Teaching

Looking at the various emails, links and ads that I’ve seen over the last few months, I’m trying to sort out where I’ll go for a coaching conference this off-season.

Who Am I?

I’m just a beginning coach. I coach at nearly the lowest level of youth baseball and I’ve only been doing it a year.

The highest level I played regularly at was the “F minor” in 1979, which was the city rec league – no tryouts required. I sat at the end of the bench as an 8th grader the next spring on our school team. Once I got to college, I started a string of 35 years playing on as many adult softball teams as I could. I settled on a men’s “C” league team for 25 years, plus a few Congressional “beer league” coed teams.

When I bought Dusty Baker’s You Can Teach Hitting, I went from a mediocre hitter to a very good one. It didn’t last because I got older and the league continued to have a supply of guys in their 20s. However, I had become a student of hitting.

About five years ago, I got invited to play in a 48+ men’s baseball league. Again, I started as a mediocre player. I’ve been down to Florida 3 times for our league’s “spring training”. I got coaching from the Twins’ Jeff Smith the first year. The next two years, Rick Knapp lead my team — Rick’s most recent post is as the pitching coach for the Durham Bulls. I’m an extremely coachable player, so my hitting got better and…. I finally learned how to pitch.

I think of myself as demonstration that you CAN teach an old dog new tricks.

I feel that this learning process I’ve gone through to get myself back on the field and onto the mound gives me a lot of insight that most youth coaches don’t have. I’m facing challenges, overcoming hurdles and trying to improve my play every day. I think this puts me ahead of guys for whom the game came easy and ahead of guys who haven’t played in 30 years.

Nonetheless, as a coach, I’m nearly a complete neophyte.

What kinds of options are there?

I joined the ABCA a year ago on recommendation of our league President, hoping I could learn coaching. They have a coaching conference every January. I also started seeing ads for pitching conferences and a catcher conference. In addition, some organizations are starting certification programs, in which you do a lot of learning off-site, but come on-site with a number of other coaches for a final program. So, there are some general options and some specific ones. Size of conference also varies, from those small on-site sessions that might have 25, to groups of 100 or 150, all the way up to the ABCA conference at over 7000 participants.

ABCA Annual Conference

2-5 January 2020 in Nashville, TN at a cost of $120 ($80 for early, $100 for advanced and $150 for late registration)

This is the big production – clinics, trade shows, and banquets. They’re accepting up to 7100 attendees. There’s even a special Youth Coaches session on the 3rd and 4th. The 2021 convention will be a few miles from my house at the Gaylord National Harbor, so I’m going to defer on the 2020 conference for a “no travel required” 2021 option.

Baseball Skill Acquisition Summit

12-13 October 2019 in Lakeland, FL at the Florida Baseball Ranch at a cost of $999

This is the second edition of the Summit, which is focused on “motor learning and skill acquisition conference targeted specifically for baseball.” After the initial 2018 Summit, 3 of the presenters were hired by MLB teams as consultants. The attendees included 53 representatives of MLB teams, so the value of this conference is understood at the highest level. As a beginning coach, I’d be way over my head.

Ultimate Pitching Coaches Bootcamp

6-8 December 2019 in Montgomery, TX at the Texas Baseball Ranch at a cost of $449

In it’s 20th iteration, the Ultimate Pitching Coaches Bootcamp has 3 intense days of pitching coach sessions that can be supplemented for another $99 with the Bonus Session on the 5th of December to learn the techniques and tools used by the Texas Baseball Ranch. This is limited to 150 coaches, so the ratio of coaches to speakers is probably 10:1 or so. This is intriguing because of the focus and the ratio.

Pitchapalooza

6-9 December 2019 in Franklin, TN which cost $349 in 2018

If you’re a pitching nerd like I am, trying to learn from folks using all the latest tools and scientific analyses, Pitch-a-Palooza is probably right up your alley. Last year they had Kyle Boddy, Dr Stephen Osterer, Eugene Bleecker, and Nunzio Signore among the speakers. I only know them from their writings and tweets, but they’re impressive. The rest of the speakers also have meaningful backgrounds, but those jumped out at me. This is a 300-coach conference, with representatives from 23 MLB teams in attendance last year. (What were the other 7 teams thinking?) Those headliners and the scientific approach catch my eye. It’s possible that I’d also get to visit the Civil War battlefield there….

CatcherCON

December 2019 in Nashville, TN

Every detail you want to learn about catching and coaching catchers is fair game at CatcherCon. When you search videos from the conference, you get great stuff like Xan Barksdale’s 2017 talk on drills for recovering blocked balls more quickly or Jerry Weinstein of the Rockies talking about Building Arm Strength in 2018. I started catching in January because I hadn’t tried it since 1978 and there are never enough catchers in men’s leagues. This, however, is also likely going to sail over my head.

