As the fall season approaches I wanted to write something for new coaches — especially of 5, 6, 7 year olds.
After watching a ton of hitting drills recently I see so many dedicated to keeping players from dropping their bat at the start of the swing.
Why do you think this has been ingrained in little kids so that when they become big kids it takes a zillion swings to fix.
Why?
Well they use bats WAY TOO HEAVY FOR THEM.
If you are little and someone hands you a big bat and you go to swing it, well then you will drop your hands. Kids are fascinated by big bats. I had a 10 year old team and I had my fungo bat in the dugout and one kid was like HEY COACH CAN I USE THIS DURING THE GAME?? I said GOOD GRIEF — of COURSE NOT!!!! It’s TOOOO HEAVY FOR YOU. Kid looked sad and moved on.
So fine they want to swing big bats, is it a good idea.
I’m gonna have to say no. I want things to be fun, but let’s let the numbers speak.
I had a theory that when my kid was in T-ball we needed the LIGHTEST bats we could find. I found 8 13oz bats on line for like $100 — this was in 2010.
So the team had 10 random kids — I knew none of them. 4 out of 10 played baseball in high school. 40% is a HIGH NUMBER. So was it all the bats — nah, I had one assistant who ended up being the high school softball head coach and two other assistants that ended up being very well respected coaches so I had a crazy staff, the kids had amazing DNA, but I am convinced the BATS helped. No one hit the ball far, but no one developed a habit of dropping their hands. The next year in Single-A they don’t keep score but the board decided the team could not stay together and mandated that we keep only a few players for the next season. Why? Because even with no score board it was clear we were about 10x better than any other team. Was it all the bats?? NO, but it sure had something to do with fundamentals and the bats sure didn’t hurt.
I’ll keep looking for 13oz bats, they were cool. I think they were 25″ long, but not sure. If I find them I’ll do a post.
If the bat story got you thinking about your youngest hitters, sign up for the newsletter or grab the free Quick Start Guide — there’s a lot more where this came from.
