Hopefully you learned from my first post that youth baseball has changed drastically. More games, more money, and more travel. And, much more commitment too. Usually the kids are up to it. The question is are you as a parent up to it? If you have more than one kid playing sports it can become a full-time job getting to games and a financial burden too.
Speaking of finances. Should you buy a batting cage? And, of course if you have batting cage you should buy a pitching machine too. Right?
I put in a heavy duty batting cage when my son was 10 years old. And, of course I bought a pitching machine. A real nice Aztec that threw some nasty breaking pitches. The one thing that I tried to save money on was an L-Screen which would protect me "DAD" from getting drilled with a line shot. But, after getting drilled several times I decided to make my own screen out of chicken wire. After almost losing a knee cap I decided to invest in an L-Screen.
So if you do decide to buy a batting cage, get an L-Screen. Its worth every dime.
Having a batting cage was definitely helpful. But, not in the way that you might think. First, my son didn't like hitting off the Aztec pitching machine and refused to use it. So it sat idle until I sold it. Second, we didn't use the batting cage as much as "I" wanted to. We might have used it once a week of once every ten days.
So how was it an advantage? It gave my son a psychological advantage. How so? Well word spread that he was the kid with a batting cage and a pitching machine in his back yard. Several times we would walk into a local park and a kid on our team would be telling someone on the other team, "there goes the kid with the batting cage in his backyard." My son and I both over-heard this on more than one occasion.
The result was the other team and their coaches would approach my son differently than the other hitters. The fact that everyone thought he was better prepared than they were, equated into causing many of them worrying that he was better too. I heard a coach tell his pitcher be careful with that kid he can really hit. When in fact that coach had never seen him hit before. Having a batting cage gave him a reputation as being a dangerous hitter.
The advantage to my son was the other teams had already lost the battle before the first bullet was fired.
The best example (and a bad one at that) of how not to talk to your team or kid(s) is this one. We were in a ten and under tournament in St. Louis and had made it to the championship game. Our team was easily the best in the tournament, not that we had a great team.
Before the game our coach took the kids and gathered them into a circle and told them that the other team was really, really good and that we would have to play our best game ever to beat them. Well we played terrible and a team that should have never beat us, beat us bad.
Just like the batting cage example the coach put fear into the heads and hearts of our kids and we played tight, didn't have fun, and played like we had never seen a bat and glove before.
My humble opinion on buying a batting cage and pitching machine? If you decide to buy one get an Iron Mike style pitching machine. Teach your kid how to use it and let him/her play. The Iron Mike doesn't require a parent to feed each ball into the machine. They come with basket that holds lots of balls. And, they are about the same price as a better Juggs or Aztec from that time period.
Next blog: The short window to develop proper mechanics in your kid.
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