John T. Reed’s baseball-coaching blog

Copyright John T. Reed There is a sort of standard pre-game warm-up in youth baseball. I do not like it. I recommend you use a more sensible pre-game warm-up as follows. RIF-1 balls only In 1992, a majors player in my local Little League got hit in practice by a regular Little League hardball that one-hopped into his knee. It shattered his kneecap. In 1970, my oldest son's varsity head football coach was at his first coaching-teaching job after college. That spring, a bull pen catcher threw a pitch back to his pitcher. But at that moment, the pitcher turned...

After years of trying to improve both my hitting and that of my players through batting mechanics, I decided it was not working and went back to Ted Williams' classic book The Science of Hitting. He said the most important thing was to get a good pitch to hit. Not mechanics. So I tried emphasizing waiting for a good pitch on the first and second strike in both my own adult-hardball and semi-pro play and in the way I coached my youth teams. Bingo! Both my youth team and myself saw an instant improvement in our batting. More walks and...

Complete rule on how many bases runners get on a throw that goes out of boundsMy book only has part of the rule abotu this. Here is the complete rule(g) Two bases when, with no spectators on the playing field, a thrown ball goes into thestands, or into a bench (whether or not the ball rebounds into the field), or over orunder or through a field fence, or on a slanting part of the screen above thebackstop, or remains in the meshes of a wire screen protecting spectators. The ballis dead. When such wild throw is the first play by...

Nelson Cruz, the Texas Rangers right fielder, had a chance to make a walk-off catch in game 6 of the 2011 World Series. He failed to and his team lost that game and the series itself in game 7.The Rangers were one strike away from winning the world series, or one out if the ball was put in play. Cardinal David Freese had one ball and two strikes and there were two out in the ninth inning.Too shallowFreese hit the next pitch off the right field wall for a triple. But Cruz was right there and appeared to be going...

Wasting practice time on activities where one player gets an occasional repetition while the rest of the team stands around in small groups chatting.Rotating all players through each defensive position. This is supposedly done to “expose” each kid to each position. Baloney! It’s done because the coach does not have the guts to tell any of the fathers that his kid is playing right field. Try asking your local music teacher to rotate each member of the school band through each instrument so they can be “exposed” to it. Or ask the local drama teachers to rotate all the students...