What I've Learned From Baseball by Coach John Peter
The game of baseball is infinitely more complex than most give it credit for. Most that I have learned about baseball is common sense…but each lesson took someone with more common sense than I to point it out.
Coaching
Uniform is more than a noun. Players should dress reasonably alike at practice and identically at a game.
Pitching
Don’t throw the same pitch at the same speed in the same location. Why?… Because hitting is timing and balance and the same pitch does nothing to disrupt either
Throwing
When I see a poorly thrown ball from an infielder, I immediately look at his feet. Why?… Because without good footwork the brain and the arm always tend to be compensating… and that’s when bad throws seem to happen.
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Coach JP: I found Coach Ellis's content straight-forward and his style interesting, easy to follow and understand. You will easily learn the secrets he regularly teaches to today's best pro hitters and tomorrow's superstars!
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Featured Article
Hitting Simplification by Coach Rob Ellis
Baseball Quotes, Wit & Wisdom
If you're not having fun in baseball, you miss the point of everything.
Chris Chambliss, 2,109 hits in 17 seasons
Pitching is the art of instilling fear.
Sandy Koufax, elected into the Hall of Fame in 1972
You can learn little from victory. You can learn everything from defeat.
Christy Mathewson, initial inductee into the Hall of Fame in 1936
I believe in the Rip Van Winkle Theory: that a man from 1910 must be able to wake up after being asleep for seventy years, walk into a ballpark and understand baseball perfectly.
Bowie Kuhn, Commissioner of Baseball from 1969 - 1984
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Baseball’s Believe It or Not
George Steinbrenner’s Path to New York
Born in 1930 in Rocky River, Ohio on the 4th of July, George Steinbrenner’s first choice of sports was football. After a stint in the Air Force, he attended Ohio State, where he met his wife, and planned to earn a master's degree in physical education so he could pursue a career coaching football. He never finished at OSU, instead transferring to Williams College in Massachusetts, where he played halfback and ran hurdles in track.
Following graduation, he took a job as an assistant football coach at Northwestern University in 1955, and later coached at Purdue. Leaving football behind to work in the family business, Steinbrenner made his fortune as the chairman of the Cleveland-based American Shipbuilding Company. In 1961 Steinbrenner became an owner of a pro sports team for the first time when his Cleveland Pipers became a charter franchise in the short-lived American Basketball League. Although the team last only a year, it proved a sign of things to come, as head coach John McLendon resigned because of Steinbrenner’s interference. After owning a piece of the Cleveland Barrons of the International Hockey League, Steinbrenner finally turned his attention to baseball, a sport that he knew nothing about. After a deal to buy the Cleveland Indians fell through, Steinbrenner and 11 partners bought the New York Yankees from CBS for $12 million, which was less than the television company had paid for it nine years earlier. The deal closed on January 3, 1973 and at the time Steinbrenner said, "I won't be active in the day-to-day operations of the club at all."
With controversy aplenty in his 28 years as the principal owner, Steinbrenner has changed managers 21 times (including 17 in his first 17 seasons), replaced 11 general managers, and won six World Series titles. In between he was banned from baseball “for life” from August 20, 1990 through March 1, 1993, which occurred on the heels of being granted an Executive Grant of Clemency in 1989 from the President just as he was leaving office. Ronald Reagan’s pardon erased Steinbrenner’s 1974 conviction in Ohio of a felony count of conspiracy, the result of illegal corporate campaign contributions to President Nixon’s bid for re-election. Promising to never sell the Yankees while he is alive ("Owning the Yankees is like owning the Mona Lisa."), “The Boss” has tried to groom one of his sons to take over the team. So far, one son and son-in-law have quit the team, but another son and son-in-law continue to work for the Yankees.
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