John Miller, player/coach of the Brussels Kangaroos and a reporter for a major American newspaper, is back chronicling his team’s 2009 season in his weekly column that will appear every Monday on mister-baseball.com.
We’re six sessions into Spring Baseball (www.springbaseball.org), an attempt to draw more European – in this case, Belgian — kids to our game by offering 11 two-hour sets instead of a seven-month marathon.
I am relearning some fundamental lessons about teaching baseball to newbies.
First, the pitching machine is a priceless tool, even essential. There is no point in adding the confusing, difficult and time-wasting pitcher. That’s like teaching language with the grammar before the vocabulary. We’ve played two scrimmage games against established local teams. My beginners have lost both, but they happily dig in against our two-wheeled hurler popping soft fastballs down the middle.
(In Antwerp, the clubs have started a neat tradition. Every Friday night, they invite a few dozen under-12 players. Two teams play a short pitching-machine game, while the third works out with a coach. Then they switch. No arms get blown out, and the kids get a pile of at-bats, groundballs and close plays, the stuff ballplayers are made of. I say Bravo.)
Second lesson, progress comes in leaps. For weeks, my kids couldn’t throw the ball around the infield. There is nothing more important, I said, as we practiced the drill over and over again. Playing catch is to baseball what skating is to ice hockey. Then, this Saturday, they got it. Nobody can pitch, but groundballs are starting to turn into outs.
Finally, what really drives the baseball missionary’s conversion rate is that advancing toward that moment when the kid bites. When he or she says wow this is the coolest thing in the world.
There is an 11-year-old girl in my program who throws, left-handed, with an arm action worthy of Jamie Moyer. “She practiced all day by herself yesterday,” her mom told me. No, she has no future in the Major Leagues or even the Belgian first division, but who cares? She gets it, and the more that get it, the better the chance the game will endure.
That’s why I give away balls and lend gloves and bats kids and parents. That way you can play at home, I say. More often than not, a week later, the kid can finally play catch.
I got the bug when I was seven. My uncle Jimmy pitched to me and my cousin Sally. The World Series was on the line, he said. After that, my dad happily encouraged his Belgian-born son to play.
Dad, a professional piano player and conductor, still lives in Belgium and follows the Kangaroos. Last week, he, my mom, a clarinetist, and my brother Jacob, a bass guitarist, recorded a sentimental jingle. I set it to some clips and pictures from our club and stuck it on Youtube:
(During the recording session, he also played a jazzy “Take Me Out To The Ballgame”)
The purpose is to draw Brussels souls wandering the internet to baseball. Like with the kids, one plants seeds, trusting that some will get it.
I’d love to see creative ways you’re trying to promote your club or the sport online. Please send Youtube videos or links to oldworldpastime@gmail.com. I’ll post the best.
Comment by makoG
May 25, 2009 | 11:14 am
John, you are the catcher with the Frank Drebin-dance?