Latest / From the Coach's Mouth / Episode 59: Steve Hendershot

Transcript

Episode 59: Steve Hendershot · From the Coach's Mouth

• 0:00
  Now we get kind of get into the world of what I think should
• 0:03
  happen. And so a question of the show
• 0:05
  is, you know, or this investigation that I'm
• 0:08
  undertaking this season is like, all right, So baseball at least,
• 0:11
  has historically been especially important in all the sports.
• 0:15
  And it totally has boxed out women.
• 0:18
  Is it worth fixing? At the field, in your car or on
• 0:22
  the couch, get your basket from the coach's mouth.
• 0:41
  Welcome to the From the Coach's Mouth podcast with your host Jay
• 0:46
  Bolden and Ken Krause. Yes, hello everyone.
• 1:04
  We are back again with the From the Coach's Mouth podcast.
• 1:08
  This is Ken, of course here with my good buddy Jay Bolden.
• 1:12
  Jay, the pride of Indiana, how are you doing today?
• 1:16
  I'm doing well, Ken. How?
• 1:17
  How about yourself, buddy? I'm doing all right, you know,
• 1:21
  healthy, healthy, moving around, staying on the right side of the
• 1:24
  grass. So that's always good.
• 1:26
  That's always a positive. Yes, absolutely.
• 1:28
  No, it's things are good. And Speaking of Indiana, our
• 1:31
  conference tournament is currently going on.
• 1:33
  We're down there playing at the Crown Point Sports Complex.
• 1:36
  We are still on the winter side, which is awesome and hopefully
• 1:40
  we stay there all the way through it.
• 1:41
  But weather has been a little iffy.
• 1:43
  It was real feel of 39° last night and tonight looks like
• 1:47
  it's going to be a little bit chillier with possible rain.
• 1:49
  I'm just wondering when the the good weather is actually going
• 1:53
  to get here and and stay here. Well, it's probably going to be
• 1:56
  right after you get done with the conference tournament and
• 1:58
  when you're done playing, it'll get nice.
• 2:00
  Yeah, it usually works like that.
• 2:02
  Yeah. You know, it's actually hard for
• 2:03
  me to believe that we're already up to the conference tournament.
• 2:06
  I mean, it seems like just a couple of weeks ago we were
• 2:09
  talking about being excited for the opening of the season.
• 2:12
  Yeah, it's it. Every year it just seems to go
• 2:15
  faster and faster. It's like, don't blink because
• 2:18
  it's over really quick. Yeah, for sure.
• 2:20
  Hey, I want to mention something to you.
• 2:22
  I've I've been seeing some of these videos lately and I don't
• 2:24
  know if you've seen them, but it's the thing where I guess
• 2:28
  some coaches are teaching this to catchers.
• 2:30
  They have runners on 2nd and 3rd, there's two outs or maybe
• 2:33
  bases loaded, 2 outs, and the catcher deliberately throwing
• 2:37
  the ball into the batter to try to get the umpire to call the
• 2:40
  batter out for interference. I mean, it's so bad that I
• 2:44
  actually saw one that looked like the kid ran after the
• 2:47
  hitter, got right next to her and then just chucked the ball
• 2:50
  into her helmet. Yeah, I have seen, I have seen
• 2:54
  some of those, Ken, and I say it all the time.
• 2:56
  I think if it's intentional, you're just trying to hurt
• 2:59
  somebody and that's just, that's not the way to play this game,
• 3:01
  right? Those things do happen.
• 3:04
  I I don't expect the batter to give up the box that I don't.
• 3:07
  But if you're doing that on purpose just to get somebody
• 3:09
  out, I think, you know, that's just intentional.
• 3:12
  It's not a good thing at all. Yeah, To me, they shouldn't be
• 3:15
  calling that as interference. I think that the umpiring
• 3:18
  organizations or the, you know, the sanctioning organizations
• 3:21
  have to make sure they're getting the word out to these
• 3:23
  umpires that don't just assume because the batter got hit with
• 3:27
  a throw that it was interference or that it should be called
• 3:30
  interference. To me, especially one of the
• 3:32
  ones I saw, that shouldn't be interference, that should be an
• 3:35
  ejection of the catcher and maybe the coach because it was
• 3:39
  clear the coach taught it. Yeah, yeah.
• 3:41
  If it's being taught, that's just, that's absolutely wrong.
• 3:44
  That's absolutely wrong. Yeah, it's just not the way the
• 3:46
  game is meant to be played. So agreed.
• 3:49
  All righty. Well, should we get into our our
• 3:52
  guest? 100% Ken, Let's introduce this
• 3:55
  awesome guest we have today. This is going to be a great
• 3:57
  episode. Cannot wait to dig in and and
• 3:59
  see what our guest has to say. Well, our guest today doesn't
• 4:02
  come from the channels we usually draw from.
