Lessons from a Youth Baseball Coach: Lesson #2 Coach for the Right Reasons

It is important that every baseball coach starts coaching for the right reasons. Every coach should have three primary goals: 1) increase every player’s skill set so they are better players by the end of the season; 2) strive to make every player’s time with the team a fun experience; and 3) be fair in both positions played and innings played. If a youth baseball coach can accomplish these three things, the season was a success.

As I stated in Lesson #1, it is not where the player starts, but where he/she finishes. It is a coach’s duty to make each player better. I have run into many coaches that use their talent to win ballgames, but don’t necessarily put effort into improving the skills of their players. For example, if a ballplayer has problems swinging the bat, some coaches will put that player at the end of the order and only have them only bunt. So, instead of spending the extra practice time trying to make the player a better hitter, the coach will put the player up there to bunt and hope for a walk. In addition these coaches will also, often times, try to hide that player defensively. In other words, they will try to place the player in a position where they will not have to field a ball. This cheats the players and diminishes the sport. This sort of thing harkens back to the old days when coaches assumed players either “had it” or didn’t. Those that didn’t played the minimum and sat on the end of the bench. But with today’s coaching techniques we know that players, given the chance, can improve; they can learn to hit and field, given the proper instruction and the opportunity. And they deserve that opportunity.

Many coaches coach for two reasons: 1) for the ability to play their son or daughter for as many innings as they like at the positions they want and 2) to win ballgames. These are the wrong reasons. For some reason, there are many coaches at the youth level that only care about winning ballgames. Why? Maybe because these coaches feel like failures if they lose and, in addition to that, most youth leagues will pick the coach with the best overall record to coach the all-star team for that level of play. So, it comes down to prestige; it is more prestigious to win ballgames than to teach baseball. And it then comes down to maturity. How big of a deal is it to be the country’s youth baseball coach with the most wins (woo woo!), compared to being a coach who truly looks out for all of his players and their personal development?

So, I am asking all coaches to buck the system. I had a very simple system. I played my regular season games to teach baseball. I played my tournament games to win ballgames. But, even when striving to win, I wanted to allocate fair playing time. Why shouldn’t all the teammates be able to participate in the challenge of play-off baseball?

I am also asking leagues to buck the system; leagues should make it more prestigious to teach baseball than to win ballgames. I want to win as much as anyone. But there is a right way and a wrong way. Coaches at the youth level shouldn’t have winning as their top priority. Prestige is defined at the group level; leagues define what is prestigious within their ranks. If youth leagues start recognizing their coaches as teachers, then teaching baseball becomes prestigious, and a new trend in youth coaching will begin.

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