From Tokyo to Kyoto, or trying to, at least 
After my night at the hotel in Tokyo, it was time to get over to Kyoto, which is about a 2.5hr (320 miles) bullet train ride from Tokyo. While at O'Hare, I had started to doubt my initial plan, which was to go immediately from Tokyo to Kyoto the first day - thinking about it I thought that I might not be optimizing my time in the best way but I knew that I wanted to make it to Mt Koya before the baseball tour began and getting out to Kyoto would get me close to Koya. Anyways, despite doubting my original plan, I set out from the hotel that morning to the local JR (Japanese Rail) station which was a short shuttle ride from the hotel. At this point, I hadn't exchanged my rail voucher for the JR Pass yet and thought that I would be able to do so over at the JR station.
Riding the Rails in Japan - the JR (Japanese Rail), the Shinkansen (bullet train) & more!
Before I go any further, it's worth explaining how the rail system works in Japan. I already mentioned that I had bought a rail pass before heading over to Japan, which was FedEx'd to me via the rail company. The company will mail you what basically amounts to a coupon that you take with you and then exchange at a JR station in Japan. Once you have your rail pass, you'll get access to bullet trains (the Shinkansen) that criss-cross the country in addition to a special train system referred to as the JR. The JR is available in most Japanese cities but is separate from each city's subway system. You'll need separate tickets in each city in order to ride each city's subway system but in some cities, like Tokyo, the JR train might be all you need to get around the city so your JR pass will suit you just fine.
Just to keep this straight - you can think of there being three train systems in Japan. The Shinkansen (the bullet train) which gets you between major cities very quickly, the JR (Japanese Rail) which gives you around within cities, and the individual city subways which, like the JR, gets you around each town. The subways, generally, have much more coverage & stations within cities than the JR. 

I'm fairly certain that I read this somewhere over the past few months but a recent situation brought it back to light. The situation was losing. In this particular situation, I was working a baseball camp and towards the end of the camp, we had a running competition in which two runners would face off against one another. The runners would run a suicide-like sprint. For the uninitiated, this normally works on a basketball court in different variations but a standard one looks like so - the runners run from the baseline to the half-court line, back to the original baseline and then all the way to the opposite baseline. Whichever runner makes it to the opposite baseline last is the "loser." 
So, we had a similar situation setup in our baseball camp. Two campers were facing off in the run and one runner got out to a large lead. The other runner began to realize that he was way behind and started to give up, allowing the other runner to increase his winning margin. 
This situation reminded me of this idea - that even though the losing runner was way behind, the sprint still represented an opportunity for him to improve. He might lose this race, but if he fails to take advantage of the opportunity to give his full effort and improve, he lessens the chance that he is going to win in the future.
The applications to baseball are pretty obvious here, but I'll present this situation - your team is losing in the middle or late in the game. If the margin is large enough, this presents a pretty good opportunity for a team to give up and just try to get the game over. However, the team needs to be reminded that this is a learning opportunity and although the score might be out of hand, it's a chance for them to improve for future competitions. Who knows, with this mindset, you might even get the team to rally and come back to win the game.
There's another twist on this that I came across while watching a small college fall practice this year. The college team was split up into two squads and they were completing their annual fall world series. Rather than keeping a culmulative score for the entire game, the score was based on how many innings each team won during the game. So the overall score did not matter! Team 1 could have scored 50 more runs than Team 2 overall, but if Team 2 won more innings during the game than Team 1, Team 1 would emerge victorious. I thought that this was a great idea to maintain competitiveness during games even when one team jumps out to a big lead - change the objective for sustained effort. 

I posed this as a comment on another page and thought I'd copy/paste it here as well. 
One related point regarding teaching cuts/relays that I heard earlier this year at ABCA Nashville and liked was the concept of rules related to the lead base. We've all probably heard about lead base before, it's basically 1 base ahead of the base runner. So if there's a runner on 1B, the lead base is 3B. If there's a runner on 2B, the lead base is home plate. If there are no runners on, the lead base is 2B.
The common problem teams and OFs run into is this - let's say runner on 1B, ball hit to the OF and he/she decides to go lead base (3B) when there is no chance of getting the lead runner out. Relay goes to 3B and batter-runner takes 2B. Now, instead of keeping the DP in order and the batter-runner at 1B, you've got 2 runners in scoring position @ 2B and @ 3B.
Matt Bragga at Tennessee Tech covered a rule-based system for preventing this situation. The idea is this - the OF makes a decision about what base to throw to based upon where the ball takes him/her. If the base hit takes him towards the lead base, he throws to lead base. So, for example, with a runner on 1B, if the ball is hit to the CF's right side and in front of him (i.e., towards lead base), he/she should throw towards 3B. If the ball is hit and takes the CF away from lead base, he should throw into 2B to keep the batter-runner at 1B thus keeping the double-play in order. So any ball to the CF's left unless it's a rocket to him, should go into 2B. Give up 3B to the base-runner & keep the DP in order. Same rules apply to all the other outfielders in all situations.
If it's your RF with a runner on 2B, if the ball takes the RF towards home plate (lead base), relay should go into home plate. If ball takes the RF to his left or right (not towards home plate), relay should go into 2B. Also, if the OF bobbles the ball at any time, even if the ball is taking him towards lead base, he should throw into 2B.
A quick video of Matt's presentation is here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?... I think this also includes some video but no audio.