• 4:05
  He's not as far as we know, nor has he ever been a fast pitched
• 4:09
  softball coach, player or a umpire.
• 4:11
  In fact, until recently he has had no connection to softball
• 4:14
  whatsoever, although he has coached youth baseball, so he's
• 4:18
  not a total stranger to bat and ball sports.
• 4:21
  What he is instead is an award-winning journalist and
• 4:24
  multimedia creator whose latest project delves deep into our
• 4:27
  world. More on that in a bit.
• 4:30
  As a journalist, his work has been featured on many high level
• 4:32
  media outlets including WBEZWGN and WLS Radio in Chicago,
• 4:39
  WTTWTV, Chicago's Public TV station, Chicago Access
• 4:44
  Television Network, and Crane Chicago Business Magazine, among
• 4:48
  other outlets. As many accolades include the
• 4:51
  Peter J Lissiger Award, the Jesse H Neil Award, the
• 4:54
  Editorial Excellence Gold Award, the W3 Gold Award, and Content
• 5:00
  Marketing Association Awards, his content spans a wide variety
• 5:04
  of areas from Chicago politics to craft brewing to homelessness
• 5:08
  to technology to academia and education.
• 5:12
  He is also the author of the best selling book, Undisputed
• 5:15
  Street Fighter, the art and innovation behind the game
• 5:18
  changing series, which was named one of the best video game books
• 5:21
  of all time by Nintendo. Life magazine.
• 5:24
  Pretty sure that's a magazine my kids read his.
• 5:27
  His latest project is a documentary style podcast called
• 5:31
  UN Ingrained, which looks at ideas that are deeply ingrained
• 5:34
  into society and examines whether it is worth pulling them
• 5:38
  out. The first season takes a deep
• 5:40
  dive into the question of why boys are generally directed
• 5:43
  toward baseball while girls are directed towards softball, and
• 5:47
  whether that should change. Ladies and gentlemen, please
• 5:50
  welcome the founder of Cedar Cathedral, Steve Hendershott, to
• 5:54
  the From the Coach's Mouth podcast.
• 5:57
  Penny, Jay, good day. Good to be with you.
• 5:59
  Good to be with you. Welcome.
• 6:00
  Welcome. Thank you.
• 6:02
  We're glad to have you here. You know, when we first got in
• 6:05
  touch with you through our mutual friend Matt Bath, you
• 6:08
  know, looked at it and, you know, wasn't really sure what we
• 6:11
  were going to do or how we were looking at it.
• 6:13
  But, you know, the more we looked at the topic, it seemed
• 6:15
  like this would be a good one. Kind of goes against the grain,
• 6:19
  obviously, the onion grain, but, you know, against the grain of
• 6:21
  what Jay and I normally talk about.
• 6:23
  But I think there's a lot of mutual ground in there there
• 6:26
  that that we can explore. I'm looking forward to the to
• 6:28
  the conversation and to learn more about your world.
• 6:32
  So I know that you're a baseball coach.
• 6:34
  So the thing we were mentioning before, have you been seeing
• 6:36
  that in baseball too, with the catchers kind of hunting the
• 6:39
  hitters and trying to get the outs, you know, the cheap outs?
• 6:43
  I have not. I did have a game the other day
• 6:46
  that ended. It was like a massive comeback
• 6:48
  from 11:00 to 3:00 and 11:00 to 11:00 and then the game ended in
• 6:50
  the most anti climactic way on runners interference where the
• 6:54
  kid on 2nd plot into the shortstop.
• 6:55
  But I think that was the old fashioned legitimate sort of
• 6:57
  interference. Not the not the type you were
• 6:59
  just talking about, but I do. I mean, look, name your sports
• 7:03
  when there's a coaching technique.
• 7:07
  And this is the kind of thing to the point about the umpires
• 7:09
  associations, if that happens once or twice and it feels
• 7:13
  anecdotal and one off and you let it go.
• 7:14
  But the minute you start to discern that that's a tactic
• 7:18
  that's just so far out of bounds and outside the spirit of what
• 7:21
  this is supposed to be about, you've got to like, you know,
• 7:24
  squish it out not from not only from a like calls perspective by
• 7:28
  the, but that's just not where you want your program to be,
• 7:31
  right? Or even better, if you're
• 7:33
  teaching that, then what are you doing right?
• 7:35
  Like you shouldn't be, you should not be coaching then like
• 7:38
  again, I think, like I said there, I I don't want the batter
• 7:40
  to give up the box. I understand that part of it.
