Have you ever watched young ball players field A baseball and then hesitate? One of the coaches yells “2nd”, a team mate yells “go home” and where ever the player throws, there is no positive result for his team. Those developing baseball players from the ages of six to twelve need to have more “smarts” about the game. “If the ball is hit to me - what do I do with it” is the most fundamental area of the game following physical skills. Developing this skill can make the difference between a mediocre and a good baseball player. It can give them the edge, it can mean being a starter or a sub, it’s the little things that make the big difference. This book gives infielders and outfielders the basic solutions to every base running situation. It gives situations that make them think to develop that instinctive sense of what to do with the ball. This book can be used in the field by coaches, in the backyard by dads, between players on the way to the game to build confidence. It is a basic tool for every player.
In this book, authors H.A. Dorfman and Karl Kuehl present their practical and proven strategy for developing the mental skills needed to achieve peack performance at every level of the game.
Swope presents 147 drills, plays, and diagrams, all numbered for easy reference between coaches. He covers all the basic offensive, defensive, and situation fundamentals one needs to get started.
What Does it Take to Have a Great Baseball Career? You daydream about one day seeing your face on a baseball card. You live for pressure and the green grass beneath your cleats. But as your career progresses, the game gets harder. You slump and struggle. You get injured and overlooked. Your confidence plummets. Can you keep improving? Are your big dreams still within reach? A Handbook for the Dedicated Player Clean Your Cleats is filled with stories and advice learned the hard way, over a long career on the diamond. Develop better routines and improve your consistency. Handle the ups and downs with confidence and resolve. Strengthen relationships with teammates, parents and coaches. Learn mindset strategies to become the best version of you. Dan Blewett, in this practical guide, helps players understand all the little things in baseball that make a huge difference over a long career. Why clean your cleats? Because every detail matters.
"This unique 180 page book and 99 minute DVD combination presents drills, step by step descriptions of movements and positions, plus hundreds of pointers in every area of baseball, from hitting to base running"--Page 4 of cover.
Become a fundamentally sound player in every aspect of the game with Baseball: Steps to Success. For years, the Steps to Success series has helped people around the world master the fundamentals of sport. Its unique progressive instructional approach to every skill makes learning the game of baseball easier and more enjoyable than ever before. With Baseball: Steps to Success, the road map to becoming a five-tool player is at your fingertips. Step out of the dugout and onto the diamond with confidence in your skills in the game’s most important areas: • Hitting • Bunting • Throwing • Fielding • Pitching • Catching • Baserunning • Situational play Drawing on more than 76 self-improvement and practice drills that include skills broken down to their most basic techniques, you’ll be a threat every time you step to the plate or take the mound. Baseball: Steps to Success leaves no area of the game uncovered. Whether you’re learning, teaching, or coaching, Baseball: Steps to Success will help you master this great game. Part of the best-selling series with more than 1.7 million copies sold, it is your guide to on-the-field excellence.
Baseball Hacks isn't your typical baseball book--it's a book about how to watch, research, and understand baseball. It's an instruction manual for the free baseball databases. It's a cookbook for baseball research. Every part of this book is designed to teach baseball fans how to do something. In short, it's a how-to book--one that will increase your enjoyment and knowledge of the game. So much of the way baseball is played today hinges upon interpreting statistical data. Players are acquired based on their performance in statistical categories that ownership deems most important. Managers make in-game decisions based not on instincts, but on probability - how a particular batter might fare against left-handedpitching, for instance. The goal of this unique book is to show fans all the baseball-related stuff that they can do for free (or close to free). Just as open source projects have made great software freely available, collaborative projects such as Retrosheet and Baseball DataBank have made great data freely available. You can use these data sources to research your favorite players, win your fantasy league, or appreciate the game of baseball even more than you do now. Baseball Hacks shows how easy it is to get data, process it, and use it to truly understand baseball. The book lists a number of sources for current and historical baseball data, and explains how to load it into a database for analysis. It then introduces several powerful statistical tools for understanding data and forecasting results. For the uninitiated baseball fan, author Joseph Adler walks readers through the core statistical categories for hitters (batting average, on-base percentage, etc.), pitchers (earned run average, strikeout-to-walk ratio, etc.), and fielders (putouts, errors, etc.). He then extrapolates upon these numbers to examine more advanced data groups like career averages, team stats, season-by-season comparisons, and more. Whether you're a mathematician, scientist, or season-ticket holder to your favorite team, Baseball Hacks is sure to have something for you. Advance praise for Baseball Hacks: "Baseball Hacks is the best book ever written for understanding and practicing baseball analytics. A must-read for baseball professionals and enthusiasts alike." -- Ari Kaplan, database consultant to the Montreal Expos, San Diego Padres, and Baltimore Orioles "The game was born in the 19th century, but the passion for its analysis continues to grow into the 21st. In Baseball Hacks, Joe Adler not only demonstrates thatthe latest data-mining technologies have useful application to the study of baseball statistics, he also teaches the reader how to do the analysis himself, arming the dedicated baseball fan with tools to take his understanding of the game to a higher level." -- Mark E. Johnson, Ph.D., Founder, SportMetrika, Inc. and Baseball Analyst for the 2004 St. Louis Cardinals
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From The New York Times baseball columnist, an enchanting, enthralling history of the national pastime as told through the craft of pitching, based on years of archival research and interviews with more than three hundred people from Hall of Famers to the stars of today. The baseball is an amazing plaything. We can grip it and hold it so many different ways, and even the slightest calibration can turn an ordinary pitch into a weapon to thwart the greatest hitters in the world. Each pitch has its own history, evolving through the decades as the masters pass it down to the next generation. From the earliest days of the game, when Candy Cummings dreamed up the curveball while flinging clamshells on a Brooklyn beach, pitchers have never stopped innovating. In K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches, Tyler Kepner traces the colorful stories and fascinating folklore behind the ten major pitches. Each chapter highlights a different pitch, from the blazing fastball to the fluttering knuckleball to the slippery spitball. Infusing every page with infectious passion for the game, Kepner brings readers inside the minds of combatants sixty feet, six inches apart. Filled with priceless insights from many of the best pitchers in baseball history--from Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton, and Nolan Ryan to Greg Maddux, Mariano Rivera, and Clayton Kershaw--K will be the definitive book on pitching and join such works as The Glory of Their Times and Moneyball as a classic of the genre.
