Archive for the ‘Baseball News’ Category
Phillies Baseball – Can the Phillies Do it Again in 09?
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The Phillies Baseball Club took home the prize of 2008 World Series Baseball Champions and the pitching of Joe Blanton and Jamie Moyer was for me the difference maker of the World Series. Going into the series I thought that the Tampa Bay Rays pitching would be too strong. On paper most felt that the Rays would win the match ups of Matt Garza vs. Jamie Moyer and Andy Sonnanstine vs. Joe Blanton, with Kazmir and Shields winning a game each, but it didn’t pan out that way.
Both Moyer and Blanton are not renowned for throwing strikeouts yet combined they managed to strike out twelve Tampa Bay rays batters over 12 innings of pitching. When you couple that with the fact they only walked three batters between the two of them it was no wonder the Phillies where able to win both games. Not just against Blanton and Moyer but through out the series the Rays top order seemed to be rushing too much and not waiting for the ideal pitch. The allowed Blanton and Moyer to get ahead, and you just can’t afford to do that against those two as their off speed pitches become more powerful.
Unfortunately for the Rays the bats got cold during the World Series. This was a surprise after they where able to overpower the White Sox and the Red Sox in the previous two match ups with their bats. During the World Series the Phillies hit nine home runs to the Rays four. Luckily for the Phillies this helped overcome their poor hitting with runners in scoring position.
I thought Cole Hamles was a worthy MVP recipient after his awesome pitching performances in Games 1 and 5 against Rays ace Scott Kazmir. The fact that Kazmir was unable to win either of those two match ups was another key reason for the Phillies winning it all. Moyer and Blanton clearly required recognition as they, for me, where the two players that stood up during the key middle stages of the series.
Questions will always be asked did the Rays choke on the big stage or where they simply just out played. When a team doesn’t lose a post season game at home they are going to be pretty tough to beat and when you look back at all three opponents for the Phillies their pitching was dominant.
So now the question gets asked can the Phillies Baseball Club repeat? Cole Hamels and Brad Lidge are staying put and with Ryan Howard , Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins also coming back you would have to raise a case that the Phillies have enough pieces in place to be more than a one season wonder. Statistically the Phillies will be up against it as only the Blue Jays and Yankees have repeated in the last thirty years.
Only Pat Burrell and Jamie Moyer will be free agents in the off season. Both will probably get bigger offers to play somewhere else but the lure of Moyer finishing hise career in the town he grew up in may give him a reason to stay for less.
The Phillies will have a tough job of keeping their payroll at $104.5 million with players such as Howard, Hamels, Shane Victorino, Jayson Werth, Ryan Madsen and Chad Durbin all eligible for arbitration.
At the beginning of 2008 the players made a statement by walking around the clubhouse during spring training wearing t shirts that stated “Winning Starts Now”. The mindset was clearly where it needed to be for the Phillies from start until finish in 2008. The question will now be asked.
Can they do it again in 09?
By: Josh Hammer
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Baseball Hitting Like a Pro
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Baseball Hitting is very challenging. Professional hitters are considered good if they get a hit 3 out of every 10 at bats. This essentially means they fail 70% of the time. With this type of rejection rate, it is easy to see why younger players can get frustrated with limited results. The good news is this will not be you if you are willing to put in some practice and apply our tips.
1. Get Lessons From a Top Baseball Hitting Instructor early in your career. A good hitting coach can help improve your swing and teach you the proper mechanics from the very start of your career. This will save you time and energy by doing it the right way first. Although the cost of the lessons may seem initially high, this will be quickly recouped when you start to see your batting average rise and begin to hit them deep.
2. Practice your Swing daily. Never let a lack of access to the batting cage or batting practice prevent you from practicing your swing. Just simply swinging the bat 100 times each day will provide loads of benefits for you. This repetitive practice will make your swing more natural and automatic in games and you will end up having some additional benefits of gradual improvements in your bat speed and arm strength.
3. Review your Swing regularly. Be sure to videotape your swing and determine if you are picking up bad habits. Also, periodically follow-up with your hitting instructor. This should be an ongoing relationship where he acts your mentor. You can provide him with the tape and he can point what he thinks maybe some things you can focus on.
