Coaching: Teeball/Tee Ball, Farm, and Minors Divisions in Little League Baseball

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Coaching: Teeball/Tee Ball, Farm, and Minors Divisions in Little League Baseball

Introduction

Site updated May 1, 2004 (additional input at bottom of page). For several years now, I have had a hometown site entitled "Teeball Facts and Info" that was number 1 for the entire time. Whatever happened to the site, AOL cannot find it and it has simply disappeared into cyberspace, floating around in a microchip universe, never to be found again.

But that's okay. It was time to make up an entirely new page anyway. I am going to spend the next few weeks developing this page with nothing but information about teeball (5 & 6 year olds), farm (7 and 8 year olds) and minors (in our league, 9-12 year olds) divisions in Little League Baseball. I may, in the future, also add some on the majors level (10-12 year olds in our league). The primary purposes for this page are as follows:

1. To encourage parents to take the coaching/managing role in Little League baseball.

2. To give you specific information which will help to mentally prepare you for this role.

3. To try and alleviate if not eliminate the fears many people experience when faced with a decision to take on a Little League Baseball team. This site will include tips and some drills for each level of play I am going to include here. I will start with teeball, when I finish that, I will move on to farm, and then when finished with that, I will finish the page with the minors division. This will take some time to accomlish, as I have ALOT of information that I want to include.

I will also be happy to answer email questions, my address is wrldchange@aol.com.

Let's get on with it, already!

Teeball - to coach or not to coach?

Your son or daughter turned 5 one day (maybe not too long ago?), and you decided to sign him/her up for teeball in LL baseball. You approached the registration desk, was handed a registration form, asked to fill it out and return it. You filled out the form, putting all the info on, came back to the desk, and what happens next? The guy sitting behind the desk looks up at you, gets a strange look on his face, and then begins to talk to you about managing a teeball team (a manager in Little League is simple the head coach of a team). Your face goes pale, ashen, white, your pulse begins to increase dramatically, you initially say no. The guy goes on, telling you that if you don't volunteer, there may not BE a teeball division. You grudgingly accept the position, go home, and begin to panic. How do I manage a teeball team?

Don't sweat it, it's easy, it's fun, and it's very rewarding. No need to lose sleep, just read the rest of the info here about coaching a teeball team and you will be well on your way. You may not believe it now, but if you were anything like I was when I faced the same challenge, I quickly grew to love the position and have been managing ever since.

First, you have to get organized. Where are you going to practice? When will your first practice be, what day, what place, what time? How long will you practice? How often will you practice? What on earth are you going to say at your first parent/player meeting?

The league will give you a list with the player's names on it, and their telephone numbers. As soon as you get that list, call every player and introduce yourself on the phone. Call a parent meeting, make sure the players show up with gloves. I always have my parent meeting at the field where I am going to have my practices.

Once the parents show up, get out the safety balls, get the kids lined up, and get them out there playing catch. While they're doing that, you are handing out medical release forms to the parents and telling them you want them filled out right now. As they're doing that (and you brought enough pens to cover everyone), you begin to go over your philosophy of how you coach baseball. Yeah right, you've NEVER coached baseball before, WHAT philosophy? It's simple. Your main priority (I hope) is for the kids to have fun, and stay safe while they're doing it, that's what you tell them. Admit to them you are a first time coach, but you will give your best effort and you KNOW that it's going to be a GREAT season! You ask for someone to volunteer to be the team mom/dad (usually team mom). She is going to make a schedule for the snacks and drinks after the game. If you are doing trophies, she will also organize that.

So, you get the parent meeting over with. You have everything set-up, now you have to face those 5 and 6 year olds, keep them busy, keep them interested, and yes, keep them entertained. If you don't, you will lose them quickly, and they won't want to come back for more. 2 practices a week, an hour long is sufficient for teeballers. Make games out of everything. I used to do a throw to the bucket "drill". I did this with both teeball and farm ages, they loved it.

You take a five gallon bucket, lay it on it's side on home plate, and face the opening towards center field. You hit soft - emphasis on soft - grounders to each player. They have to field the ball in their glove, grab it, make a throw, and throw it at the bucket, trying to get the ball into the bucket. I gave out prizes, a piece of gum, whatever. The kids wanted to play this "game" every practice.

