Coaching Baseball Technical and Tactical Skills - ASEP

Coaching Baseball Technical and Tactical Skills

by ASEP

NEW, 272 pages

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About Coaching Baseball Technical and Tactical Skills

Numerous coaching books cover the bases on the skills and drills of baseball. But very few hit on the tactical skills of the game: the situational decisions players and coaches make that often determine the outcome of games. That's where Coaching Baseball Technical and Tactical Skills stands out in the lineup of baseball titles available today.

Written by the American Sport Education Program (ASEP) in conjunction with Tom O’Connell, a 30-year veteran coach and 2004 American Baseball Coaches Association Coach of the Year, Coaching Baseball Technical and Tactical Skills prepares you to be a better teacher and tactician of the game. Technical skills—such as hitting, throwing, and fielding—are examined in depth, as well as the tactical skills—such as hit-and-run, double-steal, and double-play defenses—that so many other books pitch around.

Nearly 180 photos and illustrations bring the basic to intermediate technical skills to life, while sample season and practice plans help you in your preparation. With Coaching Baseball Technical and Tactical Skills, you have a resource you can rely on to take you down the base paths to coaching success.

Endorsed by the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA), the book serves as a companion resource for the Coaching Baseball Technical and Tactical Skills online course, which, along with Coaching Principles, Sport First Aid, and CPR certification, make up the curriculum for ASEP’s Bronze Level coaching certification program.

About ASEP

Coaching Baseball Technical and Tactical Skills was written by the American Sport Education Program (ASEP) with the assistance of Tom O'Connell, a 30-year veteran coach and 2004 American Baseball Coaches Association Coach of the Year.

ASEP has been developing and delivering coaching education courses since 1981. As the nation's leading coaching education program, ASEP works with national, state, and local youth sport organizations to develop educational programs for coaches, officials, administrators, and parents. These programs incorporate ASEP's philosophy of "athletes first, winning second."

Reviews of this book

"Coaching Baseball Technical and Tactical Skills is truly superb! It is a must for young and old coaches alike. I sincerely feel that it is one of the five best baseball books on the market. It is a great guide in practice planning, the illustrations are excellent and it is outstanding in the presentation of fundamentals. Congratulations to Tom O'Connell and to ASEP; it's as good as it gets."

Gordie Gillespie
Head Baseball Coach
University of St. Francis

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.

Coaching Baseball Technical and Tactical Skills