The Quality of Coaching

The Quality of Coaching

Clare hated our one-on-one baseball practices.  I made her field a hundred grounders, then made her hit a hundred pitches, as many curves and sliders as I could make my arm throw.  I like to think I exhorted rather than yelled and that the two years I coached Clare’s teams I never showed up my daughter and I never gave her special treatment.  What really saved me, though, was softball.  There was a whole line of coaches who made me look good in comparison.  That’s how I got on the short list of “people I’ll listen to,” as Clare puts it.

The hardest thing for me to learn was “when,” when to say something and when to keep quiet.   That inability boiled over freshman year at Elmhurst during a godforsaken doubleheader at Judson University, former home to the Chicago Bandits; it was a doubleheader that started at 5:30 in 39-degree cold.  I wouldn’t even have wished game two on a Cub fan.

First inning of game one, Clare smoked a ball to dead center that would have gone out of any regular college field, but thanks to the Bandits the fence was 230 feet.  So, homerun number six turned into a double off the fence.  Everything after that, Clare got under the ball trying to launch it, only to pop up.  Between games I let her know what she was doing wrong, but I forgot the hitter in question wasn’t 11-years old anymore.  That’s to say Clare poked me in the ribs with her bat and told me to “Go away.”  I have not repeated that mistake since.

The above serves as my introduction to the following:  We went to the batting cages on Saturday, and Clare’s unhappy with her stance; she can’t put a finger on it, but something’s off.  In general, Clare likes to stride into a pitch with her front foot tippy-toe.  “Is it too much?” she asks later, showing me video from a session last year with her hitting coach.

So, for ten minutes in the living room when she should be getting ready for a date, we discuss stances and approaches at the plate.  I come from the Yogi Berra school—hitting can be fifty percent half-mental.  I think the best way for my sweet little girl to go into the season is with the look of a homicidal maniac on her face so frightening pitchers will be afraid to look at her.  Then, see ball, hit ball.

            Short of that, it’s back to the cages on January 2^nd after we study more video I shot last year.