If it's nice and hot out, you can come loaded up with water balloons to a practice, make up dozens and dozens of them. Line one row of players up on the foul line, line up another row, in front of them, about ten to fifteen feet away. The object is to catch the balloon without having it break. Obviously, balloons break, kids get wet, and they have a blast.

Another thing you can do is do a sliding practice in wet grass. Get a water hose and absolutely soak a large patch of grass, make it good and wet. Overly wet. Kids come in shorts ready to get wet. You simply have them run and when they get to the wet area, slide away. They also love this.

Another drill you can do is to have a relay race around the bases. You take half the team and place them at home plate, you take the other half of the team and place them at second base. Line them up, give the first runner a baseball. The object is to have each player on each team round the bases, making sure they touch every base, and hand off the ball to the next runner until all runners have completed their trip, the first team that gets all runners around wins.

Batting practice is always fun with the tee, beause everybody hits. Not like player pitch where you don't know if they are going to hit or not. The kids might beat the heck out of your tee, but they will, eventually, hit that ball.

Another item of extreme importance is teaching them the names of every base, and even more importantly, which direction they are supposed to run in. You line up all your players at home base, send the first one off. He hits first base, yelling out "FIRST BASE!!" and continues around to home, yelling the name of every base. Meanwhile, as soon as the first runner hits first, you are sending off the next runner. Believe me, kids will run the WRONG direction if you don't teach them!

Please, DO NOT position your teeballers at one defensive position and then leave them there. Move them all around. They are going to make tons of mistakes whether they are positioned at one position of whether they get 5 positions, you are going to give them a much better idea of what the game is about if you give them plenty of different positions in both the infield and the outfield. They will also have more fun. If you keep the same kids in the infield and put the same kids in the outfield, you are going to lose the interest of players. And there is NO good reason to do this with this age level, none. If anyone would like to present to me an argument as to WHY positioning a 5 year old at one position and leaving them there for an entire season, I would be happy to engage you in a civil discourse about it. Simply email me.

Another event that will make the parents laugh and you, the coach, too, will be to see 7 kids running after the same ball in the outfield, and then fighting over who gets to throw the ball back to........who? The infield and outfield have practically been abandoned. Dont' get mad coach, have fun with the kids. I remember falling onto the ground laughing on a few occasions at some of the things that happened out there. Some parents bring out their camcorders, believe me, if you get some of this stuff on tape, you will have something to remember and laugh about into your golden years. Sure, you teach them how to play the game, but remember these are very young boys and girls, you have to have patience with them, and you have to be able to laugh right along with them. If you are a quick-tempered person with little patience, then coaching teeball probably won't work out too well for you, unless you know you will be able to find enough restraint in yourself to be able to keep your cool.

Teeball rules in LL are pretty simple. 50 foot basepaths instead of 60. No pitcher, but you put a player at the pitcher's position. We don't use a catcher, cause there's no pitching to catch. No stealing, no leading off, and most leagues do NOT keep score. Forget about the score, this is a purely instructional level of ball. Batter gets to swing until he hits the ball, there are no strikeouts, at this level. The only exception to be made: if a batter hits the ball and then throws the bat, the batter is brought back to the tee and told he has to do it over because he threw the bat. If he throws the bat again, the batter loses his turn. This is the best way for young batters to quickly learn that throwing the bat is a BIG no-no.

You MUST have someone keeping order in the dugout, or if you don't have dugouts for teeballers, keeping them in line and keeping them as focused on the game as you can. If you have no fence separating the players from the batters, make very sure you keep the players in the "dugout" FAR away from the batter's box, to insure no-one gets hurt.

When a player arrives at the field, and he brings his own bat, that bat becomes YOUR property until he leaves. No ifs, ands or buts, players are NOT allowed to handle bats without the permission AND supervision of an adult. You don't need a serious injury to ruin a season. There is NO ondeck batters in LL at any level up to the majors division. The players can ONLY swing the bat at games while they're IN THE BATTER'S BOX!