• 7:42
  But however, if you're teaching that, just throw it in the back
• 7:45
  of her helmet. I mean, that's just that's,
• 7:47
  that's wrong, wrong on every level.
• 7:49
  And, and as a coach, you, I mean, I always say like, respect
• 7:54
  the game, respect the players, win with class, lose with class.
• 7:57
  If you can't do that, then get out of the game.
• 7:58
  You don't belong in it. Well, and here's the other
• 8:00
  thing, who adapts fastest to the, you know, the the rules and
• 8:05
  the umpires are not always the fastest.
• 8:06
  The players are going to start noticing.
• 8:08
  So all of a sudden the batter in the box, you're going to start
• 8:11
  cheating that helmet back toward the catcher to anticipate that
• 8:14
  play so you can get out of the way.
• 8:15
  And then all of a sudden you're going to catch that thing and
• 8:17
  you're, you know, in the mask, not the back of the helmet.
• 8:20
  And you know so before that starts happening.
• 8:23
  Yeah, it just doesn't seem like if you can't win without doing
• 8:25
  stuff like that, then you really don't belong.
• 8:27
  Coaching. Yep.
• 8:29
  Couldn't agree more. All right, so let's get into the
• 8:33
  topic of the day though. So you've got the On Ingrained
• 8:36
  podcast. Can you give us an idea what
• 8:38
  that documentary series is all about and how it's going to
• 8:41
  work? Yeah.
• 8:42
  So this is essentially, I mean, you mentioned the The Street
• 8:45
  Fighter book earlier. This is a podcast, you know,
• 8:48
  that we'll every year we'll look at a or as often as I've managed
• 8:51
  to put maybe it'll be less often than a year.
• 8:53
  But the plan is to do these ten episode deep dives into a topic
• 8:57
  and each one of those looks at an idea, a cultural idea that's
• 9:00
  so ingrained, so invisible, you know, based on some hidden
• 9:04
  assumption that we didn't notice it.
• 9:05
  So I think for a lot of people, you know, the the question of
• 9:08
  like, Oh yeah, why don't girls and women play base?
• 9:10
  But you didn't even think to ask.
• 9:12
  In fact, the genesis for this particular topic happened when a
• 9:16
  fellow baseball coach friend of mine said, I want to start an
• 9:20
  all girls fall Baseball League. And I interrupted her and I
• 9:24
  said, you mean softball, right? And she didn't.
• 9:27
  That was when I realized, Oh, I I, you know, had this idea so
• 9:31
  close, so ingrained in my own brain that I somehow thought it
• 9:35
  was the right idea to just correct this person who would
• 9:37
  send something else. So, you know, a different story
• 9:39
  like that. And there are lots of those in
• 9:41
  society and we'll we'll unpack one of them, figure out, you
• 9:44
  know, a how we got here. But then also, and this is
• 9:47
  really relevant to baseball and softball because to tip my hand
• 9:51
  a little bit, I you know, I think they're different sports.
• 9:53
  And I don't think there's any reason why men's fast pitch
• 9:55
  shouldn't be a big deal. And I don't think there's any
• 9:56
  reason why girls women's baseball shouldn't be a big
• 9:59
  deal. But they're, you know, then is
• 10:01
  the question of like, well, now this is the state of affairs.
• 10:03
  Is it worth fixing or have where we landed?
• 10:05
  Does this make sense or is it OK even if it you know it wasn't
• 10:09
  the most logical path? So was it your friend that
• 10:13
  having that conversation that got you interested into this
• 10:16
  concept of going against the, the norm generally, or did you
• 10:20
  kind of have this already in your, in your mind a little bit?
• 10:22
  Was it the friend that made this like, wow, that's that would be
• 10:25
  a great topic to to to really dig into.
• 10:27
  The topic, yes, a combination of her starting the league and then
• 10:31
  also, you know, so I coach, I have two kids, a daughter and a
• 10:34
  son. My daughter is older.
• 10:36
  She had played Coed baseball, in part inspired by this friend,
• 10:39
  you know, before she started the all girls league.
• 10:41
  Just, you know, hey, girls should play baseball.
• 10:43
  Jade got excited about it. And I watched the difference in
• 10:46
  social dynamics between her being the girl on the team or
• 10:49
  the one of two or three girls on the team in the Coed situation.
• 10:52
  It just the coaching she got, how she responded to it, how she
• 10:55
  got along with other members of the team compared to when she
• 10:58
  finally got into a dugout on a girls team or, you know, playing
• 11:01
  girls basketball or whatever it may be.
• 11:02
  And it was just like, yeah, this is it.
• 11:04
  This is an odd world. If you convince a girl to love
• 11:07
  baseball, as my friend did, then we've put her into a bit of an
• 11:10
  odd situation. And how did we get here?
