Chapter 14 - Training Aids

Sliding Area.

The time to teach sliding is when a boy begins to play baseball. He is closer to the ground and eager to learn. Let the grass grow 6 or 8 inches high in foul territory at the end of a bullpen or outside the outfield fence. This is all the cushion the player needs.

If you can't grow grass in the area, spade up a pit 6 feet wide by 12 feet long and fill it with sand. This doesn't provide the same realism in movement as the grass, but will serve the purpose.

Place a loose (detached) base in the center of the sliding area. Every boy who is physically fit should practice sliding every time he goes to the field, sliding three or four times to the right and three or four times to the left so that he forms the correct habit pattern and has no fear of sliding. He should wear sliding pads, basketball trunks, or heavy swimming shorts to avoid skin burns.

Concentrate on teaching players to slide so that they land on the buttocks, where the body provides the most natural padding. It should be obvious that getting the arms and legs into the air will prevent possible breaks, sprains and chipped bones. Players should stay low when going into the slide and should keep in mind that it isn't a jump, but a slide. Once a boy learns this basic position, he can work on refinements such as the stand-up slide. Give a boy the chance to learn to slide and you may be amazed at the speed with which he masters the art.

PITCHING TARGET. The pitching strings, introduced to professional baseball by Branch Rickey, provide a target for a pitcher. Two strike zones are recommended. They are erected over home plates in the bullpen. (The bullpens, incidentally, should face in the same direction as the pitcher's mound and home plate.) They can be built of scrap lumber, painted white, and anchored to the ground with wooden pegs for this purpose. Poles 2 by 4 inches can be stuck into the ground approximately 10 feet apart with the to Play Little League Baseball
 
4-inch sides parallel to the pitcher's mounds. The poles should be lined up so that cords strung between them will be directly above the front of each home plate. One string should be at the average knee-high height of Little League batters and the other string at the average armpit height of a majority of batters in each league.

FIG. 50. Pitching targets.

The strings, which can be obtained in hardware stores, should be of strong white cord similar to a carpenter's marking line. Once the cross-strings have been stretched, vertical strings at the width of each home plate should be strung between the cross-strings directly above the sides of a home plate to complete the strike zone.

Practice pitching mounds should be erected the proper pitching distance from the strike zones, and again practice pitching slabs can be built from scrap lumber, painted white, and anchored to the ground with wooden pegs.

When pitchers warm up, using the strike zone for a target, this practice can be made more realistic by having a batter stand in the batter's box. In this way the batter has a chance to judge strikes and balls and become familiar with the pitched ball, and the pitcher gets used to pitching to a batter.

After a few sessions, the batter can start his swing and then pull back to get the practice of checking his swing when the pitch is bad. This is a good drill for the batter, but he should never go through with the swing because it would break the strings and might injure someone working out elsewhere.

BATTING RANGE. If there is space near your playing field, develop a batting tee range. A net or canvas can be strung between poles or buildings. The size of the area is not too important, but an area from 8 to 10 feet high and 30 feet wide is recommended. This would take care of three batting tees and batters at one time.

By using a woolen practice ball, the batting tee area could be set up beside a building or any other barrier which would eliminate the necessity of going a long distance to retrieve the batted ball. A woolen practice ball will carry far enough in flight to determine whether the batter is hitting line drives, grounders, or high flies, and will eliminate the breaking of windows and other hazards of that nature. Again if no area is available, tees can be set up behind the regular field backstop and balls can be hit against the backstop. Use a rubber-covered baseball, plastic ball, or tennis ball if woolen balls are not available.

The tees should be placed about 10 to 12 feet from the barrier so that the batter can determine by the flight of the ball whether he is hitting the ball on a line, which should be his aim, or hitting over or under it. A batter can also determine whether he is hitting to the opposite field, pulling the ball, or hitting straight away.

Batting tee "A" (see Fig. 52) can be built at very little cost by any parent for his son to use in the back yard, basement, or on the corner lot. It is constructed from a 5-gallon pail or can filled with sand which serves as the base, three varying lengths of broomstick, and a 6-inch length of radiator hose that serves as a seat for the ball. The three tees, or broomsticks, are cut to different lengths, as follows: (1) average knee height of the boy, (2) average waist height, and (3) average shoulder height.

Batting tee "B" (see Fig. 53) was designed by Arthur Dede for use at the Vero Beach spring training base by the Dodgers and their farm clubs. It can be built in any machine shop for approximately $15.

The baseboard should be rather rugged: say 30 inches long by 11 inches wide and 1 9/16 inches thick. The top board is about 9 inches wide, 12 inches long and 7/8 of an inch thick. An extra piece should be placed on the front end to serve as a bumper and also to reinforce the board. The two strap hinges can be 6 inches long and should be bolted on. The height of the top board, due to the hinges, should be the same both front and back. The distance in back can be made up with mending plates, which should be screwed on both top and bottom pieces. An extra piece of wood may have to be used as a spacer with the mending plates. These plates are also used as bumpers. The 1-inch pipe with the two thumb screws is 9 inches long threaded on one end. The threaded end screws into a 1-inch flange, which is bolted through the top board, keeping the flange as far front as possible. The sticks in the pipe are broomstick handles (maple wood), and four sticks should complete a set: the lower one 12 inches long, the next one about 22, the third one about 34, and the long one about 44 inches. (Little Leaguers would not need the 44-inch tee, which is used only by adults to groove a swing for chest-high pitches.) As a rule the diameter of the sticks is about 7/8 of an inch so friction tape can be used to make up the difference and have a snug fit into a 1-inch piece of automobile radiator hose about 12 inches long. The piece of hose for the shortest stick is 9 inches long and fits on the broomstick handle about 3 inches. The three other pieces are 12 inches long and fit on the broomstick handles about 4 inches. The top of each piece of rubber hose should be chamfered with a razor blade to make a better seat for the baseball.

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