Teaching a kid to properly throw and catch will create the foundation for the rest of his or her baseball-playing life. As a coach or parent, you want to show them the fundamentals and give them games they can do to practice them. From a coaching standpoint, you want games that are fun that are also going to make the kids get better without a coach or parent always having to tell them what to do. These games are all perfect for Little League practices, but they’re also perfect for the backyard, the park, the gym or your local baseball facility. And, they’re simple enough that the kids can organize themselves when there are no adults around.
For the Littlest Kids: Catch with One, Throw with Two
How To: For the littlest kids, start just 10 feet apart or so. Have them put their non-throwing hand in their pocket, or in the belt of their pants, or behind their back. They will catch with the glove hand, then they can move the throwing hand, take the ball out of the glove and throw it back.
Benefits: When young boys and girls first learn to throw and catch, fear is a big factor. We see it over and over again; the first time you throw a ball at a kid, he or she will go palms up to try to protect themselves. This game will help to break them of that natural habit.
Gamify It: To make this more fun and give the kids a goal, give them a point per catch or try for streaks so they can try to beat their score each time.
Things to Remember: It’s very important that kids learn to catch the ball properly. You want them to turn their hands over with the fingers up and the palm facing the ball. You want them to move to pick the ball out of the air rather than wait for it to hit their open palms. If they are approaching the ball palms-up, practice with a Wiffle ball or tennis ball they’re no longer afraid of the baseball.
Hit the Hat/Hit the Tee
How To: For this game, two players will stand the furthest distance apart that they can while still throwing with their most perfect mechanics. Then, you’ll either drop a hat on the ground or put a ball on a tee exactly between them. For young kids, 60 feet apart should be plenty. As they advance and learn to throw harder and more accurately, they can progress to somewhere between 90 and 120 feet. The object of the game is to shuffle for the younger kids or to throw from a step-behind, a run-and-gun or a crow hop for the more-coordinated kids, and hit the hat or the ball on the tee.
Benefits: This game will force the kids who are still learning to throw properly to get their body moving towards the target. Because you don’t want the kid across from you to catch the grounder, you can’t just lob the ball at the hat or the tee. You have to throw hard. So now they’re learning to get their body moving, they’re learning to throw hard with accuracy and they’re getting a lot of reps learning how to catch hard ground balls effectively. It’s a nice, instructional game.
Gamify It: It’s easy to create a fun scoring system for this game. You could, say, give five points if you hit the hat or the ball on the tee, and one point if you catch a grounder, and the first kid to 30 points is the winner. Or, if your kids don’t need to compete with each other for motivation, you can also have them compete against themselves. The standard for me is how many times out of 15 you can hit the target. We use 15 as a standard and safe number of reps because it’s enough to get real practice in without overly taxing the body or arm.
Things to Remember: Distance magnifies mistakes and throwing at a target always turns a throwing exercise into a skill exercise. If you miss the target right or left, you likely have a problem with your posture, which means your head is probably running away from your arm. If you miss short or long of hitting the target, there’s probably an issue with your front side (glove position).
“21”
How To: This is simply a regular game of catch. Start at 45 feet and adjust that distance accordingly for the skill level of your athletes, keeping in mind again that distance magnifies mistakes.
Benefits: This game teaches the kids to catch and to throw quickly and to throw the ball so their partner can catch it properly, because it’s not a point unless your partner catches it.
Gamify It: If you hit your partner in the face with your throw, that’s two points. (Not literally, obviously; just a head-high throw that’s easy to catch!) If you hit him or her somewhere in the body, that’s one point. The first player to 21 points is the winner. It’s also fun to gamify this as a race among partners. Spread your better players out evenly throughout the pairs and have them raise their hands when, as a team, they get to 21 points. And you have to have the coaches watch to make sure they’re not fudging the scoring, because they will cheat!
Things to Remember: Whether they’re pitchers or position players, baseball players throw with their feet, and it’s important to bring that up wherever possible. The quicker their feet, the more accurate they’re going to be. Teach them to GFF – Go Forward Fast – and to keep their eyes level, their glove in front and to drag the back foot. Just teaching kids to shuffle properly (with ankles lined up towards the target and the shoulders closed) will immediately level up their throwing strength and accuracy.
Happy Gilmore
How To: If your kids can’t visualize how to play this game because they haven’t seen the movie Happy Gilmore, you’re going to have to set up a team movie night. (Or, for starters, check out the video above!) You have a bat in your hand, and there is a ball on a tee, and you’re going to shuffle-step – or do the Happy Gilmore, or whatever you want to call it – as fast as you can, and try to hit the ball off the tee.
Benefits: On the surface, this looks like a hitting game, but it’s a great game to teach any player timing and how to generate power with their lower half. Once the kids get the hang of this game, you can start to play with having them try it with their right eye closed, then the left eye closed, and then both eyes closed; when determining if a kid will be a left or right-handed hitter, you ideally want the dominant eye in the front. You’ll find that they will hit the ball better with both eyes closed than they will with one eye or the other eye closed. They should also do their Happy Gilmores both left-handed and right-handed so they learn to rotate and move in both directions and learn to see in different ways. This will help them in the field, allowing them to get better jumps on balls, and will virtually eliminate oblique issues as they get older. This is also great for pitchers. If you’re a right-handed pitcher, swinging the bat left-handed will help create balance in your core, so that when the hips and shoulders separate in your delivery, that acceleration and deceleration of the core doesn’t tear itself apart.
Gamify It: To gamify the Happy Gilmore, play Home Run Derby. Set up an appropriate distance from the fence, or from a net, and just keep score. Or, if you’re working on hitting with one eye closed, just give the kids a point for each line drive they hit. If you’re playing indoors against a wall, you can score singles, doubles, triples and home runs based on where they hit the wall.
Things to Remember: Playing this game with a Wiffle bat and ball is just as effective as using the real thing, and kids can play it in the backyard with little to no supervision.
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