Make no concessions on safety, it is your number one priority out there. Your league should supply a first aid kit to you, as well as have ample supplies of ice paks for any hits a player may recieve to body parts with a thrown or batted ball. Helmets are ALWAYS worn when batting and when on-base, no exceptions. Male players need to have some sort of protection. Whether a hard cup or jock strap, whatever, I am sure you want your little slugger to be able to continue the family lineage long after baseball becomes a fading memory?!!! Believe me, a baseball hitting that area of your body, with no protection, can be EXTREMELY painful. And it happens frequently with these young, inexperienced players.

I hope this has helped. I have more information I will post on the subject of teeball, but I am going to move on to the farm division. If you are going to coach teeball, you may find some helpful hints by reading the farm coaching script, as well.

My Interests

The FARM Division! Okay, you coched teeball for a year or two. Your son/daughter, by league age, is forced to move up to the farm division. In our league, farm division engages 7 and 8 year olds. MOST Little Leagues utilize either machine or coach pitching for this age. I prefer coach pitch, but machine pitch works out, it just doesn't prepare them as well for player pitch when they have to move up yet again. Are you up to the task? Look, it only gets easier as the players get older. Why? As they get older, it gets easier and easier to keep their attention. The farm division encompasses ages that are sort of "middle of the road" when it comes to attention spans. Some of them can practice for hours, some can practice for ten minutes. One thing is for sure, if you have a plan, a good plan, and you believe that kids this age can learn, they will learn many of the fundamentals of baseball. In teeball, you were lucky to get an out at first base. In farm, you will see a lot more defensive plays being made, at least, that's true if there is any hitting going on.

I have to point out here that I am not the typical coach. When I was coaching the farm division, I refused to simply set a player at a permanent position and leave him there for the entire season. I firmly believe, and my record bears the proof, that these kids can learn 2 and more often with me, 3 positions. They get to move around, and they get to experience the game from alot of different angles and views. Moving them around may SEEM unproductive, but in reality, it goes quite far into making baseball lovers out of a lot of them. I plotted out each game on paper before the games ever started. Players would move to 2 or 3 different positions. ALL of my players would play an infield AND an outfield position, regardless of thier skill/ability.

Can 7 year olds make double plays? YES! Not very often, mind you, but it does happen if you teach good defensive skills and knowledge. I actually had one player that was resonsible both all and in part for a triple play! He caught a fly ball, touched 2B before the runner could return, and fired the ball to 1B before that runner could return. The air after that play and that game was electric.

I have much more to say about farm, but I also want take a few moments to touch on minors.

MINORS

Once these boys start getting older, you will find they really WANT to practice, and if you are a coach that can gain the respect of your players, they will work their hearts our for both themselves and you. They WANT to get better, they want to make the plays, they want to hit the ball, they want to pitch. Just to give a little "anecdotal info", today (the day I am writing this) is March 10, 2003. I had a practice earlier today that lasted one and a half hours. I am currently managing a minors team. ALL of my players worked their tails off and gave their heart to practicing to their fullest. Defense is one of the biggest issues with minors players. Many of them don't know anything about the game when it comes to defensive knowledge/ WHAT TO DO WITH THE BALL ONCE YOU HAVE IT IN YOUR POSSESSION. So, along with a lot of skills stations, I have at least 45 minutes of each practice devoted to the "knowledge" of the game. We go over situations with a question and answer session, we play out defensive situations, and then we have a scrimmage dividing the team up into 3 mini-teams playing against each other.

The result? We get a pulse on where we're at defensively. We see where we're weak and what we need to work on. The players get game-like conditions and get the revelation that they are going to have to work even harder to learn the game. Practices are not just places to teach mechanics and defensive skills, drills and knowledge. It's the place where you repeatedly go over and over the same things. If you have enough practices and enough time, defense begins to become second nature. Players come to the point where they don't have to do a lot of thinking, they start to react and do a lot less panicing. Panic? Like an outfielder throwing to an unoccupied base with no runners advancing to that base and NO FIELDER present to CATCH THE BALL!