• 11:12
  And you know what, what what are the other possible paths to the
• 11:14
  show more broadly? That's just my personality.
• 11:17
  I never just want to like give the right answer to the
• 11:19
  question, I want to come up with an answer that nobody else in
• 11:22
  the class thought of. Awesome.
• 11:27
  You seem more like a business writer than a sports writer, at
• 11:30
  least from your background. How did you choose?
• 11:32
  Well, you kind of talked about how you got baseball, softball
• 11:35
  in the beginning as the topic. You know, how deep are you into
• 11:38
  the whole baseball area and did you get it into the softball
• 11:43
  part of it as well? Actually started out I went to
• 11:46
  college to do sports journalism specifically.
• 11:48
  I mean, that was my dream coming out of high school.
• 11:51
  I was partly why I, you know, I didn't end up being that great
• 11:54
  at baseball. I was better at basketball, but
• 11:55
  nowhere near a college athletes. So I went to college so I could
• 11:58
  I went, I went to Drake where I could be AD one athlete thinking
• 12:01
  that was going to be the thing that helped to make my bona
• 12:03
  fides as a sports journalist. And then quickly realized over
• 12:06
  the, you know, I did play by play for all the college teams
• 12:09
  and went back and did TV sports in my hometown and things like
• 12:11
  that. And realized that though I love
• 12:14
  sports, I didn't love sports journalism because of the number
• 12:17
  of times in everything I just said a second ago about like in
• 12:19
  the the wacky thing you've never heard before.
• 12:22
  I realized that, you know, the post game interview where you're
• 12:24
  just essentially asking a variation of, hey, that big play
• 12:28
  in the 7th inning, how huge was that?
• 12:32
  It's a boring way to live life as a journalist, even though I
• 12:34
  love the thing. So I decided to mostly leave
• 12:36
  sports in the in the fandom domain, though, you know, I've,
• 12:39
  I've come back and covered sports occasionally and did a
• 12:42
  story about the National Pro fast pitch league back in the
• 12:46
  late 2000s. I think when the cat and Jenny
• 12:49
  Finch and, you know, they like the Chicago and Rockford, you
• 12:51
  know, an earlier era in which that league was going on and had
• 12:53
  some some star power. But mostly.
• 12:55
  Yeah, I I found with business, for example, I was covering
• 12:58
  specifically a lot of tech startups for a while.
• 13:01
  And I just really loved interviewing those founders
• 13:03
  because those were people who were, again, trying to come up
• 13:06
  with a different answer to the test than anyone else had come
• 13:09
  up with. And I just really like telling
• 13:10
  those stories that has kind of broadened over the years to
• 13:14
  going deep on whatever. So, you know, you you mentioned
• 13:18
  earlier that the breadth of stuff and like, yeah, sure.
• 13:20
  Homelessness, that's another thorny issue that nobody knows
• 13:23
  the answer to. So let's talk about that.
• 13:24
  Or, you know, public safety, craft beer, take your pick.
• 13:27
  Yeah. Yeah, I think things like
• 13:30
  homelessness, people are always looking for that simple answer.
• 13:34
  And yet if there was a simple answer, we'd have already solved
• 13:36
  it. So it's, you know, it's not as
• 13:38
  simple as saying just do this, that and the other and
• 13:40
  everything is good. Yes, exactly.
• 13:42
  So the bad news then is if if I pick a topic, that probably
• 13:44
  means there's no solution. But yeah.
• 13:47
  Except for craft beer, there's plenty of solutions for craft.
• 13:50
  There you go. An abundance of solutions.
• 13:53
  Is that still going strong, by the way?
• 13:55
  I know that that was a big thing for a while.
• 13:57
  And then, you know, I live in Mundelein and there are, I
• 14:00
  think, a couple of craft breweries here.
• 14:02
  I mean, that's one of those like for a while it was going
• 14:04
  gangbusters to such an extent that all you needed to do was
• 14:07
  have some ability to make a beer and a neon sign to put out
• 14:10
  front. And you were you were doing
• 14:12
  fantastically. I don't think it's, you know
• 14:14
  that the industry is like consolidating, but I don't think
• 14:18
  it's going to vanish. It's going to going to right
• 14:20
  size. So you talked about like the
• 14:22
  whatever that you're going to, you know, what meaning topics,
• 14:26
  what are, what are some future things that you're looking to,
• 14:28
  to cover in the future? If you can give us a little hint
• 14:30
  about some of the things coming up for you.
• 14:33
  Yeah, this is a tricky 1. I so I've thought about this
• 14:35
  live. It's very important because, you
• 14:36
  know, it's not like every episode is a different topic.
