Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Baseball - Daniel Keller - NEW

Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Baseball

by Daniel Keller

NEW, 176 pages

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About Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Baseball

You volunteered to coach the local baseball team, but are you ready? How will you teach the fundamental skills, run effective practices, and harness the energy of your young team? Fear not: Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Baseball has the answers.

In Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Baseball, longtime coach Dan Keller shares his experiences and provides advice you can rely on from the first practice to the final game. From evaluating players’ skills and establishing realistic goals to using in-game coaching tips, it’s all here—the drills, the strategies, and most important, the fun!

Develop your team’s fielding, catching, throwing, pitching, and hitting skills with the Survival Guide’s collection of the game’s best youth drills that young players can actually use. Best of all, you’ll be able to get the most out of every practice by following the ready-to-use practice plans.

Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Baseball has everything you need for a rewarding and productive season.

About Dan Keller

Dan Keller is the president and owner of Lifeletics Sports Instruction in Huntington Beach, California. A lifelong student of the game of baseball, with a particular interest in pitching, he started Lifeletics in 2001 and has built it into a household brand providing world-class fundamental training with an emphasis on positive character development and the life lessons learned through athletics.

Keller experienced athletic success from youth baseball through the collegiate ranks and was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles in 1995. Since 2000 he has worked as a private pitching instructor for youth league and professional athletes. His team coaching resume includes work with competitive youth teams and teams at all levels of high school play.

Keller’s work has been featured extensively in Collegiate Baseball Newspaper, Junior Baseball Magazine, and several online publications. He’s also a frequent instructor for a number of youth clinics. In his free time he enjoys staying active by hiking and playing basketball, softball, and golf. Keller lives in California with his wife, Erin.

Reviews of this Book

“Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Baseball is a great way to begin your season. By providing the key essentials, this book will help you succeed with your players and team.”

—John Savage,UCLA Head Baseball Coach

"Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Baseball is a must-read for all youth baseball coaches. Using simple practice plans and fundamental skills sets, Dan Keller makes practice fun for coaches and players alike."

-Abe Key,President and CEO, PONY Baseball

“Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Baseball takes the guesswork out of coaching and gets everyone on the same page.”

-David Kloser, Mental Game Coach, Author of Stepping Up to the Plate: Inspiring Interviews with Major Leaguers

About Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The goal is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot square, or diamond. Players on one team (the batting team) take turns hitting against the pitcher of the other team (the fielding team), which tries to stop them from scoring runs by getting hitters out in any of several ways. A player on the batting team can stop at any of the bases and later advance via a teammate's hit or other means. The teams switch between batting and fielding whenever the fielding team records three outs. One turn at bat for each team constitutes an inning and nine innings make up a professional game. The team with the most runs at the end of the game wins.

Evolving from older bat-and-ball games, an early form of baseball was being played in England by the mid-eighteenth century. This game and the related rounders were brought by British and Irish immigrants to North America, where the modern version of baseball developed. By the late nineteenth century, baseball was widely recognized as the national sport of the United States. Baseball on the professional, amateur, and youth levels is now popular in North America, parts of Central and South America and the Caribbean, and parts of East Asia. The game is sometimes referred to as hardball, in contrast to the derivative game of softball.

In North America, professional Major League Baseball (MLB) teams are divided into the National League (NL) and American League (AL). Each league has three divisions: East, West, and Central. Every year, the major league champion is determined by playoffs that culminate in the World Series. Four teams make the playoffs from each league: the three regular season division winners, plus one wild card team. Baseball is the leading team sport in both Japan and Cuba, and the top level of play is similarly split between two leagues: Japan's Central League and Pacific League; Cuba's West League and East League. In the National and Central leagues, the pitcher is required to bat, per the traditional rules. In the American, Pacific, and both Cuban leagues, there is a tenth player, a designated hitter, who bats for the pitcher. Each top-level team has a farm system of one or more minor league teams. These teams allow younger players to develop as they gain on-field experience against opponents with similar levels of skill.

Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Baseball