The Forever of Opening Day

We trundled to school today side-by-side, hands in pockets.  The whipping wind still trying to push us back into our heavy coats and the doldrums of a long winter’s hibernation, but little G and I instead embraced our windbreakers, basking in the high sky and sun that beckoned toward warmer days…

…and baseball.

The two of us were indeed a sight to behold.  Gunnar shrouded his freshly-laundered Bryce Harper jersey with the traditional navy jacket of his Nationals.  He didn’t seem to mind at all that his Dad looked more like he was headed to the Breakfast Club, the shimmering satin blue of the vintage 1987 Mets jacket shimmering garishly in the early spring glare.

And so we smiled and shivered knowing that this illusion of forever, this connective tissue of our family moving into its fourth generation, was our reality once again.  So with our fist bump and kiss, we separated, but this time knowing that our pattern starts once again.  Knowing that when I see him after Math Club, the question “How was your day?” will not be replaced, but merely substituted, as “What was the score?” in our family means pretty much the same thing.  It is the beginning of that maze of conversation that may lead in endless directions: school, girls, politics, friends, girls, climate change, girls—on and on.  But that binding agent, that common ground that grounds our relationship—it always starts “What was the score?”

And that is what is so beautiful about baseball—a game that mimics life.  It’s seemingly endless schedule.  It’s leisurely pace.  It’s a game that’s doesn’t proffer the pompous grandeur of the Super Bowl or the spectacle so insane it can only be termed March Madness .  It’s a game that, if you allow it to, permeates into the fabric of life.  It’s astounding beauty and it’s background noise.  It’s spectacular moments and it’s 6th inning naps.  And it’s there, every day, offering the possibility of something new couched in the comfort of the familiar.

It’s there, of course, until it isn’t.  Until the cruel autumn winds come to sweep the game into slumber once again.

But the winds today are that of spring, and the game once again offers the promise of a forever stretching in both directions.  I’m eight years old sitting in the tattered wood seats at Shea, eating grapes as my Granda Lou correctly predicts the home run Neil Allen will give up to Dave Winfield to lose yet another game, continuing a winless streak for the Nathanson clan in Flushing that stretched from 1977-1983.  Yet at the same time I’m a grandfather, sitting with my two sons and their kids, explaining how their favorite first baseman is good, but there will never be another one quite like Keith Hernandez.

And it all begins again today.

“Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.” – A Bartlett Giamatti, The Green Fields of the Mind

The Giving Tee

Baseballs go from soft foam to hard leather.  Kids outgrow their gloves and helmets and bats.  But even as our kids change and the game changes along with it, there’s one piece of equipment that can go from first swing to game 1 of the World Series—the batting tee.  A tee can be a piece of living memory for coaches and kids alike, not dissimilar to Shel Silverstein’s Giving Tree.

Hello, old friend

Behold my Giving Tee—one I’ve had since my 12-year-old graduated from BlastBall.  It squeaks when I carry it around as the handle has rusted a bit from forgotten nights out in the rain.  It’s black plastic body hides a multitude of scars as numerous closed-eyed, spinning swings have taken their toll.  And the tee itself isn’t even the same one that originally came with it.  That heavy-duty, spiral rubber top managed to survive about seven seasons, but was ultimately overwhelmed by the power-sans-control of my 10-year-old Grays.  But I brought it back to live using the tee tube of one of my numerous other victims, using a carrot peeler to slim the tube down enough so it could move up and down and still be secured in the shaft.

I love this tee.  And when I see it sitting there, holding my boys’ bats, waiting anxiously for another season in the sun, I feel like it loves me right back.  This tee makes me especially excited to be going back to coaching t-ball, as it gets the chance to start over with yet another group of kids playing, laughing, and learning.

Okay, yes, I cried at the end of Toy Story 3.

But whether you’re a nerd like me turning a tee into a family heirloom, or perhaps because I’ve convinced you (or you already knew) that tee work is important at every level of baseball, I hope you’re going out and adding a batting tee to your baseball equipment must list.

So let me give you a quick guide to purchasing, protecting, and using your tee.  Tear-jerking personification is entirely optional.

