4 Old School Baseball Drills You Need to Be Using

The old baseball drills still work!

The way baseball is taught and played has dramatically changed over the last few decades. In the past, kids used to spend lots of unsupervised time playing baseball (see The Sandlot movie) and often self-correcting flaws in their game. Today, kids almost never play or practice baseball without at least some adult supervision.

I used to think that kids in countries like the Dominican Republic mostly played without supervision, like Americans kids used to, but I recently spoke to someone from the DR who told me the opposite was true. Even in small villages, he said, they’d have someone who played in like Double A overseeing the kids.

With all that said, coaches and parents still employed baseball drills back in the day. Check out the following old-school drills that’ll help your kid better his game.

1. Close One Eye to Make Sure You’re Not Pulling Your Head Out

One of the most common hitting flaws is pulling out your head on the swing. My son’s hitting coach used to drill into him to keep his “eyes, nose, chin” on the ball at all times.

The old-school way to teach this was to have kids close one of their eyes when doing tee work so that they’d be forced to keep their head in to make contact:

• Righty batters close their left eye
• Lefty batters close their right eye

One coach even made it easier for the kids by bringing in an eye patch to block the front eye. You can make your own eye patch or buy a cheap one on Amazon.

Do this drill for a couple weeks and you’ll be amazed how much better your kid is at keeping his head in.

Bite Your Shirt to Keep Your Head In

Another old-school way to keep your kid’s head in is to have him bite on the neck of his shirt when taking swings. Being attached to your shirt limits your ability to pull your head out.

2. Count the Hops When Practicing Ground Balls

With this drill, you hit ground balls to either the infield or outfield, and the kid counts each hop the ball takes before he gloves it. I’ve seen some coaches still use this drill to teach kids to anticipate where they need to be to properly field the ball.

“Five hops,” the fielder shouts, for example, and throws the ball back in.

So instead of blindly going for a ball, the kid has to stay really focused on its path.

I have to say my son hates doing this, unfortunately. So I make a deal with him that if he fields 15 straight balls perfectly while counting hops, he doesn’t have to do it anymore.

3. Mark Batting Practice Balls with Different Colors to Teach Pitch Recognition

To be a successful at the plate, hitters ultimately need to recognize different pitches out of the pitcher’s hand and anticipate the location of the pitch when it enters the hitting zone. The way we used to get ready for this was to mark practice balls with different colors with a permanent marker.

The hitter would then have to call out the color of the ball before swinging.

“Red,” the kid would shout, then hit the ball.

“Blue!”

“No color!”

Like with the counting-the-hops drill above, this gets your player to really focus on the ball.

You can take this drill to the next level by throwing different types of pitches and having the kid shout out the additional information. For example:

“Blue, change up!”

“Red, fastball!”

“Green, curve!”

4. Line a Baseball with Marker or Tape to Teach How to Throw with Proper Rotation

Young players often struggle with gripping the baseball correctly and throwing with the proper wrist action. One way to work on this is to line a baseball across the seams with either magic marker or electrical tape. Then when you warm up, have your kid line his fingers up with the line for the traditional four-seam fastball grip.

When he throws the ball back to you, the line will tell you if he’s throwing it with the right rotation:

• If the line is spinning perfectly straight, he’s got it.
• If the line is crooked or all over the place, something’s wrong.

To really focus on this, have your son isolate his wrist action by resting on the knee of his non-throwing hand and hold his throwing elbow straight with his non-throwing hand. Then he can practice snapping his wrist and getting the line to spin straight.

SHARE IN THE COMMENTS YOUR FAVORITE BASEBALL DRILLS TO DO WITH YOUR KID.

For pregame drills, see 4 Hitting Drills You Need to Do Before Every Game.

For more on baseball training, check out The 4 Best Baseball Batting Aids (No. 3 is Free) and 4 Ways To Increase Your Kid’s Pitching Velocity.