When I was in junior high school, I played on a summer-league baseball team. One day, the coach arrived at practice with a new warm-up drill that he had invented. Successfully completing the drill involved following three rules: 1) Each player needed to face his partner, standing approximately 45 feet away. 2) Each player needed to throw the baseball as hard as they possibly could at their partner’s chest, as fast as they possibly could. 3) Players did not stop doing this new rotator-cuff-splitting-Tommy-John-surgery-inducing activity until the coach blew his whistle.
Coach named this new drill, “the drill.”
Fast forward to one week later.
In our coach’s assessment, we were not doing “the drill” hard enough. He gathered our team at the first base line, and walked in front of us. “Boys,” he said, “you do not seem to know how to do the drill! I will SHOW YOU how to do the drill! Rule #1…You stand across from your partner!” He called one of my teammates up, and stood across from him, prepared to whip the baseball hard and fast at this 12 year old’s chest. “Rule #2, you throw the ball as HARD as you can…right at your partner’s chest. You gotta do it fast! Fast! Fast!” My teammates and I watched as our coach and our teammate successfully completed the first two parts of the drill.
Unfortunately, my coach forgot Rule #3 of “the drill.” As Coach turned to address the team, without blowing his whistle, my teammate whipped the ball one more time, hitting Coach square on the neck. What followed was an unparalleled display of anger and profanity (at least until I watched The Sopranos on HBO).
We never did “the drill” again.
……
Why is it that I have visions of David Wright, Jose Reyes, and Carlos Beltran missing the 2009 season with catastrophic wrist or back injuries when I read this article from newyorkmets.com:
…in this Mets camp, the first one organized and administrated by manager Jerry Manuel, even the hitters work on stamina, strange as that may sound.
Swinging a bat and driving pitches never is done without effort and strain. Swing a bat 80 times in six minutes — i.e., swing at 80 pitches and make contact with each with no more than seconds between successive pitches — and fatigue is added to the equation.
Key words: effort and strain. Swing! Swing! Swing!
Manuel believes [the drill] will prepare his hitters for some of the situations that will confront them this summer in Citizens Bank Park, Turner Field and Citi Field.
New rule #1 for 2009: Pitchers get to keep a bag of baseballs on the mound and rapid-fire-toss them at the batter.
New rule #2 for 2009: Batters are not allowed to take any pitches.
The objective is connected in several ways to improving the Mets’ situational hitting, hand-eye coordination, making contact when contact is essential, going the other way — for right-handed hitters — when a runner is on second base.
This at least makes sense…but is there really not a non-junior-high-school-summer-league way to do it?
Tags: effort, jerry manuel, junior high school, potential catastrophic wrist and back injury, profanity, strain, the drill, the sopranos
(4.89 out of 5)
Just for clarification, this is different from the time that my Dad hit me in the neck with a throw to home plate during a little league practice (I think that was also in junior high).
I’m proud to say that I was there for both “The Drill” as well as Nerdicus Finch’s father hitting him in the neck with the throw from the outfield.
I’m glad to see that Manuel is training these batters to never take a pitch. He would obviously rather have his guys swing at pitches out of the strike zone resulting in dinky grounders to the second baseman rather than reach base by a BB.
No Pepper!
Looks like Manuel is hoping to incorporate the “swing at every pitch” aspect of the drill into games. Here’s a recent quote from him about moving Reyes to the third spot in the batting order:
“He can hit third,” Manuel said when told of Reyes’ comments. “He’s got enough strength. Third would probably be a good option, and it might give him some freedom. I think it would free Jose up a bit not to be thinking of taking pitches and those types of things.”
Yikes.
From the New York Times baseball blog:
“Kielty, incidentally, said he never developed a hitting-induced blister. Every finger but his thumbs is wrapped in tape thanks to the infamous 80-pitch drill Manager Jerry Manuel has put in place.”