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How to Teach Your Kid to Pitch

A couple summers ao, I went to a vintage base ball game in Westfield, Connecticut. The Westfield Wheelmen played the Hartford Senators on Adonis Terry Day.

As many as 200 vintage teams have arisen in the last quarter century. Usually playing according to the rules of the 1860s and 1880s, the teams take you back to baseball’s formative years. In the game I saw, players used leather the size of gardeners gloves. They swung big bats — usually around 40 ounces — and hit balls that didn’t have the hard rubber core that makes today’s hits go so far.

It was a refreshing game. Even though most players don’t have extraordinary physical abilities, they have more physical toughness. When you catch a sizzling liner down the third base line, your hand stings for days. That’s a lot harder to do than extending a basket-sized glove to swallow the ball.

The day’s highlight was meeting Jim Bouton, the rebel who had as much effect on the culture of baseball than anyone else in our lifetime. Bouton’s Ball Four was a seminal book that ripped the mask of heroism off the face of baseball.

Before the game, I took a couple of Little Leaguers up to Bouton and asked how young kids should approach pitching.

“What you have to do is find out your own style,” he said. “Everyone has their own pitching style. You have do some things a certain way, but mostly you have to find your own motion. Coaches don’t let pitchers do that any more. They think you have to [conform] to some mechanical way of doing things. But people are different, and kids are still growing. They can’t be forced into doing something that doesn’t feel right.”

How do you figure out the right pitching motion, Jim?

“Easy! Long tossing. You stand as far as you can from a friend and throw the ball to hm. Play catch, that’s all. You throw so it’s nice and easy, so you can reach him and hit him in the belly-button. And then once you’ve done long tossing for a while, you start to come closer and closer. When you get 50 feet away, that’s your pitching motion.”

Jim Bouton, once baseball’s great rebel, is now a traditionalist. Don’t tell me about biomechanics, he says. Just learn how to throw in as natural a way as possible.

“Throw as much as you can,” he says. What about throwing too much? What about arm injuries. “Look, you’re going to have a sore arm 500 times, if you’re lucky. You’re going to hurt your arm. But that’s how you learn how to deal with it. That’s how you get stronger.”

The Bouton way, in effect, is to learn how to throw rather than learn how to pitch. A lot of baseball gurus say it should be the other way around — that instead of “just” throwing, a kid has to learn how to pitch. That means using a proper motion, painting the corners, developing a repertoire of pitches, and so on.

The scientists of the game are taking pitching in a different direction. Led by the American Sports Medicine Institute, coaches and doctors are learning about the intricate “kinetic chain” of a pitcher’s motion. They want the pitcher to go through a specific sequence of movements — lifting the front leg (to create energy), maintaining balance (to prevent the dissipation of energy and bad mechanics), raring back (to start to use the energy), rotating the hips and torso forward (to power the bodyt forward), whipping the ball forward (using the energy thrust the ball forward with as much force and as little damage to the joints as possible), landing on the front foot the right way (to absorb the shock of the motion).

(I discuss this kinetic chain in my book The Last Nine Innings. Order the book today!)

The ASMI has been working with Little League to study the impact of throwing on the young pitcher’s arm — most particularly, the shoulder and elbow. ASMI has found that the cumulative stress of throwing can cause serious injuries. ASMI does not make hard and fast claims about the effects of throwing curveballs, but its research tsar, Glenn Fleisig, says there’s reason to suspect that curveballs can damage young arms.

That is the crux of today’s debate about youth pitching. Traditionalists like Jim Bouton say kids should just throw, throw, throw. Play all day till you’re tired, then stop. You might call that the Sandlot School of Pitching. Scientists like Glenn Fleisig say, wait a minute, kids play organized ball these days. And in leagues and tournaments, the strain of pitching — not just throwing, but pitching — can cause serious injuries with overuse and bad mechanics. So you need some rules and regulations to protect the kids. Call that the Scientific School of Pitching.

The debate is critical to the future of youth baseball. As an excellent article in USA Today notes, Little League Baseball seems poised to adopt a pitch-count rule for the 2007 or 2008 season and Little League’s summer tournaments.

How To Talk To a Yankee Fan, If You Must

Tough winter, eh? First you guys flame out against the Cleveland Indians and a swarm of bugs. Then your enfeebled owner and his wanna-be thug sons fire the best manager you’ve ever had. And now Mo and Jorge and A-Rod might leave the team. Say, is Carl Pavano signed through 2008?