Driveline Foundations of Pitching Certification

32 online courses with a live, in-person seminar to complete certification at a cost of $699

Deep dive, on your own schedule, into everything about pitching by Driveline’s experts. I think that the in-person sessions are currently all in Seattle, but that they plan on more sessions at other locations in the future. One of the nice things here is that you go at your own pace, on your own time. Of course, that can also be a hurdle if you find yourself too busy — being away a conference can give one an ability to focus. It has the added benefit of a certification at the end, which is likely going to helpful for those starting a career. I think I’m going to wait on this, while I see how much I might be over my head elsewhere.

Tentative thoughts

I’ve only been thinking about this for a few weeks, so I doubt that I even have half of the options available. So, right now, I’m thinking that I’ll go to one of the pitching conferences. I study and teach pitching a lot, so it would be good to get a deeper dive. There might be other options that I haven’t considered, so I’m eager to hear from you if you’ve done or are doing something else.

When I was a kid, if you wanted to learn from watching someone pitch, you had to sit close to the TV and hope you could pick up what they were doing from the centerfield bleachers. If your coach wanted to demonstrate, he needed one of the kids to go through his motion live, in front of the rest of the team. If someone wanted to be noticed, they had to pitch in front of a scout who wanted to pay attention. We don’t have to do it that way in the 21st century.

I’ve become a twitter addict in the last year. I’d started on twitter a few years ago to promote my software blogging and speaking, then, I decided I wanted to blog and tweet about horse racing. I have separate blogs on software development, military history, horseracing and this one, on baseball. So, as the writing on each topic got more extensive and my desire for interaction got higher, I added a new twitter handle for each: @LostInXPages, @WereNotLost, @PunterNavarre and @OldMensBaseball. Each has a separate focus and mostly separate community (some of my blog posts or interests bleed across them, but I try to keep them focused).

Now that we’re in the 21st century, I can watch 50 different guys at different stages of development. Each does some things right, some things wrong. Even if the only thing you do is watch these videos and read the comments on @FlatgroundApp, you’ll learn a lot.

Sample Pocket radar — Sophomore Julien Hernandez in the middle of his delivery on an 81 mph pitch

Flatground is the brilliant idea of the @PitchingNinja, Rob Friedman, to get exposure and advice for high school, junior college, college and free agent pitchers who might otherwise slip through the cracks. Not everyone can afford to attend showcases. Not everyone has a scout attend their game and pay attention to them. With the time and money squeezes everywhere, Rob set up @FlatgroundApp for those players to submit their videos to get noticed.

I use Flatground for two purposes – to learn how to pitch better and to teach others to pitch better.

I’ve put in a lot of study over the last few years trying to learn to pitch. I’ve hired a pitching coach. I’ve bought books. I’ve watched a bunch of YouTube videos. I’ve gotten lessons from Rick Knapp during our Ponce de Leon spring training. (Any failures in my mechanics are entirely my fault, not those of any who’ve tried teaching this old dog new tricks.) Getting Knappy’s advice has always provided the most gain, but I only get to see him once a year and he’s dealing with 30 or 40 guys who also want to learn. Flatground has tied in nicely with the books I’ve been reading, allowing me to see, in slow motion and stop-motion 50 different guys pitching. Watching guys open that lead shoulder too soon, or not scap loading, or striding inefficiently really helps one identify their own flaws.

So, when watching those videos, I’ve apply my experience coaching (negligible), my book learnin’ (useful foundation), the coaching I’ve gotten and my limited experience with pitching. Sometimes, I can see the flaws in someone’s delivery. When it’s unclear, I can simply compare videos of two different pitchers and point out to the one who needs help what the other guy is doing better — and point them to the video for help. I’m basic and I can only help with the worst flaws, but it’s going to help me in my live, in-person coaching.

I put in my order this morning for my Pocket Radar to use with the Smart Coach app so that I can start doing some scouting for Flatground. It might help some kids get noticed, but it will certainly get me an opportunity to see more guys pitching.

So, if you’re in the DC metro area and want a video to get onto @FlatgroundApp, let me know. I’ll be reaching out to some coaches once I get the technology figured out. I’ll even be taking it with me when I go on vacation in Asheville, NC in April (UNC-A, here I come!), since I’ll have some downtime while Melissa is taking a French cooking class.

Old Men Playing Baseball

Which coaching conference suits you?