On this 4th of July, I reflected on a recent team road trip, where we watched the movie The Sandlot. A film I’ve seen at least 100 times over the years. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve watched it through a much different lens, and today instead of laughing and enjoying it like I usually do, sadness was the general feeling.   You see, when someone my age watches The Sandlot, we experience it differently than kids nowadays, and that’s what makes me sad. My youth parallels The Sandlot story almost too much. Every day the neighborhood kids got home from school, and all during summer va ..read more

As a toddler, my mom said that I would swing my bottle like a baseball bat. As a six-year-old, I would ask for baseball scorebooks for my birthday and watch the games on TV and keep an official book. There wasn’t a time in my childhood that I didn’t dream of putting on an MLB uniform. I can remember Saturdays that I would catch the front end of a doubleheader and pitch the back end and when I got home, we played Wiffle Ball in the backyard until it was too dark to see the ball. Even into my early 20’s, I couldn’t let go of the dream playing independent ball and traveling around to tryouts, hol ..read more

If you’re in need of a Monday Motivation, this might help: – I was the oldest of 7 children of a refinery worker on a single income. – I was expelled from my high school my senior year. – I never played one game of college baseball… – I never played professional baseball – It took me 10 years and 6 months from my HS graduation to my college degree – In 2010, I was homeless living out of my car. – At the end of 2012, completely broke, living 500 miles from home and a pregnant wife, my friends had to buy me groceries and diapers. I quit coaching to get a “real” job and had to move in with my in ..read more

A hot topic over the years in hitting has been the debate over the difference between a baseball vs softball swing. Let me preface my answer to this debate by saying, I’ve been in “the game” almost 40 years now. Have coached for over 17 of them. 13 in baseball and 4 in softball. I’ve worked with several MLB hitters including a starter in the 2015 All-Star Game. I’ve also worked with several Pro Fastpitch Softball players. Let me be clear: A good swing is a good swing. Baseball. Softball. The Same. Although most coaches, parents and players already know that… if you are still in doubt or don’t ..read more

At practice, we as coaches tend to spend most, if not all of our hitting time on the mechanics of the swing and getting reps in BP. A few years ago after realizing that we had some players who had perfect mechanics and weren’t hitting above .200, I chose to reevaluate what were we doing in the batters box. I began to sit with players and ask them what their process, routine and mindset was when they were at the plate. It was startling to find out that most players didn’t have any and were guessing most of the time once they were in the box. Soon afterward we began to spend a good deal of time ..read more

Two strike hitting is one of the toughest things we have to do as hitters.  As coaches, we always talk to our players about having a “Two Strike Approach” (meaning what we do at the plate differently when we have two strikes). The majority of coaches teach their hitters (as I did for several years) to choke up, spread their feet out, get their front foot down early, and to protect the plate with a defensive swing. Now there are advantages to this approach: By being spread out and getting our foot down early our concentration is on making contact and not getting beat by a fastbal ..read more

If you’ve been following baseball closely over the last few years you’ve probably heard the term Launch Angle. Launch Angles are a very hot topic in baseball and among hitting coaches and hitters across the country. What is Launch Angle? According to the MLB Glossary: Launch Angle represents the vertical angle at which the ball leaves a player’s bat after being struck. Average Launch Angle (aLA) is calculated by dividing the sum of all Launch Angles by all Batted Ball Events. As a guideline, here are the Launch Angles for different types of contact: Ground ball: Less than 10 degrees Line drive ..read more

As the sun sets on my 41st Birthday and the house is quiet, I thought I’d share some things I’ve learned over the last 41 years and my goals for my 42nd year and beyond. Time…Why You Punish Me? The biggest lesson learned is that time is our greatest commodity. It goes by so fast. We all know that it does, we all act like it doesn’t. Then a close family member dies, or we look at our children and ask “How did they grow up so fast?”. The older that you get the more you realize it. You covet it. You pray for more of it. You evaluate how you spend it.  You’ve Got Mail. Which leads to my next ..read more

I want to preface this post by saying a few things: I receive a lot of emails each week from people of all kinds of professions who are trying to build their social media following/presence and want to know how I did it. My hope with this post is that it will help those who are starting out or struggling in their social media business journey  By the Numbers: I have about 750,000 social media followers across different platforms with the hopes of hitting 1 Million by the end of 2018. Facebook: 355,000 Twitter: 130,000 Instagram: 35,300 LinkedIn Connections: 25,000 The Hitting Vault Face ..read more

I agree with the sentiment behind Coach’s words here but there are very good “reasons” to transfer as well and everyone reads a post like this through their lens. So I want to offer it from a few different perspectives. We can’t coddle our kids. And we can’t allow them to quit at the first sign that something is difficult. Quitting is not the first resort. However, there are very good reasons to transfer and I won’t get into all of them but an example would be a very toxic culture created or allowed by the coaching staff or even a predatory coach. I know of athletes who have transferred and th ..read more