Hey, we’ve won more than anyone else! We got 26 rings? Twenty-six rings, buster! Count ‘em! How many do the Red Sox have? The Mets? The Devil Rays? The Seattle Pilots?

True, true. The Yankees are the dominant team in professional sports since the Red Sox traded Babe Ruth because of his penchant for trips to whorehouses during games. No doubt, 26 championships is quite an achievement.

But? You’re going to say, “But…”

Well, it’s a little like saying you like the Bush administration because Washington and Lincoln and the two Roosevelts were great presidents.

Yeah, but we’re in the playoffs every year–

For which you fire the estimable Joe Torre, the guy who has held together for 12 years.

Well, he didn’t win it all. No Yankee fan can ever be satisfied unless we win it all. Making the playoffs is a failure if you don’t win the World Series too. Nothing else matters. It’s an embarassment, a disgrace. We owe our fans better.

I don’t get it. You said making the playoffs year after year is a sign of success. But then you say it’s failure.

Well, a success, but a necessary success. We spent $200 million a year on payroll. You have to win with that. We buy every good player we get our hands on. So the playoffs should be automatic. So, no that doesn’t feel so great.

Kind of like you’re playing a rigged game, eh?

Yeah, but Mr. Steinbrenner deserves more. After all, he and his partners shelled out $10 million for this team. It’s worth a billion now. But that’s not enough. Nothing is ever enough. If you win it all, you start breaking things down to be even more ruthless, even more dominant, next time. Just like Torre said. After the 2000 World Series, George confronted him: We need to get working on next year’s team. It’s not a game. It’s war, total domination. If you don’t win it all, you lose. Like Patton said …

Is George your role model?

Oh, I see where you’re going. Don’t start on his problems — tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions, hiring a thug to harass David Winfield, his love-hate relationship with Billy Martin, the way he trashed Yogi Berra. He hasn’t done anything like that lately. He’s been too sick, for one thing.

No, I guess not. His sons sure look like winners, eh? They remind me of Molly Ivins’s crack about W: “He was born on third base and he thinks he hit a triple.” What are their names? Thug 1 and Thug 2?

Hank and Hal. OK, so they made some mistakes. But you gotta admire their bluster. When Torre pointed out that an incentive clause for getting deep into October was an “insult” — a statement that he and his players needed some special incentive to play hard in the playoffs –Hank fought back. He said he reallyreallyreally wanted Torre back as manager.

So he’s quite an operator. A man who gets what he wants.

Well, maybe he didn’t reallyreallyreally want Torre back. So he got what he wanted when Torre rejected the offer. But he had to say he didn’t get what he wanted. You know, so he would look strong.

Sounds like Jimmy Carter when he talked about his “incomplete success” in Iran. He sent some helicopters to rescue the hostages held at the American embassy in Tehran. But the vehicles crashed and burned. “Incomplete success.” It would have been a complete success if, um, the mission succeeded.

Yeah, that’s it. So the Yankees have been an incomplete success since 2000. That sounds better.

So sometimes you have to break up a team. Maybe Torre was losing his sharpness at the end. Here’s what he described his way of interacting with the Yankees Brass in an interview with Bob Costas of HBO: “You know, what are your thoughts? Ba, ba, ba.” Ba, ba, ba. ba, ba, ba.

You don’t get it. “Ba, ba, ba” is part of the Yankees’ secret language. That’s what saved the season. When Torre said “Ba, ba, ba,” they put in Jo-ba.

So who are the Yankees gonna hire to manage the team in 2008?

Can’t go for Don Mattingly. Too much like Torre — a smart baseball man, groomed for the job, a lot of class, liked by the players and media, level-headed. I mean, you just can’t hire Mattingly because you know you’re going to have to fire him and he’s an icon. So, probably, you go with Joe Gerardi, who you can fire for being a hothead, or Tony Pena, who you can fire for being a softie. Torre and Mattingly are just too well balanced. Can’t have that in an organization like this.

Don’t worry too much about that. Hank Steinbrenner, heir to the throne, has declared that the Yankees would be “stupid” to expect a World Championship every year — um, days after firing Joe Torre for not winning a World Championship. He said: “We want to win the World Series every year, but we’re not stupid enough to think we can do it every year. Like everybody else who has that goal, basically you’ve got to be patient.” So now patience is a Yankees virtue!

