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The Baseball Drill Book - American Baseball Coaches Association
The Baseball Drill Book
by American Baseball Coaches Association
NEW, 320 pages
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About The Baseball Drill Book
Seventeen of the game’s top collegiate coaches have teamed up with the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) to bring you the game’s most comprehensive assortment of practice activities.
The Baseball Drill Book features 198 drills proven to improve individual and team performance. Former Fresno State coach Bob Bennett, Ripon College’s Gordie Gillespie, Lewis-Clark State’s Ed Cheff, Wichita State’s Gene Stephenson, and South Carolina’s Ray Tanner are among the greats who present their best practice drills and insights for improving these skills:
- Conditioning and warm-up
- Throwing and catching
- Base running and sliding
- Hitting and bunting
- Pitching
- Fielding
- Offensive and defensive tactics
Each drill follows a concise format. First, the primary skill or tactic to be enhanced is identified, then procedure and setup details are provided. Illustrations for proper technique are also included, followed by coaching insight to help you sharpen players’ understanding of the game’s finer points. Glean tactical advice such as how to get a teammate home from third when a key run is needed and how to “sit on” certain pitches while at the plate. Drill modifications are included so that each drill can be modified to fit specific needs.
Additional chapters explain how to effectively and efficiently incorporate drills in practice sessions and to simulate game situations. In all, The Baseball Drill Book provides the essential link between initial skill learning and winning performance on the diamond.
About ABCA
The American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) is the largest baseball coaching organization in the world and includes coaches from every U.S. state and hundreds of international members. The association's mission is to improve the level of baseball coaching worldwide. The ABCA assists in the promotion of baseball and acts as a sounding board and advocate on issues concerning the game. In addition, the ABCA promotes camaraderie and communication among all baseball coaches, from the amateur to professional levels. The ABCA also gives recognition to deserving players and coaches through several special sponsorship programs. It is an organization that has grown steadily in membership, prestige, and impact in recent years. The ABCA's headquarters is located in Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
Reviews of this Book
From Scholastic Coach & Athletic Director
"Seventeen of the game's top collegiate coaches have teamed up with the ABCA to pen a comprehensive assortment of practice activities."
About Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The goal is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot square, or diamond. Players on one team (the batting team) take turns hitting against the pitcher of the other team (the fielding team), which tries to stop them from scoring runs by getting hitters out in any of several ways. A player on the batting team can stop at any of the bases and later advance via a teammate's hit or other means. The teams switch between batting and fielding whenever the fielding team records three outs. One turn at bat for each team constitutes an inning and nine innings make up a professional game. The team with the most runs at the end of the game wins.
Evolving from older bat-and-ball games, an early form of baseball was being played in England by the mid-eighteenth century. This game and the related rounders were brought by British and Irish immigrants to North America, where the modern version of baseball developed. By the late nineteenth century, baseball was widely recognized as the national sport of the United States. Baseball on the professional, amateur, and youth levels is now popular in North America, parts of Central and South America and the Caribbean, and parts of East Asia. The game is sometimes referred to as hardball, in contrast to the derivative game of softball.
In North America, professional Major League Baseball (MLB) teams are divided into the National League (NL) and American League (AL). Each league has three divisions: East, West, and Central. Every year, the major league champion is determined by playoffs that culminate in the World Series. Four teams make the playoffs from each league: the three regular season division winners, plus one wild card team. Baseball is the leading team sport in both Japan and Cuba, and the top level of play is similarly split between two leagues: Japan's Central League and Pacific League; Cuba's West League and East League. In the National and Central leagues, the pitcher is required to bat, per the traditional rules. In the American, Pacific, and both Cuban leagues, there is a tenth player, a designated hitter, who bats for the pitcher. Each top-level team has a farm system of one or more minor league teams. These teams allow younger players to develop as they gain on-field experience against opponents with similar levels of skill.
The Baseball Drill Book
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