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Teaching Youth baseball

Baseball fundamentals are acquired through repetitive practice.  Our children at their current age can learn these skills very quickly, but it requires practice.

Playing without the fundamentals is like eating without a knife and fork. You make a mess. 
- Dick Williams

The best thing you can do in teaching youth baseball to instill good fundamentals is to play catch with your child regularly.  It is good quality one-on-one time and you will be surprised at how quickly your child will begin to develop good skills. Try to set-aside 15 minutes a day for 2-3 weeks to teach the following skills and I think you will be proud of how your child develops in such a short time period.

There are a few other general rules for parents and coaches in teaching youth baseball:

• PATIENCE! First and foremost, be patient with your new player. Remember how young and small s/he really is.
• PRACTICE a lot with your child before signing him up on an organized team. This gives him or her a sense that at least s/he has played the sport before.

• PLAY baseball with your child as early as possible. I started teaching Logan at age two to throw and catch in the living room as we watched TV together. Now at 10 years old, he has pronounced and advanced baseball skills, and he will be plenty prepared when playing organized baseball later. Seven years and alot of broken vases, lampshades, and broken knick-knacks later, he is beginning to show a little promise.
• Show SENSITIVITY to your child’s moods. Be aware that some days kids just aren’t in the mood to play. Also teach your child that everyone has “on” and “off” days - even professional players.
• INTEREST in baseball should come from your child - not you. Encouraging baseball is okay, but recognize and accept it if s/he would rather play another sport. Forcing a child to play a game s/he doesn’t really care about will only result in frustration for both of you. When your child asks you to play catch, put aside what you are doing and "play catch".  This is usually a plea for attention.
• BE POSITIVE! Your child listens to everything you say and watches everything you do.  If you are speaking to your spouse or friends and your child is within earshot s/he IS listening.  If you say "Johnny is really making enormous progress in fielding ground balls and is getting better every time we practice", it will encourage Johnny to try harder, practice more, and seek your help more often.  Don't be surprised if the next time you play catch he specifically says "Dad (or mom) throw me some ground balls".  This is the first clue that Johnny was listening, wants to please, and positive reinforcement works well in making Johnny a better ballplayer.  Sometimes speaking indirectly to your child to others (through praise) works much better than direct praise.
• AVOID CRITICISM! While every child is different, some children do not accept criticism as well as others.  As a coach I have to distinguish and establish situational leadership styles for each boy.  Some boys react better to other boys receiving all the praise, which makes them try harder. Others require direct praise.  While others can be motivated by using them as a good example to follow to the other boys.  In working with your child individually, show him the correct way a skill should be done and have him do it slowly (at half speed) and as he learns the proper technique have him speed up the drill until he masters it.  After he masters it, show him what he was doing before he mastered it the right way.

Work on Proper Skills From The Start

Concentrate on having them use both hands to catch each thrown ball.  Using two hands assures proper body positioning and helps them develop their skills more quickly.

• Make sure you throw low balls to get them in the habit of turning their fingers down, palm out (again using both hands). The elbow should be pointed toward their body side. In turning their hand over with the elbow out (Toward you) this is a bad habit and will limit future development. Using two hands will require proper catching position.  It is almost impossible to use two hands in an improper catching position (elbow out).

• Next work on throwing balls to their glove hand side. Most kids at this age want to move to get in front of the ball.  While this is proper procedure, the purpose of the drill is to teach them to reach out (elbow back) and catch balls to their left (or right for lefties) with glove fingers pointed outward. 

• After they have mastered catching balls on their glove hand side, begin throwing balls to their throwing hand side. In this instance make sure they stand in-place, turn their body with the glove elbow turned toward you and catch the ball back-handed.  Again the proper procedure is to get in front of the ball, but this drill helps them develop skills for situations in which they are unable to move quickly enough to get in front of the ball.

• Throw pop-ups, stressing the use of two hands.  Pop-ups are the most difficult skill for youth to master at this age.  First they must learn to get under the ball, use two hands to catch the ball, and catch the ball at about their chin.  After they become proficient in catching balls thrown in their standing position, work on throwing balls that they must move to their left or right.  Always stress elbow back on balls thrown to their glove side and elbow front (back-handed) on balls thrown to their throwing hand side.

