Practice #15--Defense wins games

The Mudcats might not know it, but they largely wrote Friday's practice script during Thursday's game. That 20-7 loss was a terrific illustration of the power of defense, as the Bats made several sparkling plays in the field--plays that made it virtually impossible to string together any kind of offense, and plays that seemed to feed off each other. Once one terrific play was made, the next one almost seemed to be a foregone conclusion.

That's the kind of defense the Mudcats want to play in Saturday's 3:30 contest against the Thunder. As the season approaches the midway point, it's the time of year when some fundamentals can start to slip. With that in mind, Friday night's session was defense-intensive.

The practice began in the cage, with the usual round of tee/soft toss/live pitching. Live pitching was done by the newly preppy Coach Andrew, who showed no ill effects from consuming 32 root beers on Thursday night and apparently spent his evening off shopping for new duds at J. Crew. For those who missed it, it looked something like this. Perhaps intimidated by the new West Raleigh dress code, the other team with rights to the field didn't show up. That turned out to be a good thing, because it was determined that the Mudcat hitters were "burning down the cage" with the hot bats they were swinging.

Once they took the field, the team broke into two groups--infield and outfield. Infielders started the session with the reaction ball, a torturous device designed to bounce anything but normally. They eventually moved on to fielding grounders, focusing hard on getting a wide base and receiving the ball out in front of them, closing the top hand down like a gator...whoops, not that gator, this gator...or, er, I know it's here somewhere...this gator.

In the outfield, players worked on a variety of skills. Coach Rob proved to be the master of the tricky in-between ball, forcing the outfielders to choose between charging it hard and trying to play the ball on the fly, or staying back and fielding it on a hop. Later, gum was awarded for charging in hard on ground balls to the outfield, trying to emulate the force play at second made by Hayes on Thursday. They also worked on one of the toughest plays for this age group--turning and sprinting back on a fly ball over their head.

Practice concluded with a relay, won in a titanic upset by the outfielders--made up mostly of the team's younger players--over the bigger, stronger infielders. Of course, the fact that the outfielders only had to have five racers complete the race while the infielders had six might have had something to do with it. Afterward, Coach Joy and Coach Tonya awarded helmet stickers for sportsmanship to Hayes and Tyler.

Pregame Saturday begins at 2:30 p.m. The key part of the day--Andrew and Neal's field grooming clinic--should begin at approximately 3:10 p.m. and will be filmed by the Home and Garden Channel for a later documentary. Those with a keen eye for scheduling will note that NC State plays Georgia Tech at noon and Carolina plays Duke, er, Rutgers (got the two state universities of New Jersey confused for a second) at 3:30. The West Raleigh Diamond Vision board will show live feeds of both games.