BUYING A TEE

There are four general tee categories that I have experience with.  Let me give you a rundown:

Bucket Tees: The concept of these are simple and fantastic.  The tee and the bucket are one piece, allowing you to keep your balls and tee together, which is extremely convenient.

Try throwing a few batting donuts in the bottom to help keep it from tipping

I’ve either used or seen three different types of Bucket Tees.  First is the Easton Bucket Tee.  This baby will run you about $50 and has 30 whiffle balls included, which makes it a pretty darned good bargain.  The key is that this one is made almost entirely out of rigid plastic, so it’s not overly durable.  It uses an elastic band to allow the tee to collapse down into the bucket and be sealed.  This one is best suited for the foam bat set, but could be used for t-ball and early coach pitch batting practice. If the mechanism to raise and lower the tee breaks, an easy fix is just to jam a key in as a wedge.  Worked like a charm for me.

My Giving Tee is a bucket tee made by the Virginia Baseball Club.  It costs around $40 and is much more durable.  Unfortunately they don’t ship, so you’d need to be in the Northern Virginia area to score one of these (they’ll even build one for you at a discount if you bring your own bucket).  This tee isn’t the greatest for first swings, as the lowest it goes is 2 feet high.  Also, the tee cannot go into the bucket, so it does not seal up.  But it does have a weighted bottom which keeps it from tipping over.

For those who like what they see from VBC but aren’t in the area, there is the Osborne Bucket Tee, which is available for about $80.  Like the VBC tee, this one is also weighted at the bottom, but puts the tee tube in the center of the bucket, and the tube is fully removable which allows the bucket to be sealed (and used for sitting for soft toss—a nice feature .  It looks like the tubes are replacable for around $20 a pop.  It also has a 2 foot minimum height, so may be better for the 8+ set rather than for first swings.

Rubber Tees: These are the tees most folks think about.  Usually fairly thick black rubber where the tee shaft fits into a molded raised hole in the base.

Now, for about $20 you can find a perfectly good basic rubber tee like this one.  The only issue with many of these is that while they fit in the molded hole, one good whack anywhere on the tube and it comes tumbling off.

So if you are looking for a tee like this, I’d suggest you look for one that doesn’t just insert, but actually fastens in.  The most solid one I found was this Rawlings 5-Tool Multi position batting tee for $60, which has the advantage of actually having two tees that can either be linked or separated.  The downside to tees that fasten in with a screw, however, is that the kids can beat on them enough that the hinges that hold them together actually break.  Once that happens, time to head back to the store.

If you get this particular one, I would suggest NOT using the connecting piece and just use the two tees as needed.  So when one tee is hit, the whole tee will fall over—that give will keep the screw and bolt system from bending and breaking.  Then flipping the tee back up is far faster and easier than reinserting the tube itself.  These tees and almost every basic black rubber tee start at 20’’ instead of 24 or 25, which makes this perfect for t-ball work.

Note that many of these tees have replacement tops and tubes.  So when you buy, you may want to just Google your product and see if yours have replacement parts easily available.  Especially for the more expensive items, it’s good to know that you might be able to replace parts rather than the whole tee.  For coaches, having a replacement tube or top on hand is a great way to ensure that drills can continue even if there’s a mid-practice malfunction.

One last thing I’d note is that you’ll see a whole variety of tees that have tubes that can move from location to location on the plate.  I’d suggest you don’t spend the extra money for that.  Instead, use a simple throwdown home plate for your location, and simply move the tee so the tube is at your preferred location on that plate.  It ends up being faster than moving the tube around.

And a toy surprise inside every tee. Just break and find, kids!

Cheap Plastic Crap Tees: Okay, I guess I’m giving myself away here.  Tees take a beating.  So whether you have a little one wielding foam or an all-star softball slugger with her composite bat, learn from my failures and just stay away from the “My first tee” kind of stuff.  The MLB Foam Teeball Set was great—for the foam bat.  The tee lasted about 20 swings.  Then I thought I’d get clever as I saw this anti-tip batting tee.  Well, as good as its name as it didn’t fall over, the middle of the tube snapped off after about, yep, 20 swings.  Note that both of these products carry the MLB logo.  The only think I’ve been able to surmise about this is that any youth baseball equipment with the MLB logo is roughly equivalent to a product being approved by Krusty the Clown—don’t assume quality.

