Clubhouse Gas
Casey: Today on Clubhouse Gas Coach Rodney Hennan is with us from Georgia Southern University, a place very close to my heart and he’s going to talk with us a lot how to help your kids properly feel the ground ball. So stay tuned to Clubhouse Gas.
Rodney: The toughest ball to field actually is the ball hit right at you. Okay, a couple of reasons why? You know a lot of times we have a tendency to freeze on that ball but I think more so than not that ball is hit right me. A ball that’s hit to my left or to my right I’m able to gauge those hops, the speed of that ball and where that ball is hopping a little better from an angle that I am in that ball that’s hit right at me, alright.
That’s a tough thing to do. Alright and we want as an infielder we’re going to have some plays, we’re going to have balls that we can field at the top of the hop balls on the way down, short hops, and of course the ball is just going to hug the ground. The hop we have to avoid is the up hop, the ball that handcuffs alright we get that up hop and if you’re an infielder we’ve all been there, alright.
That ball that cuffs you the ball that kind of accelerating on the way up we’ve got to avoid that, one thing Bryan is very good at and it has come with a lot of repetition. He put a lot of hard work in before he ever came to our program. He does an excellent job of getting his body in good position to get those good hops. So before the ball is ever hit Bryan is going to be walking into the pitch as the ball crosses the hitting zone he’s going to be in an athletic position.
Notice he’s got his palm out front, his elbows are in. Ball is hit. Okay now immediately he’s judging in his mind where is going to be in best position to feel that ball and make that play easier for himself, okay. He’s going to approach the ball aggressively but he’s going to keep his body under control. Alright our guys here a lot I tell them all the time, “Hey we got t work low. We got to travel low.”
Everything we do in the infield as I mentioned earlier starts from the ground up. Okay, he can’t be approached in that brawl to upright. Okay, he’s got to be low, palm out front, and he’s glove is almost knee level, okay. Then he’s going t get to this position where he actually sits on the baseball, okay, notice where his head is. We’re going to talk about a lot of things and sometimes we make everything too complicated but the number 1 thing we can do is keep our head down.
If we keep our head down then we’re going to probably keep our hands down and the rest of our body, okay. Another he sees on the balls of feet okay he’s squared up and he’s fielding this ball if you made a triangle from his toes out to the baseball he’s fielding that ball out to the tip of the triangle, okay and we teach our guys to fill the routine ball on their glove hand eye, okay.
The reason why want to do that is, the common mistake, sometimes we can overrun a ball and loose it in transition. The other thing is more natural. My gloves are already on my left hand to be right out front here as opposed over to the other side of my body. Secondly, if I were to get a bad hop notice his shoulders are squared up to the baseball. If that ball were to come up on him he’s got a chance of taking that ball off the chest picking it up bare hand and still making a play, okay.
Now the other thing by being low, alright know Bryan is bending at the knee and he’s bending at the waist, a lot of times when infielders get tired and I have noticed if we’ve been taken from those for a few minutes they have a tendency to get a little lazy and start working too high on the baseball maybe just bending at their waist and not just bending at the knees quite enough.
If I simply bent at the waist look where my hands are here as opposed to using my legs and bending in my knees, alright I can get with the ball a little bit more from out front. His eyes, Bryan’s eyes are down here on the same plain as the baseball right here. Now at the point of fielding that ball, not ice this top hand. He’s going to catch the ball right in the palm of his glove, top hand in.
Now he’s going to give a little bit, alright. He’s not going to fight that baseball. We’re going to give in the same direction that ball is coming, alright that’s where you hear soft hands a lot of times. We don’t want to be stiff and rigid. We want to be relaxed. We want to get with that baseball funnel that ball a little bit and toward our belly area and then from there he’s going to step through, take his glove and throw a hand to his throwing shoulder and separate and now that front side we talked about earlier when we’re warming up should be right in line with his first baseman if we’re throwing across a diamond.
Alright who knows we still got some flex in the knees, a little flex in the hips not a long arc out of the glove down below our waist but right here, okay. He is in great position to throw. He would complete the throw and then follow his throw, okay. Now I’m just going to roll a few balls to Bryan now and we’re going to tie it all in together here like I said you’ve heard a lot of talking now you can kind of see it in action in a little bit.
I’ll give you a little more space over here, there you go.
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