• 14:38
  Every year is a different topic. So the first season in
• 14:41
  particular, I have to remember that this is not a show for
• 14:43
  baseball and softball geeks to, you know, like I have to really
• 14:46
  care about the general interest audience that just wants to like
• 14:50
  check into this topic. And so I had to kind of map out
• 14:53
  other seasons. I am still a little conflicted
• 14:57
  on how much to give the game away because partly the, you
• 14:59
  know, the fun of the show is that I'm going to tell some
• 15:01
  story that nobody else has has told.
• 15:03
  So I don't want to to road map it.
• 15:05
  But, you know, I do think it's always going to be important and
• 15:07
  I think it's always going to be fun.
• 15:08
  It's going to be close enough to some.
• 15:09
  You know, I think this season is perfect from the perspective of
• 15:12
  like, hey, I think there are some social importance issues to
• 15:16
  have. We boxed girls and women out of
• 15:18
  baseball, but enough of us are also just baseball and softball
• 15:22
  fans that it's fun to tell the story and it, you know, connects
• 15:25
  to things that are past times for us and stuff like that.
• 15:28
  So seasons will always do that to give you it to like come
• 15:33
  sideways to a place that I may or may not go in season 2.
• 15:36
  Let me ask you a question. Prospect rankings, like you
• 15:39
  know, how important are those and to what extent do families,
• 15:45
  kids going to change their schedules, the programs they
• 15:48
  participate in, things like that to try to maximize their ranking
• 15:55
  and prospects visibility and profile as opposed to making the
• 15:59
  choices that are just best for improving their game?
• 16:03
  Jay, you want to take that one or you're the college coach.
• 16:06
  Well, I'll go first, but you should chime in on this as well
• 16:09
  too. I think kids are always chasing
• 16:11
  that recognition. I don't know how important those
• 16:14
  rankings are because I've seen several kids who have been
• 16:18
  ranked on this these lists that when they get to the next level,
• 16:23
  don't show up like that. And then I've seen other kids on
• 16:26
  that list that do get ranked that do that do at the next
• 16:28
  level show up like that. And I think it's one of those
• 16:31
  things where there's just so many kids and there's so many
• 16:35
  tournaments and there's so many things going on, There's no real
• 16:40
  way to actually rank these kids out properly, right?
• 16:44
  Because, and I always say this to to the kids that I work with
• 16:47
  in my lessons, you know, my clients is that beauty is in the
• 16:51
  eye of the beholder. So 1 coach may see you as this
• 16:55
  high level prospect where another coach will look at you
• 16:58
  and say that high level, but doesn't fit my program.
• 17:02
  And I think so a lot of those rankings, and again, let's don't
• 17:05
  get me wrong, I think some of them are valid, But when we're
• 17:09
  ranking 6th graders, 7th graders and 8th graders, that's
• 17:13
  absolutely ridiculous because nobody knows how good these kids
• 17:18
  are going to be or not be right at that level.
• 17:21
  And then you also have the kids that are late bloomers.
• 17:23
  I mean, so to me, the ranking system is really great for some
• 17:27
  travel organizations and some pitching coaches and some
• 17:32
  parents to beat their chest and bang a drum at look at my kid,
• 17:35
  look at my kid. But then when they get to the
• 17:37
  college level and everybody's like that and they just kind of
• 17:40
  just average. So I think I'm not a fan of the
• 17:43
  of the ranking systems. I've had plenty of kids that
• 17:45
  have gone on to pitch it at the Division One level that were
• 17:48
  never ranked right. And, and some are really, really
• 17:51
  good. And, and, and the point of that
• 17:52
  is I just, I, I don't think that there is a, there's not enough
• 17:56
  resources, at least in the softball realm to be able to
• 17:59
  rank all of these kids validly. And I think that's kind of where
• 18:03
  I stand with it. So I don't put a lot of weight
• 18:05
  into that. And again, coaches know who's
• 18:08
  good or or not good know how do they do that?
• 18:10
  They do that by evaluating, which means you go to the
• 18:12
  tournament, you hear the hype of this kid, you go watch them
• 18:15
  play, you watch how they act, you watch those things, you make
• 18:18
  your evaluation. And then you know, if that kid
• 18:21
  really is what people are talking about and if they're
• 18:24
  going to fit in your program. And if not, then you're like,
• 18:26
  well, that's great that she's ranked, but unfortunately that's
• 18:30
  not the right fit and that's not what I'm looking for.
• 18:32
  That's just my take on that. Ken, what about you?
• 18:35
  Well, my take, yeah, I love seeing my kids get ranked.
• 18:38
  I love seeing, you know, nice high rankings.
• 18:40
  I feel good for them. I'm proud of them.
• 18:42
  I like to, you know, share that information when it comes out.
