I had lunch with a friend of mine yesterday who was a very accomplished coach in a sport other than baseball. He said when it came to
Make time for every player, every day.
practice, he had a slogan he adhered to. It was, “every player, every day.” What he meant by that was he would make it a point to coach every single player, every single day.
To do that, he would make time to talk to every player during a practice in order to address something the player needed to work on. This is actually a lot harder to do than you’d imagine. Especially in baseball where you often have 15-20 players scattered all over the field doing various drills. Although it can be a challenge to do, touching base with everyone at some point in the practice has the following benefits:
- It shows the players that every single one of them has value.
- It shows that you care about all of their progress and not just the stars or starters.
- It allows you to get a good feel for the mood of the team on a day to day basis.
- It shows that you care about them personally since conversations often turn to things unrelated to baseball.
- You are improving every player’s skills on a daily basis which makes the team continually better as well.
Give it a try. It takes time but the rewards can be very high for all involved.