EBCA Convention Day 3 – a Blog by John Miller

The annual convention of the European Baseball Coaches Association takes place in Brussels, Belgium this weekend. John Miller, who you might know from Old World Pastime, is on hand and blogs about it for Mister-Baseball.

PRACTICE

I skipped the gym clinic in the morning to run the Kangaroos kids practice. I was disappointed to miss Mike Lane’s hitting talk, but it was refreshing exercise to get back to working with 10-year-olds. In a 90-minute practice, we needed about 85 minutes of playing catch practice.

LUNCH STORY

Benjamin Kleiner, the Berlin baseball coach, relayed a very cool tale over a Caesar’s salad and Pepsi. Cubs great Ernie Banks was stationed in Mannheim as part of a Ranger Platoon unit. He played baseball as a 19-year-old, before going on to Chicago.

Jim Jones had another piece of sage advice: There are too many roadblocks to entry for young Europeans play baseball. “All you need is a T-shirt and a cap.” He’s right. The Belgian federation youth league requires a pricey uniform, an official scorekeeper and a seven-month commitment.

CLOSING

After a talk on defensive positioning, Mr. Lefebvre offered a gracious closing speech. He appropriately thanked Chris Dassy for his sweat putting the convention together. His main piece of wisdom for European baseball: “You need opportunities to play. When you have a dream, you need a place to go to fulfill that dream.”

For coaches, the EBCA convention is always a good place to go.

Stay in touch this winter, at oldworldpastime@gmail.com