• 18:45
  But at the end of the day, a lot of the rankings are this is the
• 18:49
  best of who we've seen rather than these are the best kids
• 18:52
  that are out there. There may be kids that give it's
• 18:55
  from a particular organization. All right, so they did some
• 18:59
  showcases for them, pay their money, went to those things.
• 19:03
  And then now, you know, those are the kids that are being
• 19:05
  evaluated. But there are other kids who
• 19:07
  didn't go, didn't participate in any of that, who may be better
• 19:10
  players and they're getting left out of it.
• 19:13
  So, you know, it's, it's a funny ego thing.
• 19:15
  It's, you know, nice to see. But again, I also have that
• 19:19
  problem, especially at the younger ages, you never know
• 19:23
  who's going to be great by the time they're 16.
• 19:25
  And it really matters. So ranking an eighth grader or
• 19:29
  7th grader, that puts a lot of pressure on those kids too.
• 19:33
  How about we just play some ball, have a good time, try to
• 19:36
  develop our skills, and then from there we'll see what
• 19:39
  happens? So somewhere in there is the
• 19:41
  idea. I think you guys were both right
• 19:43
  on the list. A number of ranking.
• 19:46
  It feels data-driven, it feels objective.
• 19:50
  And somewhere is the somewhere in there is the ingrained
• 19:52
  thought that I think we buy into as a society.
• 19:54
  Hey, if there's a, somebody's made a list, it's got to be
• 19:57
  objective and then A to both of your points.
• 20:00
  It's not always and then B, sometimes the tail starts
• 20:03
  wagging the dog. You start, you know, changing
• 20:06
  the way you approach things in order to gamify where you appear
• 20:09
  on the list, which you know shouldn't rationally be your,
• 20:12
  you know, your aim, right? Right.
• 20:14
  Well, I was looking. It's like Hotshots part do
• 20:16
  right, You're the best of what's left.
• 20:21
  Yeah. So all right, let's let's dig
• 20:23
  into you a little bit. Did you play baseball growing up
• 20:26
  and and if and if you did, did you have girls on the team that
• 20:29
  you played on? I did play baseball.
• 20:32
  I, you know, maybe in t-ball slash, very young.
• 20:36
  I remember a girl on the team. But you know, definitely by the
• 20:39
  time I got to anywhere near double digits, I think that was
• 20:43
  not the case anymore. I played basketball, ran cross
• 20:45
  country and track. You know, those they were, they
• 20:48
  were parallel teams. There were girls teams, but they
• 20:51
  it wasn't this Coed situation. And I think that's kind of what
• 20:53
  makes baseball weird. In fact, that I didn't think
• 20:56
  about this going into the season, but I have reflected
• 20:58
  since I dated in high school and Allstate basketball player.
• 21:02
  And you know, I was also on the the guys team and she was better
• 21:05
  than me and she ended up playing D1.
• 21:07
  Her kid played for the University of Michigan a couple
• 21:10
  years ago. That was one of those things
• 21:12
  where I started thinking about this world in baseball where an
• 21:17
  elite girls and women's baseball player right now can make the
• 21:22
  guy's team in a fringy way and have a look at a certainly made
• 21:27
  our team. But instead she was Allstate
• 21:32
  scholarship caliber in this other category because it
• 21:34
  existed of women's basketball. And so I you know, I as I have
• 21:37
  interviewed these Unicorn women's baseball players.
• 21:40
  It's hard not to think it what could you have done if this
• 21:42
  other sport existed? And you know what, a lot of them
• 21:44
  actually, you know, I, I think baseball and softball are
• 21:48
  different sports with shared DNA and we can get into that, except
• 21:51
  I'm sure you probably believe it and don't need the convincing.
• 21:54
  So, you know, it's, it's not so far a field that you can't make
• 21:57
  the transition unless you're a pitcher.
• 21:59
  That's the one where I feel like the, that, that that's a tough
• 22:01
  go. If you become a pitcher in one
• 22:03
  thing or another, it's hard to just crossover.
• 22:06
  If you are a hitter or a fielder, you are in for a year's
• 22:10
  worth of hard transitional work. But I think you can, you can do
• 22:13
  it. But, you know, that's the that's
• 22:15
  the trade off you have to make. If you started in baseball and
• 22:17
  then suddenly decide you really want that scholarship.
• 22:20
  And I say that knowing, you know, there are somewhere
• 22:22
  between 6:00 and 10:00, you know, women playing on men's
• 22:26
  college baseball teams right now across the country.
• 22:27
  But you know that's not the easiest path, right?
• 22:30
  Right, right. You know, and one of the things
• 22:33
  that makes it complicated, too, is that the opportunities for
• 22:36
  women in the bat and the ball sports are definitely in
• 22:39
  softball. That's where the scholarships
• 22:41
  are. That's where the visibility is.