Well, he’s got a point. You’d be a fool to say that not winning it all means failure.

So how go the talks with Alex Rodrizuez — the A-Rod! Alexxxxxander the Grrreat! An A-Bomb! From A-Rod! A-Rude! Stray-Rod!

Well, I tell you this. If he exercises his option to break his contract and be a free agent, we won’t talk to him again. He will show himself to be a false idol. He will not be a true Yankee. And good riddance! So long! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out! Loser! What have you ever won, A-Rod? Nothing! That’s what, pretty boy!

So you think you can wrap up a deal before he declares himself a free agent?

I sure hope so. We’d like him to wear a Yankees hat in Cooperstown. We’re planning a plaque for Monument Park. He’s an integral part of this Yankees dynast–

Thanks a lot. It’s going to be a fun winter, eh? One last question. Who you rooting for in the World Series?

Who cares about the World Series? Nobody cares about the World Series anymore. It doesn’t matter. It’s just a crap shoot to get there anyway, right?

Let 'Em Play

Describing the awful wave of crime and family breakdown of the 1970s and 1980s, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan decried the process of “defining deviancy down,” an insidious spiral of cultural degradation. Behavior once considered intolerable — ugly language, slothful manners, and general rudeness — becomes ever more acceptable.

Tune into any of the Little League World Series games broadcast on ESPN and ABC, which concluded with the championship game last Sunday, and you get a glimpse of another powerful trend. Every year we “define down” the age when we treat kids as big-shot athletes. Rather than letting kids play games for fun, we turn it into a serious business.

For years, ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” broadcast the championship game of the Little League World Series. Those games offered a sweet glimpse into a rare moment of glory for ordinary kids. Those teams of 11- and 12-year-olds beat odds 1,000-to-1 odds to get to the tournament in Williamsport, Pa. Why not get a peek?

But the Little League World Series — and countless other youth tournaments — has become a big business. ESPN and ABC now broadcast all 32 World Series games and all eight regional championship games.

Little League is just the most visible example of adults getting too serious about kids’ games. Other leagues that don’t get the glory — PONY, Cal Ripken, Dizzy Dean, and more — have just as much talent. And many travel teams, which often play year-round, would beat the Little League champions any time.

Experts call the problem of overbearing parents and coaches “achievement by proxy disorder.” Adults use their kids’ games to achieve their own glory. When winning becomes all-important for adults, they cannot resist inserting themselves into the game — and pushing so hard that the games aren’t fun, or play, anymore.

Taking games too seriously has caused a rash of pitching injuries. Surgeons report seeing teenagers and pre-teens for all kinds of sports injuries that have one cause — over-exertion.

Youngsters often throw 200 or more pitches a week — more than the fully developed studs in the big leagues — and injure their arms. Most kids now throw curveballs, which have been demonstrated to create serious injuries.

One coach in the 2004 and 2005 series confessed to me that he had “abused” his pitchers because of the pressure to get to the World Series. “Everyone who has ever coached an all-star team is guilty,” he said. At least half of the pitchers in the series go home with an injury. Some players required surgery.

But it’s not just the overwork. During the games, the adults scream and scheme. A big game between the teams from Florida and California in the 2005 series is a case in point. Both coaches screamed all game about the strike zone. The California hitters were told to step out of the batter’s box to upset the pitcher’s rhythm. Both teams accused the other of stealing signs. Parents screamed all game long.

One of Florida’s coaches was Dante Bichette, a former Major Leaguer. He spent most of the game razzing California’s pitchers. I asked him if he regretted bullying the other team’s kids. “This was Little League, so you can’t drill the kid,” Bichette said. “So I yelled at them.”

Parents in the stands are not much better. One coach told me that parents called him on his cell phone after games to complain that he “humiliated” their kids on national TV by not letting them play the whole game. Another told me that hometown fans baited him because his team had not won any games in Williamsport. Other coaches said that parents bickered with each other about their kids’ playing time.

Of course, it’s not all tension and pain in the Little League World Series. The complex in Williamsport is a carnival atmosphere. Kids play on beautiful fields, live in an Olympic Village, and make friends from all over the world. When things go right, it’s hard to imagine a more memorable experience.

