Baseball Backstops
Catching Advice – Softball and Baseball Players, Getting Back Behind the Plate?
Today I was playing in a softball game on my high school’s softball team. I am a catcher and generally play close to the plate because I’m small and it helps me keep the ball from going way back in the backstop. Today, I wasn’t playing as close as I have sometimes and I got hit by the girl coming and going. When I say hit I mean like completely rocked she hit my helmet as if it was the ball and then knocked my glove off and hit my hand. I love catching and its always what I’ve been good at, but I’m freaking afraid to get back there again, What can I do?
Its a learning expierence that really the best answer anyone can give is the fact its something you must learn to get past yourself. I started out playing catcher too, I played baseball, my first issue of getting past was called “bat blindness” this is a habbit you have of either blinking or closeing your eye’s when the batter swings at the ball, that
quick blink or closeing of the eye’s caused me too miss the ball on allot occasions.
Fundamental hints: When you position the glove, allow the ball
to go to your glove, dont stabb at the ball, if the ball is heading
to an area that your not positioned in dont just move your glove, move your entire body. You see if you move your glove forward instead of allowing the ball into the glove, the batter
swinging can hit your glove, or find yourself moving forward
to get to the ball is what causing contact with the batter.
Place your glove, dont move that glove, the pitcher is trying
to throw the ball in the area you placed the glove. Dont stabb
at the ball allow it to approach the glove. You’ll get the hang of it, bad habbit players have is not trusting in themselves and simply stabb at the ball or fail to move in front of the ball when the pitcher throw a wild pitch, instead the catcher just move the glove and in most cases missed the ball completely.
Then I find myself not positioning in the same area. At times the batter would hit my glove when swinging or simply made contact with me after making contact with the ball.
I just got back in behind the plate, learned to position myself at a comfortable spot and made sure I stayed at that spot that took away of the contact from both the batter and the bat.
My “bat blindnes” came in time, a simply consentration issue, I finally got over my woe’s and turned into a decent catcher.
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