coach2709,
Why is it that whenever you coaches get criticized you circle the wagons and try to stop anyone else from expressing themselves unless they’re part of your little clique? So now I’m not allowed to say anything unless my coaching bones are at least as good as yours? Horse rockets! Sounds like I said something that struck home and y’all don’t have a way to refute it.
Calling pitches from dugouts is something relatively new. While coaches have always had the ability to send in signals, its only relatively recently that its done on close to every pitch.
As a matter of fact, a lot of what I think comes from my experiences as a catcher, from a very good friend of mine who coached a DI here for over 30 years, and a another very good friend who pitch in the pros for over 20 years, scouted for 10, and was a ML pitching coach for another 12. Those things shaped my opinion on the subject and that opinion is that its simply not necessary for a coach to call pitches.
My experience was that I was told it was my job to call pitches, and therefore my responsibility. The college coach says it was his job to prepare his players for the next level, and the pro coach says pitchers and catchers get paid a lot of $$$$ to do that.
Maybe you don’t agree with those opinions, but you have no right to refuse the right to express them because you’re miffed of the person expressing them doesn’t meet your standard of who is allowed to speak.
I'm truly baffled here. I never said you couldn't express an opinion I just asked your background which leads to more credibility for your opinion.....or could take away credibility for your opinion. If we were talking about how to best use nuclear power going into the future each one of us could have their own opinion about what is best but if one of us had actually studied or worked in anything to do with nuclear power then their opinion carries a little more weight than the rest of us. Doesn't necessarily mean we will be right but there is more credibility. It's called experience.
What is there to refute? What in my posts says that coaches calling pitches IS THE RIGHT WAY TO DO IT? I haven't seen where cabbage or bball said it was that way either. The only thing we've done is provide reasons why it's done. They were very valid reasons why it was done. In fact most of my posts are on your side in that I believe the pitcher / catcher should call their own game if prepared. But you're not always going to get them prepared for myriad of reasons. That's all we've said - you're the one who is getting upset. One thing I've learned in my time is that just because you're upset doesn't mean you're right.
Those are very good and credible sources to form an opinion but do those 3 people truly represent all of baseball? No just like our 3 opinions represent all of baseball. I was a catcher back in the day as well. I called my own game and nobody ever taught me how. Looking back on it now I wish someone would have taught me more or made the calls for me because, while I think I did a good job, it wasn't the best I could do. I'm going out on a limb here and saying that's how it was for most of us going back into the day. We were given the job, nobody taught us anything and that's how it became to be. Well times change and so do how we do things. Without change football would still be running the T formation and not the spread offenses that create the use of athletes. Whether it was good or bad is debatable (I personally think the transition to the spread is a good thing) but it was change and we had to handle it. Calling pitches from the dugout is a change - good or bad is debatable - but we need to learn how to handle it.
Nobody here is miffed because we don't agree with you. Disagreement doesn't mean that someone is upset at another person. It's possible to disagree with someone without getting miffed. But when someone twists what is said or goes after someone else for having a different point of view then that is when people get miffed.
