other side, if you're a hitter, the pitchers won't care if your free throw percentage was 85% or you sat first chair flute in the band. If you're not ready to hit they'll simply blow the ball right by you.
Guest post by Ken Krause, Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog
Anyone who has been following fastpitch softball over the past few years knows we have entered an era of hitting. The philosophy used to be "put the ball in play and hope for something good to happen." Games used to end 1-0 or 2-1 after 12 innings.
Today, though, it's all changed. There's lots more offense in the game, thanks in part to better training for hitters and in part to superior bat technology that turns checked swings into extra base hits.
So it might tempting to think that having that great pitcher isn't nearly as important as it used to be. Yet the truth is the opposite; if anything, it's more important than ever to have good pitching.
Softball/baseball is the only sport where the defense starts with the ball. And who on the defense has it first? The pitcher.
To paraphrase a saying from my underground comic book reading days, "Good pitching will get you through times of no hitting better than good hitting will get you through times of no pitching." Think about it.