The one tee of this ilk I had any success with is the SKILZ 360 tee.  The claw top was a bit more durable and the “anti-tip” base actually withstood some significant thumping.  And when the claw top came off, you could still place the ball on the tube itself, so I ended up get a solid couple of years out of this one.  The tube, however, is not adjustable, so for the money, I’d say you’re still better off going rubber.

Professonal Quality Tees: Not much to say about these.  This $80 Tanner Tee is one of the standards you’ll see and there are a number in the same price range much like them.  They are easily adjustable, the tops are well made, and they stay quite stable.  I would not recommend them for young t-ball players using metal bats, as the tubes can be bent and dented so they’re really for more advanced players.

PROTECTING YOUR TEE

How tape can save your tee (see top) and what happens when you don’t use it (see everywhere else)

The most important part of any tee—Duct Tape: Why, you ask?  Because whether you’re using a foam BlastBall bat or a cryogenically frozen carbon composite big barrel $3 jillion dollar special, tees take a serious beating.  At the early levels, kids hit parts of a tee you would never expect as they chop and twirl and close their eyes.  For more advanced hitters, even a great swing is going to strike the tip of the tee as the bottom of the barrel will brush the tee as the ball is struck directly on the sweet spot.  And because the default mistake most hitters have is to drop their hands below the ball, it is more likely that the tee is going to get whacked than a harmless swing over-the-top.

So do yourself a favor and give it a good wrap in Duct Tape.  For most tees, you can get pretty low on the tube itself without lessening the ability to move it up-and-down, but really build the tape up around the hitting area from the top down about 8 inches.  I usually go around a good 5-10 times.

For bucket tees, especially with younger players, it’s a great idea to actually give the top 4 inches of the bucket itself a wrap if it doesn’t hurt the ability to place the cover back on.  The Easton bucket especially is not of the best quality (mostly because no one expects you’ll ever hit them).  So even a foam bat can take a chunk out of the bucket, and you have a potential safety hazard as well as having the bucket itself not serve a purpose anymore if the crack is large enough for balls to spill out.

MY TOP TEE DRILLS

In my last post, I noted the “Pedroia Drill” which both my boys do as often as weather and homework allow.  But there are a few other great drills I’ve learned that I think really help maximize the value of working off the tee.

Two-Tee Drill: This one is my absolute favorite, as one of the most common issues for hitters from t-ball to the Majors is dropping the hands under the ball, rather than bringing the hands directly to-and-through the ball.  Placing a second tee about two feet behind the one the ball is placed on is a great way of getting players to really feel that loop in the swing and correct it (though, be warned, it can be hell on that back tee).

Testing this drill over time, I tend to like that back tee to be an inch or two lower than the front, as a slight uppercut is not the worst thing.  Having the back tee higher tends to teach the player to chop at the ball, so I’d avoid that. But pretty much any other tee drill can be supplemented with great efficacy using the two-tee approach.

Small Bat Drill: Here’s another Major Leaguer, Todd Frazier, with an interesting approach to hitting off the tee.

I pulled out one of my boys’ old t-ball bats which worked very nicely for this drill now that they’re bigger.  But another great tool for this drill (I’ll talk more about it in a future post) is “The Spatula.”  The actual name for it is the Insider Bat, and it is a wonderful way to help teach kids the right hands-to-the-ball approach as the only way to strike the ball is with proper hand position.

Belly Button Drill: I recently learned this one and love it, as along with dropping the hands, the “long swing” – i.e. swinging around the ball rather than directly through it – is one of the most common issues young hitters need to work out.  For this drill, you can use a screen, a chair, or a second tee, but you set up a barrier just off the outside corner of the plate.  The batter places the end of his bat on his belly button, and places the end of the bat so it touches the barrier.  Now, as the batter hits off the tee, the goal is to strike the ball without hitting the barrier.  It works well with soft-toss as well, but I’ve seen very few drills that so quickly teach players to keep their hands inside the ball rather than sweeping around it.

Well, there you go.  Hopefully enough (and more than likely too much) for you to go on.  Me, I think I’ll head over to ole’ Buckety and take a few cuts.  She’s looking a little lonely…