Pitch Recognition and Plate Discipline

There are two skills in baseball that, if not learned early in life, are both valuable and difficult to learn later. I’m talking about pitch recognition and plate discipline. Pitch recognition, the ability to see the ball out of the pitchers hand and decide at...

Getting out of Your Own Way

He was a baseball scout’s dream. Tall, lean, and with a highly-projectable arm on the mound. Throwing velocity with ease, he also mixed in two offspeed pitches that could be devastating. But from the first time I met him, something seemed just off. From the first time...

The Danger of Recreational Baseball

It’s the same at every level of amateur baseball. If you hang around a practice long enough, you’ll see the teams that are purely recreational and the teams that have more in mind than just “fun.” Unfortunately, for the purely recreational...

Young Love

My first memories of baseball involve me playing what my dad and I called “tag-up,” a game in which he tossed a ball off a door at the end of the hallway and I tagged up like it was a fly ball and tried to slide safely into the base before he tagged me...

What I Learned about God from My High School Coach

My high school coach was like Santa Claus. It was amazing. He knew everything. He knew how many classes you’d skipped, the names of all the girlfriends of our players, how much you owed him for the latest fundraiser. He knew when you didn’t run hard during...