I have 3 coaches, we are working on grounders, fly balls, infield, outfield. I have batting practice at every practice, and incorporate pitching mechanics with my pitchers. I have a lot of help. If you think you can run an effective practice by yourself, GOOD LUCK! I will put as many adults to work as are present who want to get involved. Soft toss, batting tee, live pitching, defense, pitching, situations. Your players get rotated around, they don't stay in one place. You keep their interest and their attention. They learn, and they are as prepared as they are going to get by the first game. They make a lot of mistakes, and you encourage them. If you don't encourage them and start coming down on them for making physical errors, you are demoralizing them for no good reason and you will lose their loyalty and their interest. Tbere is NO GOOD reason to yell at a 10 year old for missing a grounder. I am speaking about Little League here, if competitive leagues act differently, well that's their perogative.

Majors!! I am now coaching in the majors division. I have been a Little League Board Member, Umpire and Coach for almost 8 years now. My first love has been and always will be coaching. Regardless of what age players you are coaching, the key to making them better players is teaching them the FUNDAMENTALS of baseball. You would think that a majors players wouldn't have to "learn" fielding "mechanics" the same as a teeballer, but it's simply not true. Yes, there are naturals out there, the kid that has a God-given talent that seems to be able to do-no-wrong either defensively or on offense, but most have to LEARN the game, and YOU the coach, have to TEACH them the game!! I have a LOT of information I want to add here, it will take several weeks to do so. I really want to dive deeper into the "to coach or not to coach" issue.

Let me tell you about an experience I had last fall (fall of 2003) having my son playing in NYS (National Youth Sports) that I will never forget, and not in a good sense. I registered my son to play baseball in this league (10 to 12 year olds), and also signed up to coach. After they (the administrators) screwed up 2 times, they sent me to a team that allegedly had no manager (head coach). Well, this team had decided on it's own to nominate a manager before I got there, so I took an assistant coach's role. It became evident very quickly that the manager of this team didn't have a clue, of which I didn't have a problem. I just volunteered my services and after some discussion, helped him organize practices. I was glad to have my son playing and the parents on this team were glad to have an experienced coach there (not patting myself on the back, but you learn some things after doing this for a while). Well, practices weren't an issue, we did what we needed to do and that was that. It was game time, when Mr. Manager made the decisions of who is playing where, what the batting order is and how much playing time each player got that became a BIG issue. It took about 3 games before my conclusions were confirmed: this manager/coach was a "one player" coach. What does THAT mean? This means the coach was interested in one thing: his son. The concept of a "team" and being team players was lost in his quest to make sure his son played wherever he wanted and was in the top of the order in the lineup every single game. Why was this an issue with me? Because little Jimmy, a nice kid, big smile, and tried his best, simply didn't have any business being at the position that daddy put him in. He was the "catcher", and missed probably 75% of the pitches. In other words, there were more "passed" balls in one game with this catcher than you would see in 5 or even more games with a decent catcher. And, NYS utilizes dropped third strike rule with this age (something I'm glad Little League doesn't allow with majors and below ages), so we saw pitchers getting as many as 6 strikeouts in an inning, but Jimmy would drop the ball and wouldn't make a good throw to 1B or tag the batter/runner to make the out. Am I slamming Jimmy? No, I'm talking about managing a team in a way that's BEST for the team, not what's DESIRABLE for one player. There were two other kids on this team that could catch and throw (and no, my son was not one of them, he's not a catcher) MUCH better than Jimmy, but daddy/manager didn't care, he played him there all year long, and unbelievably, Jimmy did NOT get better with time. He was still missing pitched balls straight into the glove, and popping back out, the same at the end of the season as he was in the beginning.

What else happened? Jimmy was always placed at the number two or three spot on the batting lineup, notwithstanding Jimmmy couldn't hit a watermelon with a oversized plastic bat at two feet. In the rare occasion that Jimmy was not playing catcher, he was the shortstop, and if a ball was hit his way, I aleady knew what would happen, Jimmy would consistently miss the ball, even when hit straight at him. We lost almost every game because of this coach's obvious motivation of having his kid play at positions that he didn't belong in.

