The Hitting Coach

             Today, Clare went to her hitting coach for the first time this summer.  She’d been mad at him—and herself—since spring.

            Youth sports is all about lining up “expert” coaches; you can’t be a star quarterback, pitcher or cleanup hitter without some help on the side.  Clare started seeing Jim in the summer before high school.

            I’d like to think I made his job easy by breaking my daughter of the habit of putting her foot in the bucket on sliders away; Clare’s front foot went away from the ball when she swung at hard breaking pitches.  But the main way I made things easy was by contributing a gene or two to a natural-born hitter.  There wasn’t that much to fix.

            Jim didn’t last long in his first go-around.  Call it too many voices—his, the travel coaches and Euks, the varsity coach.  So, we did without Jim’s services until senior year, when Clare thought she was done with travel and wouldn’t be playing in college.  But she wanted to go out on a high note, and did.  Going back to a hitting coach helped Clare tie the school single-season record for homeruns, at 10.  And that drew the attention of colleges, so the hitting coach really did resurrect a career.

            Jim leaves Clare’s mechanics alone (trust me, it’s a beautiful swing) while encouraging her to visualize her at-bats.  That translated into six homers freshman year at Elmhurst, and another seven sophomore year.  Such high hopes we all had for this spring—a second straight trip to the postseason tournament, more homeruns, a shot at the NCAA Division III tournament.  But the team slumped, and Clare only managed two homers.

            She desperately wanted answers, and Jim tried to provide them.  Nothing worked, April came and went, junior year ended.  Now, Clare wants to finish strong again.  I try not to pry too much about what goes on in a session.  With me, it’s all “stop crowding the plate, or they’ll jam you” and “cut down on your swing with two strikes, even Ted Williams says so.”  I can only hope Jim says the same in the course of an hour.

            My daughter may be the only girl whose father gives her hitting manuals for a gift, Williams and Charlie Lau so far.  I want Clare to visualize being good enough to get that kind of instruction.  And I want Jim to help her visualize having a senior year for the ages.  All I know for sure is they talked things out for a half-hour before the hitting started.