‘Coaching Youth Baseball’: Essential Drills and Life Lessons from Kevin Sweeney’s 2025 Guide
“Coaching Youth Baseball” is a 2025 book by Kevin Sweeney. It is a how-to guide for coaching ages 8-13. It is a useful book that contains all the drills and strategy on needs to effectively coach young baseball players. It includes pitching, hitting, and fielding drills. They are described for you in a way that makes them useful for people who want to become effective coaches of the sport.
“Coaching Youth Baseball” is also useful to parents who want to help their children become better baseball players. One thing that is important and stressed is that the sport is a lot like life and contains many life lessons, spelled out in the concluding chapter. Do you believe baseball is a lot like life?
Hitting Drills
In the fifth chapter of “Coaching Youth Baseball” there are tens of hitting drills explained. It all boils down to, one is only going to get so many swings in life, so swing hard. Of the hitting drills included, the best one is called the bat trace drill.
Bat Trace Drill
Put a ball on a tee and address the tee in your batting stance. On the first swing, swing slowly and stop before the ball and then bring the bat back up and hit the ball off the tee. When you take your slow swing, on your ‘bat trace, ’ assess your swing from the ground up.
With your feet, make sure they are shoulder width apart and you have ten toes pointing forward. As you swing you need to step forward with your front foot and turn on your back foot so that it ‘squishes the bug. The step should be toward the Pitcher. Keep your foot at a forty-five-degree angle. Your knees should be slightly bent and shoulder width apart the entire time. Your belt buckle should start pointing at the tee and finish pointing at the Pitcher.
On the bat, when you swing you should have ten door-knocking knuckles lined up flat on the bat. A batter can check this by pointing their index fingers up off the bat, if they point up the batter is okay. Also, when the batter starts the swing, the butt end of the bat should be pointing at the Catcher’s front knee. Always look at the ball, head down to start. You cannot hit what you cannot see. Finish by looking at the Pitcher.
Fielding Drills
In the sixth chapter of “Coaching Youth Baseball” there are tens of fielding drills. While there are some good drills for fielding a baseball in this chapter, throwing the ball is also important. It is for this reason the throwing program is stressed. This is how to throw an object, like a baseball, and learning the proper way to throw will help aspiring ball players exponentially.
Throwing Program
- On one knee, raise your throwing hand knee, throw the ball over the top to a teammate. Accentuate flipping your wrist down on the follow through.
- Stand up. Make a good figure eight with your upper body, starting with your glove side and focus on getting your throwing hand all the way back and on turning sideways. Throw the ball to your partner.
- Throw a medium distance to your partner, focusing on all of the fundamentals in steps (1) and (2). It is helpful if a coach pays close attention at this point and corrects fundamental flaws.
- Have your partner move back (to about 90 feet) and make those throws – focusing again on the fundamentals of steps (1) and (2), Turn sideways (like on your surfboard), come over the top, and snap your wrist down,
Pitching Drills
Chapter Four of the book on “Coaching Youth Baseball,” has tens of pitching drills. Pitching is the specialty of the author, so this chapter is encyclopedic. The best drill is also one of the simplest to do, all that is required is a dish towel.
Towel Drill
To do the towel drill, the pitcher should hold the towel in their throwing hand and swing it downward in their pitching motion. The Pitcher should hit the Catcher’s glove with the towel. The intent of this drill is for the Pitcher to get full extension in their pitching motion. It is also the case that Pitchers get a good warm up from the towel and should use the towel before they throw a baseball – always.
“Coaching Youth Baseball” in Summary
“Coaching Youth Baseball’ is usefully separated into ‘preseason,’ and in-season practices and games sections. The way this book is organized is helpful for coaches and parents as a guide to what to do for coaches and parents who want to make children better ball players. As the author points out, doing so, will make them better people as the sports of baseball, he stresses, contains several life lessons.