• 22:44
  The Women's College World Series outdraws the men's College World
• 22:47
  Series on television so that you have a lot of those things going
• 22:51
  on. But once you get past college,
• 22:53
  yeah, there's the AUSL, but it doesn't pay very well versus
• 22:57
  Major League Baseball. If you can make it to that
• 22:59
  level, you know you're doing pretty well.
• 23:01
  Yeah, that's it. And you know what, I I will
• 23:04
  feature the AUSL and I think it's the best shot that softball
• 23:08
  has had to sort of create that Halo effect pro opportunity.
• 23:11
  But one of the things, especially if we get into the
• 23:13
  history here of how we came to this state of being, you know,
• 23:17
  like what softball did that was really special.
• 23:21
  That has absolutely no analog in baseball is welcome women in and
• 23:26
  at the time the first ASA tournament, the predecessor
• 23:30
  organization to USA softball. You know, there was AI think
• 23:34
  Chicago had the World's Fair, the equivalent of the World's
• 23:37
  Fair in 1933. It was a big softball tournament
• 23:41
  to showcase this game that had, you know, that was absolutely on
• 23:44
  fire and that had been invented locally in Chicago.
• 23:48
  And it was primarily a women's, excuse me, a men's tournament.
• 23:51
  But the crazy thing is that the organizers, I don't think, with
• 23:54
  any huge sense of social purpose, maybe just trying to
• 23:57
  boost their numbers, also invited women's teams.
• 23:59
  And they showed up. And that opened the door to this
• 24:02
  national tournament that happened annually and to the
• 24:05
  creation of the industrial leagues.
• 24:07
  And then boom, there was infrastructure.
• 24:10
  But what's interesting is in those days it was entirely
• 24:13
  possible to have a 20 plus year career as a semi pro or quasi
• 24:20
  pro. It was one of the, you know, the
• 24:21
  industrial league jobs. You weren't necessarily getting
• 24:22
  a softball salary, but you had a job that paid you to play.
• 24:29
  You had a job that made sure you could get to all your games.
• 24:31
  And we're taken care of. You know, one of those lucky.
• 24:33
  I want to make sure I, you know, walk the right side of that
• 24:35
  line, but you could continue to essentially develop your
• 24:40
  softball gifts over the course of your career.
• 24:42
  Now you Fast forward, the advent of college softball was not the
• 24:47
  reason that the industrial leagues declined solely.
• 24:50
  There were, you know, the the factory jobs that were, you
• 24:53
  know, that the companies that were supporting those leagues
• 24:55
  were also having their own issues and they were different
• 24:56
  trends, But essentially those things happened at the same
• 24:59
  time. You know that those industrial
• 25:01
  league I played until I was 40 or you know, 50 in a couple
• 25:04
  cases, those opportunities declined.
• 25:07
  The college softball and high school.
• 25:09
  I mean, all the stuff spun up at like the same time, right in
• 25:12
  the, you know, around 1970 when those, when that architecture
• 25:15
  got built, it led to the college championship.
• 25:19
  I'll say that, you know, not just the College World Series,
• 25:22
  because there was the AIAW and a bunch of, you know, things
• 25:24
  happening in women's sports in those early years, but
• 25:26
  essentially you got this new marquee event and you Max out at
• 25:30
  age 22. And then what do you do?
• 25:32
  So the scholarship is this huge goal.
• 25:35
  And then so is having success with your college team.
• 25:38
  But then it's a shame that before we had women that were
• 25:41
  able to play until they were 40 and see what they could do.
• 25:44
  And it's like, who's the best of the best in a in a quasi pro
• 25:48
  realm? And then softball has been
• 25:50
  looking for that since then. And, and I hope we have it with
• 25:54
  the AUSL. Yeah, I hope so, too.
• 25:56
  You know, it'd be nice to have those opportunities.
• 25:59
  When we spoke to Sarah Polly, you know, she mentioned that she
• 26:03
  didn't really hit her peak speed until she was, what, about 27?
• 26:07
  So she would have never seen that.
• 26:09
  She did never gotten close to that if her career would have
• 26:12
  been done when her college days were done.
• 26:15
  Yeah, yeah. You know, and that's just one of
• 26:17
  many. Based on what you've learned so
• 26:19
  far, why do you think baseball's never really embraced attracting
• 26:23
  girls to the sport? Why is it, you know, just kind
• 26:26
  of been left alone? On purpose is the answer if you
• 26:31
  go way, way back to the founding of baseball.
• 26:34
  I mean, let's go back to, you know, 18 something there to, you
• 26:37
  know, the the sports that were popular were, you know, sports
• 26:42
  of questionable repute that mostly you could bet on, you
• 26:46
  know, boxing and horse racing, things like that.
