Baseball Base Coaches

Video Transcript

BEN GRAHAM: Let's take a look now at the base coaches. These people, there's going to be one at third base and one at first base, and their responsibilities are to send signals in to the batter and to the runners on the field letting 'em know what to do. For example, a basic signal to--for the batter to swing away may be to touch the bill of your hat as the indicator, and then to do your hands like this to signal swing away, or you may also have an indicator and this is the wipe away sign. So you give your indicator, swing away, and then I'm going to wipe that away, go back to my indicator and give you another sign which may mean take a pitch, okay? Now each--the coaches and the players all have their different signs worked out. They know what every thing means. The primary responsibility of the base coach is to send those signs in to the batter or the runners on the field. Now, once the ball is live, once the ball has been hit, the base coach takes on another responsibility. Right now we're standing at third base so what I'm doing is I'm watching the field from here to see where the ball is going and if I have a runner coming around second base, I'm either going to wave him toward me or hold up the stop sign telling him to hold up at second base. Or if he's coming from second base to third base, I may want to wave him home like this or I may want to hold him up at third base here. So I've got to tell the runner where the ball is at and whether or not in my opinion he can make it from one base to the next. That's the responsibility of the third base coach. The runner must always trust what the third base coach is saying because if the runner is taking time to watch the ball, he's going to take away speed, he's not going to know where he is at and he is going to make poor decisions. That's why there are base coaches on the field. They're very active; they're very animated. They use a lot of hand signals but those hand signals all mean something. Every action that they take means something. The first base coach generally tosses in signals to the batter and to the runner and also let's the first base runner know whether the ball is fair or foul, whether--where it's at and if he can advance. The third base coach has to watch more of the entire field and has a little bit more responsibility, and they're very, very important to the success of a good baseball team.

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