What is the point in saying all of this? When you are coaching, you are dealing with 11, 12, 13 however many OTHER people's kids, not just yours. You are responsible for ensuring that everyone else's kids have a good time as well as your own. If you are out there for your kid only, it will become obvious to everyone else very quickly and there will be a lot of gossiping behind your back, and some parents may even confront you about it. Oh, and by the way, I make the decisions on my Little League Majors team aobut how plays where. So, where does MY son play? He plays 3rd base and he plays 2 outfield positions. He's a great hitter but he's weak when it comes to infield positions except 3rd, where he does very well. YOU PLAY YOUR PLAYERS WHERE THEY ARE MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED, NOT WHERE YOU WANT TO PLAY HIM SIMPLY BECAUSE HE'S YOUR SON!! If you don't, there will definintely be players that will become resentful - they aren't dumb and can and eventually will figure things out.

Let's talk COACHING AND PARENTS. Whoa, Nelly!! Why is this SUCH a big issue sometimes in youth sports? Well, because some parents simply can't handle the coach making the decisions that he does, and they want to "intervene". Let me tell you something that happened to me 2 days ago (May 8, 2004). I was in the dugout, making player positioning/starter-sub decisions. I have a strict policy about showing up for practices: You either show up or you are going to be a sub and sit out at least half the game (I am referring to Little League Majors ages 11-12 here). Well, a particular player did not show up to practice, and guess what, he didn't show up because he had gone to a soccer (GAG) tryout!!! Come to find out they have fully 5 tryouts this month, so he could have gone to another tryout and NOT have missed the practice (of which he sorely needed in the batting mechanics department). I benched him. If you want to get on my bad side, go ahead and miss a practice and then come to me and tell me that you went to tryout for ANOTHER SPORT!!! You make a commitment when you sign up for ANY sport - you will make all games and practices and if you miss either, you will call coach and give a VALID reason. Participation in two sports at the same time is not only not valid, it shows extreme lack of judgment on the part of the parents who signed up their kids to do so. What happens when one sport's schedule conflicts with the other? Exactly what happened here - one gets sidetracked for the other. Well, after I told him he was sitting, daddy comes racing up to the back of the dugout. "What's going on here" his dad asks his son. Then daddy starts in on one of the coaches. A BIG NO-NO in my book. You CAN come up to the coaching staff AFTER A GAME IS OVER and discuss whatever issues you may, you MAY NOT come up to the dugout and start an altercation while a game is in progress! I quickly moved to silence the man and get him back to the bleachers. He then started in on me - but I was having nothing to do with it. I strongly told him that we can discuss this after the game, but it ain't happening right now. He left. We had it out after the game, yes. All 3 of us coaches stood together in a row - as one united front - and addressed the man calmly, even though he was far less than calm. He lost, we won. How are you going to justify signing up your kid/s for two sports at the same time?

Okay, so how do you deal with parents. The answer is not simple, but the process is. You always start at the beginning of the season laying down the law as to practices and games, show up times, and the consequences for not showing up. Coaches - please believe me- you MUST do this. EVEN IN TEEBALL. You WANT that commitment out of every player and every parent of every player that they are going to respect you and the amount of time you are giving and will do as you ask them to do, which is quite reasonable. Before the first practice, you call a mandatory parent/player/coach meeting. You write down on paper everything you need to go over if you are a new coach and don't have it memorized. I say again, this meeting is an absolute must! Now, you don't have to come off as a hardnose, but you do have to stand strong in your position that you will not tolerate continous late shows to games, continuous late shows to practice, or continous no-shows to games or practices. Look, if a player shows up 5 minutes before game time, like one did the other day, he is NOT starting the game, period. Why? Because HE ISN'T READY TO PLAY. He has to warm up before he is going to step one foot on the field, so now you have to find a player or someone to throw catch with to get him warmed up. That player missed the pre-game soft-toss that our team always does; taking some swings and getting the bat around. He hasn't got the mind yet - the mind of getting rid of whatever junk was bothering him before he showed up and now totally focused on baseball. This is what showing up at least 45 minutes early does for a player. These are the things you have to go over! Don't learn the hard way, take my advice, just do it! If you don't, you are setting yourself up for trouble when you attempt to deal with a problem later on in the season, and you haven't set any guidelines.