4. Be loyal to your Hitting Coach. Although it may seem like a good idea to ask for multiple opinions on your swing, it is best to take advice only from one or two people. If you have chosen a top hitting coach from the start, it only makes sense to take your cues from him and follow his advice. Avoid other well intentioned advice from less experienced players and coaches if it is in conflict with your hitting coach. Remember your hitting coach’s advice only helps you if you follow it.
5. Practice Bat Speed Drills. Plyometric exercises can go a long way toward developing your fast twitch muscles. This is very important in your batting swing where bat speed is determined by how fast your fast twitch arm muscles respond. By simply swinging lighter bats, you will begin teaching your fast twitch muscles valuable muscle memory. This will translate into faster bat speed when using your regular bat in games.
6. Mental Preparation is key. Much like a pitcher must learn to block out all background noise. You too must learn to block everything else out except for the delivery of the baseball. By simply repeating a simple mantra like “See the ball” again and again while you are batting, you will find your concentration improves and the background noise is filtered out. This improved concentration will translate into more consistent hitting for you.
By: Jack D. Elliott
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Baseball Hitting With Wooden Bats
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There is no denying the power of an aluminum bat. In fact, one reason they are not allowed in the major leagues is to help protect pitchers from having a line drive take off their head. However, occasionally practicing with a wooden bat in batting practice or the batting cage can definitely fine tune your swing and improve your baseball hitting.
A wooden bat has the advantage of encouraging the batter to hit the ball in the sweet spot. If the hitter hits the ball with the inside part of the bat, he runs the risk of breaking his bat or getting a stinging sensation in his hands. If the hitter hits the baseball with the outside part of the bat, the baseball will not travel very far. For these reasons, a wooden bat will encourage a batter to hit the baseball with the sweet spot. The more repetitions you get hitting the baseball with the sweet spot will translate into better hitting when you switch over to an aluminum bat which has an even bigger sweet spot and is slightly lighter.
One caveat: Wooden baseball bats can break very easily. One thing that can be done to help increase the life of a wooden bat is to wrap baseball tape or electrical tape around the sweet spot of the bat. This should help absorb some of the sting of a baseball when it hits the wooden bat in the wrong area. This is especially important because batting cage balls (the ones with the dimples in them) are a little bit harder on bats than a regular baseball.
Regardless of how you treat your wooden bat, you can expect to break a few wooden baseball bats if you play long enough. The good news is they are cheaper than aluminum bats ranging any where from $30 to $100. Another way one can make lemonade out of these lemons is to use the broken wooden bat for other purposes. Depending on how much is salvageable, you may be able to use the fat end of the bat as a club (miniature bat) for additional wiffleball practice by putting baseball tape on the tail end of it. This would allow you to practice your batting swing with your extension hand. This type of exercise helps with driving through the baseball.
Also, the handle of the bat may be converted into a strength training tool as well. You can create this baseball training tool by:
1. Drilling a hole on the bat handle. Drilling a hole through the handle of the bat and tie a very thin rope to it. The rope should have about 3 ½ to 4 feet of slack.
2. Tie a small weight to the rope. Then, tie a small weight to the other end of the rope. This weight should be under 10 pounds. I recommend starting with a 5 pound weight.
3. Roll up rope using back and forth motion. From here, you will want to hold the handle out in front of you with two hands. It should be in front of your body at roughly chest level. Then, you will want to start using your hands in a back and forth rolling motion to start rolling up the rope and weight around the handle.
4. Reverse the motion to control the decline. Once you are at the top, you will want to do the reverse by controlling the decline of the weight to the bottom again.
5. Do enough repetitions until you get muscle fatigue. You will want to do enough repetitions to get to the point where you have exhaustion in your forearms.
6. Add weight to increase resistance. If after doing a number of repetitions, you find that you are not getting forearm muscle fatigue, increase the weight used. This exercise is very good for improving the strength of your forearms. This will be directly helpful with your swing and help strengthen your throwing arm as it will give you more muscle control of your arms.
In conclusion, wooden baseball bats provide another sound way to improve your baseball hitting. Be sure to make the investment in at least one wooden bat to see if it works for you. You will be glad you did.
By: Jack D. Elliott
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Baseball – Fans Link to Zen is More Than Fantansy
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Baseball as therapy from the daily grind or life’s challenges. As a pastime, baseball has mountains of statistics to ponder, miles of ‘what if’ scenarios and the warm glow of summer all year long.
