Mack On Baseball – Chapter 2 – Tools v1.0

Mack On Baseball  –  Chapter 2 – Tools v1.0 

Everyone in baseball starts off on the same level. Then, tools take over.

Wikipedia says there are five tools, so who are we to argue? They continue: “In baseball, a five-tool player is one who excels at hitting for average, hitting for power, base running skills and speed, throwing ability, and fielding abilities.”

No one knows they are going to be any good when they begin playing this game. Most of us played catch in the backyard, either with an older brother or a father. Some simply joined in with a bunch of classmates during recess.

Tools began when you couldn’t catch Sandy Gallatioto in the playground. He lived on 110^th Street off of Atlantic Avenue and was the fastest kid we knew. That meant he had a tool. Mr. Johnson was the old guy that lived on the corner and never through the ball back when we hit it in his yard. That meant he was a tool.

There’s a difference.

The game, especially at this stage, has changed from my day. Organized ball now begins pretty early and I found myself covering six year olds playing t-ball for my local newspaper. How do you write about that? I mean, there are around 85 people in the outfield and they all run after the ball when it gets through the infield. Do I say that some six-year old has tremendous bat speed?

You don’t eventually get paid to play this game unless people take you there. Coaching now begins in the home and takes today’s players all through their career. Everyone plays on some form or organized baseball at some point in their lives. We all think we’re the best on the field, but it takes a seasoned eye to separate some of us from the kids destined to play in the band.

Hitting for “average” or “power” weren’t the first tools to rise to the surface. We’ve covered speed, but throwing isn’t far behind. Tommy Leecock had the best arm… well, actually it was his father, but he didn’t count. The best arms were the quarterbacks in the schoolyard games after Sunday church.

I played very little organized ball. There was no team in either my grade or middle school and, by the time I got to high school, I had to work. I do remember some form of a baseball league I played in, but I had to be younger than ten. The only thing I can tell you is it was on some fields in South Ozone Park next to the Belt Parkway.

You know you’re starting to do well at this game when others keep asking you to play with them. This eventually turns into some form of team, usually round junior high school. You bat, you throw, you run, and you field and you know how well you are doing when they put you in the starting lineup, make you play a middle field position, and bat you third. The fast kids lead off. The best fielders play short or second. And, the arms either pitch or play centerfield.

God, I wish it was that simple.

It always amazed me that the best baseball players on your high school team are considered having nothing but “raw tools” when they get to either college or rookie ball. What was I thinking?

I can’t tell you how lucky some future ballplayers were to have played baseball in big high schools. These are the places where the process of converting raw tools into a commodity begins.

I currently live in Jasper County, South Carolina, a rural country stuck on the tail end of a small state. Most scouts in the area consider it part of Savannah, Georgia which neighbors the town I live in, Hardeeville.

There are two high schools in my county, Hardeeville and Ridgeland. Both have baseball teams that are extensions of the basketball programs. The Hardeeville field is barely maintained while Ridgeland’s in worse shape than the fields those kids play in the Dominican Republic.

There are two coaches on the Hardeeville team, but one doesn’t show up all the time. The other, an ex-catcher in college, has never taught catching fundamentals to any of his players. There’s no pre-game warm-up, no one stretches on the fence, and I don’t think they even have any cones in the closet.

I volunteered to set up a “long toss” program with a couple of the pitchers on the team, but neither the coach nor the pitchers cared to follow through.

These were basketball players hanging out on a baseball field doing everything wrong.

Sadly, Ridgeland had a promising pitcher a couple of years ago who sat in the low-90s. The problem was no one on his team knew how to field a ground ball and you just can’t strike out everyone. The kid transferred to a private school on Hilton Head Island for his senior year, but he never got a chance to crack the rotation.

The reverse of this would Westlake High School, in Austin, Texas, where my daughter went in the late 1980s. It is one of the premier high schools in the country for sports. Their weight room is larger than most houses. Families move to the area just to place their sons on either the football or baseball team. They don’t have a JV baseball program. They have two.

The baseball industry has simply allowed the chips to fall where they currently lay. Talent rises to the top well before the high school level. Fathers, community leagues, Pony, and even youth travel teams feed the school system the players who run, hit, and field above the norm.

What about the pitcher from Ridgeland?

He’s probably working in WalMart now.