Lacrosse coaches love both you and I! They love us because they know that our best players are one boring practice, one boring week or one boring season away from tossing their gloves for lacrosse sticks. Baseball has been at a crossroads for a few years now. In the past, a lot of talented…

  Burnout in youth sports is a threat to the physical and mental stamina of young athletes.As competitive youth athletics engages younger participants each year, the threat of, both, physical and mental burnout in young players grows more imminent. Over involvement in competitive leagues has long-term consequences for kids, if after the first 12 years…

 I plead guilty, but guilty with an explanation. I told my star pitcher before the game, who is also on a travel team, not to throw more than 6 curve balls in the game. My decision was based on the fact that the team we were playing had two really powerful hitters, two of the…

  On May 6, 2001, the Capitol City League Rockies and the Satchel Paige League Memphis Red Sox from the Washington, D.C. area took the field to play each other in a tee ball game. What made this tee ball game different from any other game was the fact that it took place on the…

 When I sat down to write this article I couldn’t help but remember a movie I saw a few years back called Flash Of Genius. It is a story of a man who had invented a form of the Intermittent Windshield Wiper that is used today. The short of it is that he spent his entire…

 I’ve coached Little League for 25 years and do clinics all over the Northeast every year. During the question-and-answer sessions I always get asked what I see as the biggest difference coaching now versus when I first began twenty-five tears ago. I see a lot of differences, but two really stick out to me. The…

  In my first Baseball Chronicles book, one of my most popular articles in terms of feedback was “FourThings Coaches Should Practice But Don’t.”   The four things I mentioned were: Pitchers not practicing fielding from the mound, catching a foul ball near a fence, players not sliding, and practicing fielding wild pitches or passed…

  I have made it no secret that I have a huge affinity toward catchers in youth baseball. A catcher who is11 or 12 years old is great to watch. Some really good ones play beyond their years. With that said, the third baseman in youth baseball may be the most important position on the…

     Ten years ago I was coaching my Little League team in a game that we were winning. I yelled out some encouragement during an inning when the other team was rallying. My catcher called “time out” and went to the mound to talk to the pitcher. Before I knew it, the whole infield…

It is amazing how youth baseball teams, as well as older and more competitive organized leagues, do not practice many of the basic fundamental aspects of the game. From my standpoint, the reason I practice certain things other coaches may not is because I’ve been burned by other teams and have lost games and championships…