I sat down last September and wrote down everything I knew about playing the outfield in my baseball career. After three nights of writing one-line descriptions, I started organizing these thoughts into book chapters. In three weeks, the text of the book was finished. I was writing so fast, my keyboard could not keep up. My new book is the result.
Next, I asked a good coaching friend of mine at a local high school if I could use his field and a couple of his players to pose for pictures for the book. He agreed, and the kids did a great job. There are 118 pictures and diagrams that illustrate the book’s techniques and instruction. I want to share with you a quick excerpt from chapter one:
“Baseball is a great game. It’s great for many reasons, but my favorite is, it’s the only game I know where the defense has the ball. No action can start until the pitcher delivers the pitch.
It’s also the most democratic game I know of. What do I mean? Every player has his turn at bat. The only exceptions allowed are pinch-hitters. Baseball doesn’t allow the coach to dictate who will bat in a crucial situation. Unlike basketball where the Lakers can give the ball to Kobe every time. Or football where player substitutions happen on every play.
Baseball is also a game of failure – or how to deal with it. A good hitter will not get a hit, he will fail, seven out of ten times. A pitcher has to throw pitches to a small strike zone – and a 60 percent success rate is viewed as very good. How players deal with the little failures in baseball is just as important as how they practice the fundamentals.
The game of baseball has a thread of continuity seldom realized by other sports. It’s been played the same way for over one hundred years. So while nothing really new or ground-breaking is in this book, it is nonetheless chock full of proven techniques to make you a better outfielder.
There are many books, camps, DVDs, and other media that teach baseball offense. Pitching, infield play, strategy, and team defense are also popular topics that are available. Very little has been written concerning outfield defense and its fundamentals. I think the reason why is because everyone assumes playing outfield is easy. In fact, many outfielders are ex-infielders who didn’t measure up. Many a poor shortstop has been banished to the outfield. Playing outfield well is anything but easy, and we’ll find out more about it in this book.
The great Willie Stargell of the Pittsburgh Pirates, in the book Out of Left Field (by Adelman & Hall) said, “…Outfield is the hardest position to play. It takes great concentration. Balls don’t come to you often, but you must tell yourself that every pitch that is thrown is going to be hit to you.””
The same high school coach who allowed me to use his players and field for the book’s pictures, recently told me he read my book. He said in his 20-plus years of coaching, he had not been exposed to some of the details on how to play outfield my book contained. He went on to say that his outfielders have already thrown out more baserunners than all of last season – and this was only the winter part of his program!
If you are interested, check out my publishing website at www.stevenemichael.com, and click on the “Bookstore” link. I’ll post more informative parts of the book in later posts. Thanks for reading.