• Some young players get into a habit of trying to catch all balls in the same catching position.  They try to move their body to catch the ball on the glove hand side. They also may try to catch all balls (even low throws) in a fingers up position.  This bad habit limits their growth in game situations, when a hit ball must be caught with a backhand or underhand technique. Make sure you work each of these drills to make sure they can catch in all positions.  You may notice that your child is more comfortable in catching with one technique than others.  This has developed from habit, and you should work on other techniques to develop the skills for all catching positions.

Catching fly balls is actually easier than ground balls as kids mature, but they are more difficult to learn initially.  You will probably notice the kids "stagger" under pop flies when you first begin to throw them.  The more repetition, the better they become.  With practice, each player will learn quickly.

The importance of the drills above is young players develop a habit of trying to catch all thrown balls using the same technique (back-handed for instance).  These drills help them catch thrown balls based on proper body position, rather than trying to adapt all thrown balls to one catching style (body positioning).

Fielding ground balls is actually much more difficult (especially with the quality of our infields).  Each player should be in a proper fielding position to catch ground balls.  This position resembles two triangles.  The bottom triangle represents their feet spread at about shoulder width with their back bent forward and knees bent.  The top of the "top" triangle represents their shoulders and the point (bottom of the top triangle) represents two hands on the glove.

Our own Ethan Hayes is a perfect player to watch to learn good fielding skills.  Ethan may not catch every ground ball hit to him, but very few grounders get past him.  He knocks them down with his chest or arms or some part of his body. He is a very feisty infielder. As he refines his skills, he has a good basis for proper fundamentals to build from.  Ethan is one of those players that we look forward to watching his development, as his coordination skills catch up with his baseball "fundamentals" skills.  He has all the gifts to be a very good young baseball player.

Here is a photo of proper infield catching position for ground balls.

There is always the "Why?" question, as in why is this the way to catch a ground ball There are a number of answers to "why"? 

• Bending the knees and back forces the hands out in front where the play can be made properly. 

• Using two hands forces a player to be in front of the ball.  It is almost impossible to use two hands when you are in an improper fielding position. 

• Also, as the player fields the ball and rises to make the throw, the throwing hand is already in a position to make the exchange from glove hand to throwing hand. 

The more the player practices this technique, the more fluid the catch and throw become.  It becomes routine, and a routine ground ball should be handled routinely.

After your child has mastered the proper fielding position, its' time to combine "charging the ball" and then automatically going into the routine fielding position.  Charging the ball or running toward the ball allows the player to get to the ball faster, and allows time for bobbles or mistakes, and still allow time to beat the runner to first base.  It may seem difficult at first, but the more repetition, the more fluid the move.  Ozzie Smith, one of the greatest shortstops to ever play the game, made even the most spectacular plays seem routine.  If you were to view film on Ozzie Smith, each play would appear routine.  The only photos you can find of Ozzie are doing his famous back-flip, which was the only non-routine thing Ozzie ever did.  Charging the ball (or not charging the ball) is probably the single biggest mistake I see young infielders make.  As they watch the Braves or Yankees on TV, they rarely see an infielder charge the ball.  This is because (in MLB) the balls are hit harder and the bases are 90 ft rather than 60 ft.  A professional player has more time to field the ball and make the throw than youth players.  When I played shortstop, I played on the edge of the outfield grass, but fielded most balls near the edge of the infield grass.  Also, Lynwood Crowder (2nd baseman) and I turned an average of 4 double plays per game.  You will not turn double plays if your infielders do not charge the ball.

Outfielders use a different technique, because, lets face it, a ball that gets behind the outfield is a home run.

For outfielders, they must be moving at the crack of the bat. While this section is to teach fundamentals of fielding, every ball hit to the outfield should have two players (outfielders) converging on the ball.  Outfielders MUST charge the ball and they should stop short of each ground ball, drop to one knee to field the ball, and come up throwing.  The second outfielder should be in a back-up position.

As a young baseball player, the outfield grounder position is the most difficult to learn.  The player must learn to fluidly charge the ball, drop to one knee at the last moment, and come up throwing.  The difficulty is in joining all three elements into a fluid "dance" move. It requires practice and repetition.

Spend a couple of minutes during each daily 15-minute session working on outfield ground balls.

If you do not get to spend a lot of one-on-one time with your child, I think you will find that your child will begin to come to you to ask you to play catch with him more often.  You should view these requests with importance. Often these requests may really be a "Mom or Dad, we are not spending enough one-on-one time together" request. Set aside whatever you are doing, immediately, and spend 15 minutes playing catch and talking to your child. Unless you enjoy playing X-box or PlayStation games, you may not realize how little time you spend together.  You'll both be happier.

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