Let me give you a few examples, just from this season of LL Majors alone.

1. A player that has an attitude. Coaches tell him to hustle on the field, he turns around, gives a "look", and then proceeds to walk EVEN SLOWER! Puts his hat on sideways, shows up with jewelry in his ears (another big no-no), and then begins trash-talking the team. This went on for about a week - the reports started coming in to me that he was making bets in the dugout that our team would lose, and saying that our team sucks. Well, a little discussion with the other coaches, and I am confronting him one day out at the practice field before the game begins. Now, this is a 12 year old kid, so you can't go overboard and jump down his throat, but at the same time, you have to show you take the game seriously and you are going to do what you think is best for the team. So, both I and the other coach I dragged along with me (for a witness - protection against accusations) begin telling him how great a player he is (and he truly is a very good ballplayer), how much potential he has, the whole 9 yards. THEN, I start talking to him about the reports. His face begins to pale. I tell him how his attitude is negatively affecting the rest of the team, and that we simply can't have it. Then comes the ultimatum: Get rid of the attitude, show up to play baseball, respect your coaches and the other players, or go home and play video games and don't come back. This was a roll of the dice, folks, because with this kid, he might have just decided to go home. But, we definitely weren't going to go through a whole season of his nonsense, either. He caved in - committed to being a team player for the rest of the season and doing as he is told by the coaches, and guess what? THAT WAS THAT! He hasn't shown a sign of that stuff for the last 3 weeks now after we confronted him. Now, if I hadn't confronted parents at the beginning of the season and told them we wouldn't tolerate such actions and words - then we would have been setting ourselves up for a war with this kid's parent. Instead, she was grateful and he is happy too.

2. The Crybaby. Yes, I know, there was an article in the paper about a coach giving out a crybaby award, please believe me I would NEVER condone doing that to a kid. And, I wouldn't go up to a player and call him a crybaby. But I am not in the dugout right now with this player, and I am talking to potential coaches, not players that cry incessantly. Yes, my team has/now had a crybaby. He would burst into tears whenever he struck out at the plate, and it would last the REST OF THE GAME. At one point, it got so bad that one of the coaches came up to me and told me he had gone to the back of the dugout, gotten into the fetal position, pulled a bunch of equipment over top of himself, and was crying and crying and crying. WHAT?!! I didn't know this because I was the 3rd base coach and our dugout was the 1st baseline dugout. Then - the next game - his mother and God only knows who the other people were, a whole group of them (relatives, I guess) converged on me after the game was over. Never in my life had I ever had anything even close to this happening. They were demanding to know why he was sitting more than playing, why we were always telling him to bunt instead of swing away, and a whole plethera of questions. His mother was actually crying, too! Well, we let her know exactly why. He bunts because he has success at it - he couldn't hit (at the time) a watermelon with a giant plastic bat at two feet! His attitude - crying - was what was getting him more bench time than anyone else (and I made sure I had specifically told him that so there was no question). I dealt with every question. This kid actually had the gall to confront me in that interaction and demand me to show him in the rule book where it gives me permission to pull a player in the middle of an inning. Okey-dokey. I let it go. Was this over? Not even close, and I prepared myself for it. Next game - I bench him again. He comes storming up to me and demands to know why ------ I cut him off in the middle of the sentence and basically let him have it. I told him I was no longer going to tolerate him having fits and crying and pouting and trying to manipulate the situation with hissy fits. I told him these exact words and more! How can you run a team with this kind of garbage going on in your dugout? I told him right there, in the middle of the game, to make up his mind: play the game like a team player and get over it, or leave the dugout and go home. He went and sat down. Lo and behold, the next 3 games, his attitude improved 100 fold. He stopped the crying fits, OR, he would get teary-eyed for maybe a couple minutes and then stop (I can accept that, a lot players get teary-eyed when they strike out). He then actually STARTED HITTING THE BALL!

Well, it's late and I have more baseball tomorrow, MUCH more to come! Do you have questions? Please email me at wrldchange@aol.com. I will be happy to interchange emails with you as time provides.

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