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Baseball Skills and Drills - American Baseball Coaches Association
Baseball Skills and Drills
by American Baseball Coaches Association
NEW, 240 pages
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About Baseball Skills and Drills
Baseball Skills & Drills is the most comprehensive training book available for coaches and players at all levels. You will learn the best skills and drills for improving overall performance at every stage of the game, thus improving your chances at winning. Baseball Skills & Drills is packed with techniques that accelerate learning and improve execution, as well as tips and insights on how to better organize practices and correct common errors.
Written by three of baseball’s top collegiate coaches in their respective areas of expertise and endorsed by the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA), Baseball Skills & Drills is absolutely the most complete instructional guide of its kind. This book offers 17 concise chapters including:
• catching and pitching with Coach Pat McMahon of the University of Florida,
• hitting and baserunning with Coach Mark Johnson of Texas A&M University, and
• fielding with by Coach Jack Leggett of Clemson University.
Baseball Skills & Drills is an extraordinary book with 225 pages of relevant information and more than 200 photos that help illustrate the practical instructions on the basic skills and drills for developing top players at any age.
About the Contributors
Three of the most prolific and successful baseball coaches contribute their expertise on behalf of the American Baseball Coaches Association. Each coach has established himself as a top instructor of a specific area of the game.
Mark Johnson is one of the most respected collegiate coaches in the country and was inducted into the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in January 2001.
Since 1985, Johnson has been head coach of the Texas A&M University baseball program, where he has averaged 45 wins a year and ranks among the top 10 winningest coaches in the country. In his 15 seasons, Johnson has a record of 668-279 with two Big 12 championships, one NCAA regional championship, one NCAA super regional championship, and two Big 12 Coach of the Year awards for the 1998 and 1999 seasons.
Johnson and his wife, Linda, have two sons, both of whom played baseball at Texas A&M and were each awarded the GTE/Texas A&M Male Scholar Athlete of the Year award as seniors. They reside in College Station, Texas.
Jack Leggett runs one of the top baseball programs in the country at Clemson University, where he has been head coach since 1994. In his first six seasons he led Clemson to 288 wins and averaged 48 wins per season—giving him the distinction of having the fifth-winningest program in college baseball. Under Leggett, Clemson has had six NCAA Tournament berths and two College World Series appearances. In 1994, Coach Leggett had the nation's winningest team with 57 victories in a single season (second in ACC history).
Before taking over the top spot at Clemson, Leggett served as recruiting coordinator and assistant head coach under Bill Wilhelm during the 1992 and 1993 seasons. He was a major contributor to the teams that ranked in the top 20 and advanced to two NCAA regional championships and won the ACC championship in 1993. Leggett has a total of 665 career wins under his belt.
Leggett and his wife, Stephanie, have two children, son Tanner and daughter Colby. Leggett resides in Clemson, South Carolina.
Pat McMahon was introduced as head baseball coach for the University of Florida in the summer of 2001. Since then, he has gone on to post an 83-40-1 record, earned his 400th collegiate victory, and has coached dozens of Academic All-SEC players. He arrived at Florida after serving four years as the head baseball coach at Mississippi State University teams where his teams consistently ranked at the top of the SouthEastern Conference (SEC) and in the top 25 nationally. McMahon became only the second coach in the SEC's history to take a team to the College World Series in his first season.
In 2001, McMahon earned USA Baseball's National Coach of the Year honors and in 1998 the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) selected him as the South Region Coach of the Year. In 1994, McMahon was designated the Coach of the Year for both the Colonial Athletic Association and the state of Virginia.
Coaching on a variety of levels since 1976 at Florida, Mississippi State University and Old Dominion, Coach McMahon has developed a host of players who went on to success in major league baseball, including Jeff Brantley, Will Clark, Rafael Palmeiro, and Bobby Thigpen.
McMahon and his wife, Cheri, have two children, daughter Logan and son J. Wells. McMahon and his family live in "Gator Country".
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.
Baseball Skills and Drills
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