I read this in "The Practicing Mind" by Thomas Sterner. I've always felt a struggle between focusing on results vs. process - I do believe in the process but believe that goals/results are important to give you direction. I love how the author describes it here with the example. 

I enjoy what he writes here. Just before this passage, he mentions goals being like a rudder.

Okay, so here's my first travel post! I'll be writing several posts about my September 2016 trip to Japan. I traveled there for two weeks between September 9th and September 24th. Here's part #1!

Before Leaving for Japan
So, the question a lot of people ask is why did I travel to Japan? The biggest reason was baseball. I had always heard that Japan was big into baseball and had wanted to see games over there for some time. I had originally thought that I would go see games on my own and had scanned the Nippon Baseball League website for tickets and dates. However, the more I searched I eventually came across Bob Bavasi's JapanBall website. Bob runs a yearly tour of Japan baseball, usually in September.  I was attracted to the idea of traveling with a group while there and enjoyed the idea of someone taking care of all the ticket details. I'll write more about Bob's tour later in this post.

While making travel plans, I bought a two week Japan Rail pass. There are various sites that you can buy this from, but I ended up going with the site recommended by Bob here. Note that if you want to buy a rail pass, you should buy it before leaving for Japan. If you don't, you'll find that buying tickets in Japan is very expensive and could cost you many thousands of dollars once you're in the country. I later found that bullet train travel in Japan is very expensive to native Japanese people but the pass is subsidized for tourists if bought before arriving in Japan. Rough cost estimate for the two week Japan Rail pass was about $450. More on how to use the JR pass later.

I recently attended the ABCA Barnstormer's clinic in Los Angeles. The Barnstormer's tour was a series of full-day coaching clinics throughout the west coast hosted by various universities. The Barnstormer stop that I attended was at the University of Southern California and while I participated in several different clinics that day, the USC head coach, Dan Hubbs, and another coach from Pepperdine gave particulary impactful presentations that I'll summarize here. 

