Oriole baseball hats among best-designed in the major leagues

I agree completely with Brett Lewis about the O's hats.

Here are Brett's top four hat rankings:

1. NY Yankees [Much as I dislike the Yanks, I have to agree that they have a nice logo.]
2. Philadelphia Phillies [Lewis overrates these. They're OK.]
3. Minnesota Twins [Top ten, yes, but at #3 they are overrated.]
4. Baltimore Orioles [Top four, absolutely. Great hats! ]

Others I like:


St. Louis Cardinals (not the first hat above, the last two. I guess I'm a sucker for realistically drawn birds -- no cartoons please -- and interlocking letters). Plus the LA Dodgers (more interlocking letters and Dodger blue is a pleasing shade), the Pittsburgh Pirates (nice font, excellent colors - that particular yellow goes great with black) and the Washington Nationals (I'm glad they retained the old "W" from the Senators).

Near the bottom of the list, in my opinion, are the Mets hats (Too seventies garish. I can't get past the HoJo-style color scheme. It's downright ugly. Don't like their droopy font either.)

Also near the bottom: Red Sox (I never liked the lumpy font they use for their "B".)

via InsideCharmCity

Spring training starts in 10 days!

To get in the spirit, here are some articles on strength training for baseball. I can't vouch for the quality, but some of them seem worth a look:

12 month baseball strength training program

Plyometric training

Forearm & rotator cuff exercises

Comprehensive baseball weight training

Things I hadn't known about baseball gloves

A friend and I had a very pleasant interaction a few weeks ago with a twenty-something sales manager at the Dick's Sporting Goods store in Hunt Valley. Some tidbits we picked up from him:

1. Many gloves these days come with oil already injected into the leather. When that's the case, you shouldn't apply extra oil to the glove.
2. Professional shortstops and second basemen tend to use smaller gloves than I had thought (around 11.5 inches).
3. Professional infielders (except perhaps first basemen) don't insert their hand fully into their glove. They leave the bottom of the hand visible (the inch or so that includes the base of the thumb). This is partly to prevent wrist injuries when diving for ground balls so the glove can fall off rather than breaking or spraining the wrist.
4. Many advanced players put both the ring finger and the pinky finger into the last finger hole. The middle finger goes into the ring finger hole and the index finger goes in the middle finger hole. This helps to create a larger pocket.
5. Some pros now have "flared" corners on their gloves (the corners at the ends of the thumb and pinky). This lets the open glove cover a larger area, when compared to a glove with corners that curl around the ball.
6. A quick way to break in a glove: smear a small dabs of shaving cream on several areas of the glove (the inside of the pocket, the back of the fingers [and the palm of the glove?] and put it in a 300 degree oven for five minutes.
7. Some pros now have "flared" corners on their gloves (the corners at the ends of the thumb and pinky). This lets the open glove cover a larger area when compared to a glove that has more curl around the ball at the corners. But some pros prefer the non-flared gloves.
   
8. One way to build up your arm strength: cut a slit in a tennis ball, fill it with pennies, seal it up with duct tape, and play catch (gently) for 10 minutes or so on a regular basis. Some caveats: don't throw too hard or too far, don't do it for too long and don't do this with your best glove, because it causes extra wear and tear on the glove.

My friend spent more money than he had planned to, but I think he got something that suits him much better and will last longer than the one he had originally planned to buy.

Move Well, Avoid Injury

Interesting website. MoveWellAvoidInjury.com

Curveballs: have the dangers to young arms been exaggerated?

Mark Hyman reports in the NY Times on two new studies:

[They] evaluated more closely than before the effects of curves on young arms [. . . and . . . ] compared the forces across the elbows of pitchers as they fired fastballs and curves. [. . .] Each study concluded that curves are less stressful than fastballs and, based on the data collected, contributed little, if at all, to throwing injuries in youth players.

I don't buy it, partly because of this bit from later in the article:

[Dr. James] Andrews cited several limitations of the study. The fact that it was conducted entirely in a lab also needed to be considered, he said. Under game conditions when youth pitchers are fatigued, Andrews suggested, curves could be dangerous.

“I just operated on one kid this morning,” he said. “At age 12, he tore his ulnar collateral ligament in two. His travel ball coach called 30-something curveballs in a row. He became fatigued. Then he threw one that snapped his elbow.”

Mark wrote an excellent article but the headline (written by a someone else presumably) was simplistic and misleading:

Studies Show That the Curveball Isn't Too Stressful for Young Arms

Tom Glavine -- change-up that breaks like a screwball

When thrown by a lefty, it breaks like away from a right-handed batter. As described here.

It's one of the interesting bits from John Feinstein's book about Glavine and Mike Mussina. The book is good, but I wish there was more about baseball and less about strikes and contract negotiations.

Some other interesting bits:

• Mike Mussina would hold runners on first base by leaning over before the set and getting a glimpse of the runner between his legs.
• Glavine got a pain in his arm in the first weeks of his minor league stint, and Atlanta coach Johnny Sain cured it with five straight days of long toss (instead of rest or a visit to the doctor). Sain's thinking was that Glavine's arm just needed some stretching out to help make the adjustment from pitching infrequently in high school to the more-demanding professional routine.
  

NYT: static stretching bad, dynamic stretching good

Little league coaches take note:

The old presumption that holding a stretch for 20 to 30 seconds — known as static stretching — primes muscles for a workout is dead wrong. It actually weakens them.

The new wisdom has two parts. First a warm-up:

A well-designed warm-up starts by increasing body heat and blood flow. Warm muscles and dilated blood vessels pull oxygen from the bloodstream more efficiently and use stored muscle fuel more effectively. They also withstand loads better ... Most experts advise starting your warm-up jog at about 40 percent of your maximum heart rate (a very easy pace) and progressing to about 60 percent.

Second, dynamic stretching tailored to your sport:

Stretching muscles while moving, on the other hand, a technique known as dynamic stretching or dynamic warm-ups, increases power, flexibility and range of motion. ...
Dynamic stretching is at its most effective when it’s relatively sports specific. “You need range-of-motion exercises that activate all of the joints and connective tissue that will be needed for the task ahead,”

Some examples of dynamic stretching include the straight-leg march, the scorpion, and handwalking. This video also shows the Spiderman.

Software guy Chris O'Leary "debugs" baseball pitchers & hitters

Have you ever taken out a few books or videos from the library on pitching or hitting, only to find that the advice from each source is wildly contradictory?

Have you ever tried to help your youngster unlock the secrets of baseball, only to find that many coaches simply pass on the same mumbo-jumbo that others passed on to them?

I found that it's awfully hard to tell the good advice from the bad advice. Partly because most coaches (1) don't explain why their advice is sound, (2) don't have much insight on the relevant physics or physiology, (3) haven't tested their own advice much, and (4) don't use tools like slow-motion cameras to see what's really happening.

A few months ago, I found a guy named Chris O'Leary who has covered all four of those bases and more. On his website, he has gone a long way toward exploding many misconceptions that proliferate on Little League fields. For example, the balance point myth in pitching and the myth of the level swing in hitting.

Although he has virtually no baseball background other than playing in elementary school, his website is a treasure-trove of clear thinking and useful insights. The site is well illustrated with videos and stop-action photos.

If you want to start with pitching, go here. For hitting, go here.