TCB1 posted:To answer a couple of questions:
No, we are not having the kids pitch yet. Not on flat ground, not on mounds. But since we are only going 2 days a week, I don't see a problem with kids coming in and warming up their arms. This means progressive throwing (1 knee, no stride, post-position, etc) up to full warm-up tosses. Being as we're inside, that means about 100 feet.
Also please understand, I'm not asking for a stamp of approval from anyone about our program, how we set it up, and when we start. For those who say "It's too early to have them throw in November", I'm sorry, I've been doing this for almost 30 years now, and while you might be a parent of a kid who plays summer ball for a great team, you don't get to dictate to me what is OK in my program. My search for comments was not about whether what I was doing was "OK" or not, it was whether other coaches have run in to this type of dictatorial behavior.
Which I guess furthers the question of whether this is the situation where parents just assume that their player's summer coach MUST know much better what is good for their son than a high school coach. Something we see quite often around here as there is the assumption, I think, that most high school coaches are just English teachers looking to make an extra buck, or Football coaches looking for something to do in the Spring. I also think some of it depends on what region you live in. As you see from some posts above, the seasons and how things are set up are very different from State to State.
Mind you, if he had come to me and said that his arm was a little "dead" and he didn't want to throw any for a while, I would have reacted the same way: "Hey, these are open gyms. Do whatever you feel comfortable doing".....I just would have liked it better than basically being told, by someone who wasn't there and doesn't know my program, what players WILL and WILL NOT be doing.
In fact, if the kid had just said "My mom/dad said that since I just got done playing Fall ball recently and they want me to take it easy on my arm", I think I would have taken it better. I would have just shrugged it off as mom/dad wanting to protect their kid because his arm was a little used up. I think when it was another coach who essentially will "let me know" when I can have my players, it irritated me a bit.
Sorry if I am a bit old school, but I don't see where a kid coming to an open gym and wanting to participate will hurt himself by warming up for 5 or 10 minutes prior to taking infield, hitting, or other baseball related activities. I'm going to bet I've preserved and protected many more arms in my time as a coach than a lot of the select ball coaches in my area.
That was quite the dictatorial response...