Toward the end of the 2005 series, the kids from Florida showed how we might restore the childlike fun to the game.

After they were eliminated from the tournament, the Floridians challenged the team from Venezuela to a “friendship game” — what we used to call a pickup game. The kids suited up and played in the smaller stadium. But this time, the kids made all the big decisions — positions, batting order, even some field strategy. The results were striking.

“It feels totally different,” Dante Bichette Jr. told The New York Times. “It feels like a regular Little League game.”

“Our guys were laughing on the bench today,” Sid Cash said. “That was a little different.”

Why not give the kids their game all season long?

When I first asked Little League coaches about the idea, most expressed skepticism. “A team can be a very delicate thing, and if one thing goes off, the whole thing falls apart,” one coach said.

But once we talked about the game’s dynamics, the coaches realized that their major responsibility lies in helping the kids get ready for games — not in micromanaging the games.

Once upon a time, kids did very well at managing their own games. One study found more than 500 games that New York kids played in the streets. They didn’t need coaches, rules, uniforms, umpires, statistics and all the other trappings of managed play. They just needed each other and a little space.

Why doesn’t at least one league for every kids’ sport — baseball, basketball, football, soccer, hockey — give the control of the game back to kids? Let the adults take care of league logistics and even teach some skills.

But then, at game time, let the kids run the show.

“Try Leaving Little League To Little Kids,” by Charles Euchner, originally appeared in The Providence Journal on August 31, 2007.

Cal Ripken and the Future of Youth Sports

By Charles Euchner

(Originally published on The Early Show)

I had the opportunity to talk with Cal Ripken today about his participation in the longest game in professional baseball history -- a 33-inning marathon between the Rochester Red Wings and Pawtucket Red Sox in April 1981. After we discussed that game, I asked him about the way Cal Ripken Baseball is changing the landscape of youth ball.

Ripken Baseball started seven years ago when the Babe Ruth League offered to rename its Bambino division -- the 12-and-under bunch -- after the Iron Man of the Baltimore Orioles.

"I thought it was a wonderful opportunity to have an impact on the grassroots level of baseball," he said. "I don’t control the league. But I am not just involved in name alone either. I wanted to have an impact on the landscape of the game."

Ripken Baseball is the only community league growing its numbers every year -- about 6 or 7 percent a year, according to the future Hall of Famer. To keep the growth going, Ripken wants to offer not only world-class youth tournaments. He also wants to restore "real baseball" to the 12-and-under set.

Ripken Baseball announced this summer that it would expand its field size from 60 to 70 feet between the bases. It's a move that's been in discussion for years. "It takes a long time, but we're doing it and it's going to make a big difference," Ripken says.

The 70-foot bases -- the same dimensions used in PONY League competition for the same age group -- is "going to breathe some fresh air into the game." The bigger field not only accepts the reality that today's young athletes are bigger and stronger, but also acknowledges the growing importance of travel teams. Love them or hate them, travel teams will dominate youth baseball for the foreseeable future. The question is how community-based leagues adapt.

"In recent years, the numbers of kids playing ball after 12 or 13 have dwindled," Ripken told me. "And at the same time, there are more kids playing year round. We want to get more kids to extend the ages that they play baseball."

By playing on a bigger field, Ripken can draw many of the best travel-ball players to his program. At the same time, Ripken can continue to offer competition on 60-foot bases for less developed young athletes.

Baseball's standard 90-foot-base field fits the power and speed of most players from the teenage years all the way to the elites of the major leagues. 

"There were some fundamental truths that were being violated," Ripken says. "Sixty feet [from the mound to the plate] gives you the right reaction time. And the bigger field gives you the right reaction time for fielders and baserunners too. Who’s the fastest player down the line now? It’s Ichiro [Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners]. But with 90-foot bases, there’s still enough reaction time for infielders to get Ichiro out. 

"When those fundamental truths are violated, you change the game. When you have so many kids, you want to be all things to all people. There’s still a 60-foot path if you want to do that. But physically, there are a lot of kids these days who are ready and want to play real baseball and put people in motion, and move the mound back four feet."

During the recent Cal Ripken World Series, a couple of teams eliminated in early play played an exhibition game on 70-foot bases. 

"We watched the offense became more of a spark, and they enjoyed the stealing and the game was natural to them. This is what real baseball is all about."