| The Coach's Corner/ Winners and Losers |
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Baseball is a team game made up of individual competitions. The object of the endeavor is for your TEAM to WIN. The prevailing opinion today in Youth baseball is, the object is to teach skills so that each player can perform those skills and play at a higher level in the future. Playing to win is almost a dirty concept. It is a concept almost ignored until HS and in some instances until college or pro ball. Very little time is spent on how the GAME is played while we develop skills necessary to hit for a high average and yack bombs. Give me a team of winners that play the game correctly and I will prevail against a team of studs that don't more often than not. What do you call a kid that won't shorten his swing and put the ball in play with two strikes, less than two outs and a runner on third? LOSER! What do you call a kid that can't or won't bunt? LOSER! What do you call a kid with a rifle arm in RF that throws through to the bag at 3rd, missing the cut off and allowing the winning run to advance to 2nd? LOSER! What do you call a 12 year old pitcher that throws 70 MPH but refuses to sacrifice a little velocity so that he doesn't walk three batters an inning? LOSER! This is particularily a problem with the studs. He goes through life never being asked to bunt. He is glorified for all the bombs he drops but never ripped for striking-out with a runner on 3rd and less than 2 outs. His skills are praised to high heaven but his lack of understanding of the game is ignored. But then he gets to college and he doesn't play there because the coach must WIN or he's fired. We all see pro players that care only for their stats. There is even a saying ‘you don't WALK your way off the island'. Sadly, pro ball really isn't about winning. It's about money. The owners want star players to sell tickets. The players want big stats so that they can win big bucks in arbitration and free agency. Teach proper mechanics but teach the GAME and demand that your players play it correctly. Forget stats and the radar gun, play the game to WIN! The Coach www.tipsfromthecoach.com ARCHIVES
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Youth Sports Video
Gas Lites
Today in 1991, Houston QB
David Klingler sets NCAA
record with 6 touchdown
passes in the 2nd quarter
as the Cougars clobbered
Louisiana Tech 73-3.