What better escape is there to use? Each and every opinion on Baseball could be the right one. From the subtle details of how to hit a ball to comparisons of old time natural players vs modern technically analyzed players. Each of us can be right at any given moment. Even when we are wrong, its obvious to find the little tid-bit that was left out of the equation.
Therapy indeed. A direct distraction from the doldrums of what occupies your time to pay your bills. Designing buildings, building the buildings, or working in the buildings. Drift away from the tugs of daily life. In other parts of the world people sit and ponder emptiness, this is called meditation. Sitting quietly, blocking out the distractions of the world and focusing on the self.
As Westerner’s bombarded with images, data, noise and more noise from the moment we wake up till sleep finally falls upon us; emptiness is hard to grasp. But the focus of meditation is not confined to the self and emptiness. The simple effort of focusing on something other than what life presents to us thru out the day is just as beneficial.
Baseball has all the right stuff to meditate about. Warm days, green grass, sun filled skys the calm of lackluster play and the rush of a great play, well hit ball or the tension of bases loaded with no outs. Baseball memories tend to improve over time with thoughts bringing up those feelings of well being.
The northern states have the fall and winter seasons where all there is to baseball is the memories and the statistics. Last year, Washington State recorded some 90+ straight days of rain. Biologically, we need sunlight to create vitamin D. Baseball with its fullness of detail is almost a necessity for those deprived of sunlight and constant exposure to dreary weather.
So there you have it, Baseball as Western Zen
By: Mitchell Dowdy
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You can also visit http://www.hirschgroupllc.com for more news/tips/articles on the subjects of baseball, construction, building codes and more that most will find a quick way to fall asleep. Thanks for reading my article!
American Baseball Professional League – History
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The first four teams were founded in South Bend, Indiana; Kenosha and Racine, Wisconsin; and Rockford, Illinois. The players were recruited wherever they could be found, but the best source seemed to be the Girls Athletic Association (GAA). The first season began in the summer of 1944. The league thrived the first few seasons garnering much popularity and fan support.
But when the war ended in 1945, things began to get hard. Especially the fact that when the men returned and took up their old jobs, forcing women out of the workplace and challenging the popularity of women’s baseball. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League reached its peak in 1948, then began to fall. The teams eventually all went into debt, and between 1949 and 1951, it dwindled down to nothing. However, women’s baseball holds a special place in history, with a section of the Baseball Hall of Fame dedicated to this era.
With soccer becoming a hit among women in the United States, with their World Championships, baseball has taken a backseat. It will come to a point again in the future where baseball becomes a hit amongst the average woman. WNBA has become highly commercialized, and soccer extremely popular. Why not baseball?
By: Peter Portero
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Breaking Tough News to Your Baseball Team
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One of the more difficult tasks as a parent is breaking bad news to your kids. We need to be sensitive to their age and awareness being careful to put things in perspective while trying to position the result as a learning experience.
When a kid doesn’t make a baseball team it can be very tough on them. Especially for younger kids who experience this for the first time. They may feel like they’ve failed themselves and you. They may also be subject the boasting and needling of peers who made the team.
First, take the pressure off them. They didn’t fail anyone. They tried there best and that’s what’s important. It is important to try to turn a negative into a positive in these situations. If you feel your child didn’t perform at a level to make the team then you can offer a plan to prepare and improve for next year. Position it as an opportunity to get better at the game.
Some may feel their child has the abilities to make the team. Most of the time there is tough competition for the few spots on a baseball team. Some times there is a small difference in talent and ability between the players that make it and players that don’t. The positive explanation for your child in this situation is that they are a strong player… and there are many strong players in their age group. If you keep trying and keep practicing you will increase your chances of making the team next year.
Kids should never be told they didn’t make a team because they weren’t good enough. Rather they should be told they are a “good player who needs to improve in some areas and here is what we’re going to do to help you improve”.
You should also prepare your child to answer questions from his peers… have an explanation as to what he’s going to do to improve his chances next year.
Don’t be shy about asking the coach or group who selects the teams to give you some feedback on areas where your child needs to improve. This will help you develop a plan with your child to help give them a chance next year.
The bottom line is to plan ahead what you’re going to say to your child with the goal of turning it into a positive. As tough as it may seem these are some of life’s harder lessons. Teaching your child positive ways how to handle these situations is the best thing you can do for them.
By: Bob Hines”>http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bob Hines
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Visit Coach Bob’s Youth Baseball Blog @ http://youthbaseballblog.blogspot.com/
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