A Hit Batter is as Good as an Uninvolved Parent

Parents should attend practices, and not for the reasons you might suspect. Parents should attend practices to find out what their player’s coach teaches. If parents don’t know what a coach teach, a parent cannot decide if they have found the right coach.

So we're at the cages the other day, me and the 12U team (the pitching tunnels and not those nearly useless machine cages). I've got my guys in a couple tunnels and there's an 8U club team in a couple of tunnels near us. I could comment on the wisdom of putting 7- and 8-year-olds onto a club / travel team, but let’s not go there today – I just don’t have the energy for that one. Anyway, the younger team was wrapping up. They gathered around for a review and teaching session.

“Remember,” one coach tells the team, “a walk is as good as a hit.”

That pearl of wisdom has been around a long time. I suppose that if our analysis concludes that both a walk and a hit gets a player on base, then both are of equal value. If our analysis proves that a walk does little to help youngsters learn how to hit a ball, then both are not of equal value. As I said, the wisdom has challenged us for a long time and when I hear those words I have to force my thinking to move on to more important things.

But then the speech took a turn for the worst.

“I’ve seen pitchers break down crying,” the coach continued. “If you let a pitcher hit you, you get on base and a lot of pitchers start crying and can’t continue pitching.” Getting hit by a pitch, it seems, is the best of both worlds in 8U baseball. Getting hit is the same as a base hit and it often knocks a pitcher out of the game.

It doesn’t get much better than that, right? It’s a win-win situation.

Another coach emphasized the point. He told his kids that college baseball teammates cheer more loudly for a player who is hit by a pitch than they do when a teammate hits a homerun. The translation for those 7- and 8-year-old children is that adults value a hit batter more than a base hit.

All this happened within earshot of my players. Damn, I thought, now I have to change my lesson plan to counteract the effects of horrible coaching.

When I gathered my guys together for our wrap-up, my message was different. I explained that there is a difference between competitive baseball and instructional baseball. There is no competitive baseball until the varsity high school team. Everything earlier in a young player’s life is instructional in nature.

My job as youth baseball coach is teaching how to play and preparing players for high school baseball. The coach of the freshman team will be tasked with preparing his players for varsity. We teach. Wins are secondary to teaching.

Alright. Now I’ve changed our premise. Wins are secondary to teaching. With that in mind, we have to re-analyze the coaching pearls I mentioned earlier.

So, is a walk as good as a base hit? Is a walk as good as a quality at-bat? Is a walk as good as the possibility of an extra-base hit? Does a young player grow as a player more if he allows himself to get hit by the pitch as opposed to work through an at-bat?

I apologize. Those are all academic questions.

Here’s a better question: Do you know what your child’s coach is teaching your child?