Here were my key takeaways from the sessions –

• Practice grips on the ball – it sounds like a simple thing, but have your players practice getting the correct grip on the ball out of their glove. This is not necessarily a pitching thing, it’s an fielder thing too. Show your kids the correct grip and have them practice getting this grip out of the glove naturally. The correct grip that he emphasized was a 4 seam grip, which means that you're gripping the ball with your fingers across the horse shoe of the ball. One thing that he mentioned that he did as a pitcher was change the grip as he got into the windup – if he wanted a curveball grip, he would get into that grip as he brought his glove over his head on his windup.
• Important pitching keys – two of the important keys that he mentioned was to get good at locating your pitches while another was being able to change speeds effectively (what he referred to as your speed differential). One way to emphasize pitch location is by practicing it – have kids hit a certain spot in the zone. You can assign them points based on how often they hit a particular spot. Or keep working on hitting a particular spot before moving onto another spot. Another thing that he said about this is to give them a goal (i.e. a place to hit) and have their bodies learn & figure out how to get it done.
• Related to location, have scripted & unscripted bullpens – This is a pretty straightforward concept and is as it sounds. For some bullpens, the coach encouraged having a scripted bullpen in which the pitchers learn different pitch sequences. For example, throwing a first pitch curveball, then an outside fastball then an inside fastball. Whatever the sequence might be, that’s a scripted bullpen – pitchers are learning to hit specific spots in a specific sequence. An unscripted bullpen would be one where you’d ask the pitcher what he/she wants to work on and focus on that. No specific script outside of the player working on what he/she wants to achieve.
• Game – Use 4 corner catch – another idea that the coach emphasized was the importance of teaching quickness. One way of doing this is via 4 corner catch where you have players at each of the 4 corners of a square and they throw the ball around the square. This is a great game to practice quickness and exchanges, especially for middle infield players who want to practice double-plays. But, coach mentioned using it for pitchers too, to teach them how to be quick on making plays around the diamond.
• Game – Point Game – Coach mentioned this game as a possibility to do during your opening catch play, but he didn’t emphasize it. Regardless , I had heard about the game but hadn’t thought about it in a while, but it is another possible game you can play to teach locating various throws. How the game works is that you have two players playing catch and you assign points for them hitting different parts of the body on the receiver. For example, you can assign two points for hitting a player in the chest and 1 point for hitting them in the face (the receiver is catching the ball, of course). 0 points for throws anywhere else. 
• Aim Small, miss small – this is another concept that I’ve heard before. Coach emphasized this concept which means that you should have a small target. If you have a small target, it’s more likely that you’re going to just barely miss that target. If you have a huge target, you’re actually going to end up missing your intended target more often. How small should the target be? He mentioned aiming for the R in Rawlings on your catcher’s glove. I’ve also heard about players putting small circle stickers in their gloves at which throwers can aim their throw.   One thought I had after going through this session was to get a bright sticker to attach inside of the catcher’s glove to give the pitcher something to shoot for.
• King of the Hill Competition  - Coach had mentioned this idea in a different context, but his talk made me think of doing something I’d call “King of the Hill.” I think that this would be a drill that would work really well in hall ways. So, let’s say that you have 8 players. Pair them up into groups of 2 so you have 4 pairs of players. Have each pair line up like they're playing catch, which each member within a pair facing one another. So, for example, pair 1 would be on the far left while pair two would be next to them, pair three next to them and so on. Pair 1 & Pair 2 will compete against one another in a drill. Same for all of the other paired pairs. Let’s say that you want to emphasize quickness and the drill is how many back and forth throws can you make in 2 minutes. Pair 1 & Pair 2 face off. Whoever loses moves down a pair whereas whoever wins moves up. So the winners of the first two paired groups face off while the loser of the first pair faces the winner from the next pair and so on. The goal is to remain in the left-most group as long as possible.
• There are energy givers and energy takers  - As players, you can either be an energy giver or an energy taker. An energy giver is a player who, as the name suggests, gives energy to other players around him. He’s encouraging other players, he’s moving quickly, he’s acting in ways to contribute energy to the situation. Also, he’s acting in ways that ARE NOT removing energy from a situation. An example would be a catcher who keeps a high tempo in receiving the ball and getting it back to the pitcher. An energy taker catcher would be lazy, throwing the ball slowly back to the pitcher. An energy giver is encouraging his team-mates positively.
• When giving criticism, try to focus on one thing – if a player has multiple things going wrong for him/her, rather than piling on everything that is going wrong with the player and overwhelming him/her, try focusing on just one thing that’s going wrong and focus on that.
• Catchers should develop relationships with their pitchers – the catcher should learn how to talk to his pitcher by developing a relationship with him. One way of doing this is having your catchers go through drills with the pitchers. Have them play catch together. Another important aspect of this is to have your catcher participate in the pre-game bullpen with the pitcher. In some teams, you’ll see the catcher actually participating in the infield/outfield drills with the coach rather than spending time with his pitcher in the bullpen.
• Bullpens should be treated like games for BOTH the catcher and pitcher – the catcher should take these bullpens seriously as a way to work on game skills. A catcher can incorporate game skills into the bullpen, such as practicing throws down to 2B. One thing that the coach emphasized was that even if they incorporate practicing throwing into their bullpen routine, some catchers will practice the footwork but then pause at the top of their throw. The coach said this is dangerous because then you’re teaching your catchers to pause as part of their throw-down to 2B. I’m not sure of a great solution to this other than having your catchers work on the footwork and then fake a throw down to 2B.
• Catch the ball in a way that makes the glove pop – it’s a small thing, but a catcher should try to catch the ball in a way that will make the glove pop. It gives the pitcher a good mental feeling if they are hearing the glove pop when the catcher catches it. 

   Heard about this drill from Mark Gjormand from Madison HS (VA) at the National High School Baseball Coaches Association convention in Columbus, OH in 2016. I thought it was an interesting, competitive drill that's similar to the "taters" drill that I've outlined here. Thought that I'd share the drill here for your reference and my own future reference.
   You start will a full infield & outfield group. The idea behind the drill is to emphasize perfect throws between the players. First off, the drill will consist of 3 rounds. The ball starts in LF. The LF relays to 3B via the SS. 3B throws to 2B (covering 2B) who then relays to 1B, 1B to C, C throws down to 2B. 2B puts the ball in a bucket near  2B. Round 1 is complete.
   Round 2 is the same as Round 1 except the ball now starts in CF. You throw from CF to 3B via SS, to 2B, to 1B, to C then back to 2B. Drop in bucket. Round 2 complete.
   Round 3 follows the same procedure except that you are now starting in RF. RF throws to 3B via SS, 3B to 2B, 2B to 1B, 1B to C, C to 2B. Drop in bucket. Round 3 complete.
   So, the throw pattern can be simplified like this -
   Round 1: LF - SS - 3B - 2B - 1B - C - 2B (6 throws)
   Round 2: CF - SS - 3B - 2B - 1B - C - 2B (6 throws)
   Round 3: RF - SS - 3B - 2B - 1B - C - 2B (6 throws)

To spice it up a little, you can mandate that the throws be made under a certain time. If any error is made, a new fielding group must replace the current fielding group.