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Does anyone have littleuns they cheer for/coach with unexplained intensity and joy?

[SHOW]

https://youtu.be/NEzdI25LE6U

Above is a YouTube video from a guy around here whom I couldn’t respect more. I took little aw in for a lesson and there was 1 step in there he was messing up. He fixed that and said don’t come back. Here’s my cell. Text a video if you need help on the spot. The guys resume is a coach for 50 years. High school to college. In a lot of hall of fames. Multiples masters in kinesiology and medicine. I feel weird posting it because I like the guy and he doesn’t necessarily want this floating around the internet but he does want people playing ball and doing it right so.... don’t take the link and share it for your benefit.

Anyway, I never wanted to get into the travel baseball world but it happened and the intensity in that world is high. It’s a world that’s awesome imo for the kids to compete and fail or thrive but holy [expletive] is there a lot of noise. Highly competitive and typically successful parents in the real world are drawn to this arena. And the noise created is ....a lot. Myself and mrs aw included. It’s easy to lose track of relevance and , generally, reality and focus on a single game.

We can probably get in to the darker sides of travel ball if anyone wants to. But there are also the awesome parts of baseball still going on. And they’re so awesome.

The joy a kid gets hitting a dinger even on a ground ball to the pitcher is amazing. And on defense when they make a play it’s unreal just pure unadulterated joy. So much fun.

I’ve coached a couple different levels and will have some videos shortly but man kids playing ball is so much fun.

I have a 6 year old grandson in Houston that Mrs. Sparks and I send to private baseball lessons. We send him for about a month before the season, through the season and also for about a month halfway between seasons. We don't really have any expectations for long term we just want to him to have something that gets him out of the house and keep him active.

He loves it.

The instructor basically teaches him base running, basic hitting off the tee, footwork and basic rules of baseball. He just finished his second year of T-ball and you can tell that he uses what he has been taught. It also seems to have made him more aggressive on the field in a good way. I coached my daughters when they were growing up and teaching a kid to be aggressive is one of the hardest things to do (IMO). His instructor said he doesn't normally take kids that young but my grandson has the ability to stay focused and listen so he enjoys working with him (and I am sure the $$ plays in to it).

His parents (my daughter and her husband) are getting caught up in the excitement as well. Unfortunately my wife and I only get to see some short videos of him playing unless we can catch him on one of out visits.

I'm really struggling to teach my little one to throw. He still goes off the wrong foot and doesn't have the rhythm of it down at all. Any tips? At this point, I'm really concerned he won't be starting shorstop for the St. Louis Cardinals (or, in other words, a failure to his father*).




*I'm kidding. Good God, I hope you realize.

BottenFieldofDreams wrote: ↑

July 6 21, 9:36 am

I'm really struggling to teach my little one to throw. He still goes off the wrong foot and doesn't have the rhythm of it down at all. Any tips? At this point, I'm really concerned he won't be starting shorstop for the St. Louis Cardinals (or, in other words, a failure to his father*).




*I'm kidding. Good God, I hope you realize.

He can just DH; it's fine.

redbirdjazzz wrote: ↑

July 6 21, 9:58 am

BottenFieldofDreams wrote: ↑

July 6 21, 9:36 am

I'm really struggling to teach my little one to throw. He still goes off the wrong foot and doesn't have the rhythm of it down at all. Any tips? At this point, I'm really concerned he won't be starting shorstop for the St. Louis Cardinals (or, in other words, a failure to his father*).




*I'm kidding. Good God, I hope you realize.

He can just DH; it's fine.

This is a good idea. That way he could just leave after his last AB to get to the Blazers game in time to start as PG.

BottenFieldofDreams wrote: ↑

July 6 21, 9:36 am

I'm really struggling to teach my little one to throw. He still goes off the wrong foot and doesn't have the rhythm of it down at all. Any tips? At this point, I'm really concerned he won't be starting shorstop for the St. Louis Cardinals (or, in other words, a failure to his father*).




*I'm kidding. Good God, I hope you realize.

Probably he'll be a drummer.

BottenFieldofDreams wrote: ↑

July 6 21, 9:36 am

I'm really struggling to teach my little one to throw. He still goes off the wrong foot and doesn't have the rhythm of it down at all. Any tips? At this point, I'm really concerned he won't be starting shorstop for the St. Louis Cardinals (or, in other words, a failure to his father*).




*I'm kidding. Good God, I hope you realize.

I know you're kidding, but if you want to work on throwing, this is a good beginner drill that we run at almost every practice when working on pitching.

It deals with weight transfer which would work all the same for stepping iwth the correct foot. Set up the kid in the stretch, more or less. Assuming he's a righty, left shoulder closest to the target, right shoulder away from the target. Put two towels tied together or something with some substance in his right hand.

Bring the hands together near the right shoulder. At this point, weight is 50/50 on either foot. This drill gets into hand position as well and because it's tough to do without it, I'll include the basics.... but you can't focus on more than one thing at a time. You could probably focus on just the footwork, though I've never tried it.

Anyway, once set the drill goes, stage by stage, stopping at the end of each until the kid gets it right.
Stage 0: Feet ~shoulder width apart, setup as described above, weight 50/50. (I'm going to avoid nuances such as knee bend, elbow bends, etc).

Stage 1: Shift the weight to 80/20 with the majority on the back (right) foot and separate the hands such that the right arm is almost straight pointing away from the target at or near shoulder height with the palm of the right hand facing completely away from the target. Extend the glove hand towards the target at or near shoulder height with the pinky pointing towards the sky.

Stage 2: Small (2-3") stride with the left foot towards the target and point the toe towards the target. Weight distribution goes back to 50/50 with the stride. The hands remain relatively steady at this point.

Stage 3: Rip the pinky down and in towards the left hip causing the hips and shoulders to rotate, the right arm comes "over" the right shoulder at this point though it really doesn't move. The act of throwing requires all this to be timed, obviously, which is ignored when going step by step, but the key is to 'push' off the right foot during this stage.

Stage 4: Weight naturally transfers to the front foot as the back foot pushes off and as the right arm comes through to throw putting the chest square to the target and over the left knee. At the end, all the weight is on the front (left) foot and the right leg kicks around to square the pelvis with the target.

Obviously, in real life, stages 2-4 take less than half a second, so there's a lot going on which is why it's helpful to break it up. The result of this drill is pretty much the exact sequence a pitcher would take if executing a pitch with a slide step instead of a more prolonged windup...which, we're far from needing at this point

Anecdotally, and I think according to research, you can't focus on much more than one thing. So, if you want to worry about the step, don't worry too much about the hands. Start from the ground up (so the feet) naturally at first and largely ignore hand/arm/shoulder/hip placement and rotation.

Yes! This is the kind of thing I'm looking for. Thanks