By: Erik,
There are quite a few parks around Mobile, Al. But only a couple have a Fall Ball League, ours happens to be one of them. I just wanted to throw in a couple of words about it, in case some of you are considering starting Fall Ball at your Park. Football is quite big around our area. But there are a lot of kids that aren't big enough for football, and a lot that just don't care about it. My son fell in to both of those categories. He did try football one year, enjoyed it while he played, but wasn't even remotely interested after that. Baseball, he could play year round. Our Fall Ball program's main goal is to have a learning season for the kids. It's not about competition, it's not about winning, it's about learning to play better baseball and getting more experience. The general rules are: All other rules are normal. My son played Fall Ball last year. Being that he only had one prior season of Minor league ball, and was moving up to Majors the following year, we figured it would be great to get some more experience under his belt. I didn't like the way he, nor his team, was coached the previous year, so rather than complain about it, I decided to coach the Fall Ball team myself. I put together about 7 players that were moving up to Majors the next year, got 4 others from drawing out of a hat, and we played in the Major League Division. Our park really promo
tes to it's coaches that Fall Ball isn't about winning, but it is about learning to play baseball better. Sure, some of the teams are stacked with a bunch of good players, but that doesn't matter. The objective is to really concentrate hard on the basics, and better baseball. In fact, if we are working with a kid in a new position, it is not uncommon, DURING A GAME, to go out on the field close to him and help him to understand how to play that position. Our Fall Ball program gives kids a chance to better themselves before the regular season starts. It gives them a chance to play positions that they would like to try. I change almost every player as I change pitchers. 9 times out of 10, a player will not play the same position more than 2 innings per game. I may put a child in a position he wouldn't normally even consider playing, but if I see some talent that may work great in a position, I go ahead and put him there for a couple of innings and let him see for himself what it's like. He may just find a new love. Another GREAT thing the Fall Ball season does for our park, is that it gets kids from other surrounding parks to start coming to ours. We have a bunch of kids that played at other parks during the regular season, but come to our park for Fall Ball. Who knows, they may like it enough to stick with our park during the next regular season as well. It also gives us coaches some more time to evaluate talent for the upcoming year. It is actually more like a Baseball Camp that lasts for a few weeks. If anyone has any questions about our program, please don't hesitate to ask. Erik, erik_raulerson@is.qms.com
Date: June 09, 1998 at 13:39
- If you want to coach a team, you can put together an entire team yourself, show up with all the applications filled out, and you have a team.
- If you don't have enough players to make up a team, then draftees are done by pulling names out of a hat.
- Pitchers can only pitch 2 innings per game.
- Six run rule limit in all innings.
- Each game can go no higher than six innings. (No tie-breakers in a seventh inning)
- No league champion, no division champion, no 1st place winners, etc... - Generally, only 1 practice per week(although some do a little more)
- Only 1 game per week.
- You provide your own sponsor. ($250.00)