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.
BRUSSELS
Once again, there is no better winter baseball event on the Old World scene than the annual European Baseball Coaches Association’s convention. It’s in Brussels this year, happily a few blocks from my apartment.
The Friday night was cozy and tight, an extended cocktail party on the first floor of a Courtyard Marriott in northern Brussels. Chris Dassy, the uber-obsessed Namur Angels coach, poured prodigious energy into setting up speakers and marketing the convention to over 100 attending coaches and players.
BALLS
The equipment stand slot was occupied by a jovial Frenchman named Lahcene Benhamida, a 38-year-old second baseman for the national team who has courageously started his own equipment business. “Ballsy,” as the president of the Belgian federation Jerome Legris put it. Indeed. Mr. Benhamida gets his gloves (and balls) made in Taiwan, and sells them under the brand name Lace, smartly branded with a stylish L on a black background. “We’re starting to catch on,” he says.
COACH
Coach of the year went to the ever-professional Steve Janssen, who took his Rotterdam Neptunus crew to a well-deserved Dutch national title this year.
CATCH
We make baseball so complicated sometimes, with inner tubes and weighted balls, flat gloves and video software. It takes talks like U of North Alabama coach Mike Lane’s opener to remind us what matters.
Mr. Lane delivered a virtuoso lecture on the art of playing catch. It was standard stuff, of course, but broken down into several dozen exquisite parts, most of them too often ignored. He correctly pointed out that the imperative for the infielder is not bringing the caught ball to the waist with two hands, but getting the ball in the throwing slot with one hand.
There were useful drills, best of all shoulder rotations holding two baseballs “to extend your range of motion.”
Players should be challenged while practicing their catch-playing, Mr. Lane said. He is a fan of the priceless relay game, and timing infielders on their bat-impact-to-first-base speed (crack-to-thud, instead of pop-to-pop). Good infielders are consistently under four seconds, he said.
CHINA VS. EUROPE
Jim Lefebvre, the voluble ex-Dodger and Major League manager, followed up with an insightful lecture on his experience building up the Chinese national team in the early 2000s. I had looked forward to his talk because, after all, we in Europe are also stuck on the bottom rung of the baseball ladder. As Mr. Lefebvre put it, “You can’t identify with the Yankees spending $200 million, but you can relate to the Chinese building a baseball program.”
The biggest adjustment in bringing amateur talent to a professional level, he said, was “the speed of the game.” To prepare his squad, he relentlessly drilled them in measuring up to the pace and violence of the pro game. He also brought to the table that pure meritocratic approach that is unique to baseball, with its statistics and scouting reports.
That philosophy, he said, is encompassed by something the great Dodger manager Walter Alston told Mr. Lefebvre and his Dodger teammates before the opening series of the 1965 season. Mr. Alston’s entire pep talk consisted of: “Gentlemen, we’re here to win. Do the job and you’ll play, and if not, we’ll find somebody else.”
STORIES
Then it was on to an open bar and a stream of conversation and patter. The star, of course, was Mr. Lefebvre, hobbled by replaced knees, but still mighty in his ability to recount baseball lore.
A few salted nuts:
- Sandy Koufax threw only two pitches, a rising fastball and a vicious down-breaking curveball. “He worked up and down.”
- The 1966 Dodgers lost to the Orioles in the World Series because they were crushed by a brutal pennant race.
- Managers and coaches stay out of players’s personal training habits, including steroids, he said.
- Drafting players who walk a lot is silly, Mr. Lefebvre, because Big League pitchers will destroy somebody with a good eye and a slow bat.
Tere were other stories then, and more to come in the convention, of course.
Tell me stories at oldworldpastime@gmail.com