Occupy Baseball, 99% vs. 1%

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This time of year, many travel baseball teams here in the Midwest have secured inside training facilities on a weekly basis. Travel baseball is big business now. Players pay a pretty penny for coaches, training, leagues and tournaments. Training sessions for teams inside can last anywhere from an 1-2 hours. If your team is lucky enough (or has spent enough money), you will rent a field and some cages.

In that time frame, a team will work on all phases of the game. Assuming a 1-1/2 hour practice, once you warm up, stretch, play catch, etc, you may have a little over an hour to work on technical skills. Try cramming hitting, pitching, fielding into an hour. If my math is right, that’s 20 minutes per station. One of our coaches brought up a great point last weekend. His comment, “If you think by throwing 20 minutes per week will make you a better pitcher, you are seriously mistaken.” Will it help, sure. Will you be able to iron out mechanical flaws in that amount of time, no.

That led me to think of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Are you one of the 1% of baseball players with such exceptional talent that you feel you don’t have to put in a ton of extra work? Or are you one of the 99% who needs to do extra? As a baseball instructor, I’m going with the latter. Baseball movements are hard to create and even harder to ingrain. Once you think you have it all figured out, you put a moving object in there and stuff goes haywire. It’s difficult.

So here’s my point. The extra work you can do can be done at home for little or no cost. Swing a bat. Go through your throwing motion. Get the feeling of what the movement feels like. Workout. Get stronger. Turn the XBox off for 15-20 minutes each day and get better in between team workouts. Players who reach the 1% do it. Your competition may be doing it. Are you?