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.
An experiment in baseball proselytizing was born Saturday afternoon. Six kids walked up to a coach and declared themselves ready to play the pastime. They had bitten on the offer announced on www.springbaseball.org.
As explained here before, my goal is to prove to those stewarding the game in Belgium, and elsewhere in Europe, that there is room for a short season written into people’s lives, instead of the seven-month novel most federations favor. That would increase the player pool, drawing the A athletes a sport needs to flourish.
There’ll be 11 two-hour sessions between now and late June. I hope to: a) attract 10 to 12 kids ages 9 to 12, enough to make a team b) teach them enough baseball fluency to compete in a few games with our regular teams in that age group. Then they’ll go back to summer and soccer with a lingering hunger for our game.
I was a bit bummed to sign up six kids instead of 15, but that’s just enough to run practice games if you have a few club players to fill in on defense. It’s also enough to make a team if those six each bring a friend.
The low, cloudy skies cleared up by noon, and it was pristine baseball weather when the first two boys showed up 20 minutes before the 1pm start. I offered free BP. They eagerly wacked a couple dozen balls.
I abstained from offering hitting theory. Instead, I set up a competitive game between the two kids. Most hits out of the infield wins. A golden rule of coaching: put kids in situations where there is thrill in victory.
The others, including one girl, showed up. I handed out T-shirts and gloves. We worked on playing catch for 20 minutes, ground balls for 5 and fly balls for 5. At 1:30pm, I launched a T-ball game, stopping every time a rule needed clarification.
Five of the six kids are fine athletes. One instinctively took a line drive off the chest to make an out. A lefty grounded out weakly his first time up. The second, he measured up his swing, carefully preparing a stride and hard cut to the ball. The resulting sweep of the bat was elegant and powerful, delivering a line drive to right-centre.
At 1:30pm, I explained pitching. This will be the hardest skill to teach on short notice. I stuck a batting helmet on a tee on home plate and offered a free baseball to any kids who knocked it off from the mound. The only guidance I offered was to keep the launch foot on the rubber. Again, you could see each one figuring out the best way of making his body throw a hard strike.
We closed with everyone’s favorite candy, homerun derby. I handed out free baseballs in exchange for promises to bring friends, and sent them off. I then rushed over to the men’s field to go 0-for-4 and catch a crisp 3-1 triumph over the Mortsel Stars.
Do you get the title reference? Anything else to say? Please shout out at oldworldpastime@gmail.com