• 26:48
  So, you know, not that there's not a huge athleticism and
• 26:53
  training and skill in boxing, but you know, since it was a
• 26:55
  sort of gambling driven thing. And then obviously when you move
• 26:57
  over into horse racing or, you know, cock fighting or what have
• 26:59
  you, you know, you've like left the realm of human athleticism
• 27:03
  entirely at that point. So baseball comes around.
• 27:05
  It's huge, you know, starting mid 19th century, but it's not
• 27:09
  organized yet. And when it finally starts to
• 27:12
  coalesce into a big box office draw professional, I mean, this,
• 27:16
  this again is based here in Chicago, AG Spalding of Spalding
• 27:20
  Sporting Goods. He was a star pitcher.
• 27:23
  Then he's in charge of the National League, of one of the
• 27:25
  teams. And he starts to build this
• 27:28
  mythology around baseball, but also really manages successfully
• 27:33
  to put forth this idea that it's not just an entertainment, but
• 27:37
  it is of social value. That, you know, like when we
• 27:40
  play baseball as kids, as pros, you know, we are building
• 27:43
  character. All this.
• 27:45
  I'm just all the stuff that we as coaches tell ourselves every
• 27:48
  day. This is why our work is
• 27:49
  important, that we're not just out there having a blast.
• 27:51
  Kind of like CW post saying that the most important meal of the
• 27:54
  day is breakfast because that's when he's trying to sell you.
• 27:58
  Yes, exactly. So you know what I actually do
• 28:00
  buy into all these things. I I think these like arguments
• 28:03
  have valid or the validity that sports generally, you know, can,
• 28:08
  you know, build character and all of that stuff.
• 28:10
  But for Spalding in particular, in this moment, I'm going to
• 28:13
  read this quote. Baseball is too strenuous for
• 28:16
  womankind, except that she may take part in the grandstand with
• 28:19
  applause to the brilliant play with a waving kerchief to the
• 28:21
  hero. It's not just men and women.
• 28:25
  It, it's also, I mean, the, this guy's obsessed with the
• 28:28
  Americanness of bait. I mean, it like obviously has
• 28:31
  roots in cricket and rounders and all these British sports.
• 28:34
  And one of the early, you know, it's a British guy, an American
• 28:37
  named Henry Chadwick, who's kind of paying attention.
• 28:39
  And he's like, no, actually, I recognize these sports.
• 28:41
  And Spalding is like, you absolutely do not shut up.
• 28:44
  It is, it is 1000% American. It would actually be impossible
• 28:48
  for a British member of the British Gentry who can barely be
• 28:52
  moved from his country house to put on his cricket whites to go
• 28:55
  play for six days, which, you know, obviously doesn't include
• 28:57
  the working man because he's off at the factory.
• 28:59
  That sport is, you know, like, that is everything about why we
• 29:03
  are cooler than the British and therefore this game that we have
• 29:06
  could not have descended from. And in fact, I'm pretty sure an
• 29:08
  American invented, in fact, I'm pretty sure a Civil War hero
• 29:11
  invented it. And that, you know, This is why
• 29:13
  you get Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, even though that's
• 29:16
  pretty plainly not where baseball came from.
• 29:19
  So it's this idea that like America's special, it is more
• 29:24
  special than all the other places.
• 29:25
  And baseball. We play baseball and no other
• 29:29
  country can play it or could have thought of it.
• 29:31
  And but also it's like America. I mean, this is a lot of like
• 29:33
  this American manhood idea. And so you are literally boxing
• 29:37
  women outs, not even necessarily because of well, I mean,
• 29:40
  whenever we can talk about misogynist that is, or whatever,
• 29:42
  but like you're, you're trying to elevate the American man and
• 29:45
  that means edging out people that don't fit both halves of
• 29:49
  that description. Time Blue.
• 29:54
  Hey Jay, on a scale of 1 to 10, how important do you think brush
• 29:57
  contact is for pictures? It's pretty high up there Ken
• 30:01
  probably attend since it's hard to get maximum speed and or
• 30:05
  accuracy without it. Yeah I agree, but have you ever
• 30:08
  had a student who struggled to get good light brush contact?
• 30:12
  Sure, all the time, in fact. Especially when they've been
• 30:16
  taught hello elbow and are trying to throw around their
• 30:18
  hips or they're sliding their hips out of the way doing that
• 30:21
  crazy ninja move. So what do you do when you run
• 30:24
  into this situation? Keep railing on them until they
• 30:27
  get it right. I used to do that a lot, but
• 30:30
  then I learned about a product called Pitch Squeak Ken.
• 30:33
  Pitch squeak. What's that?
• 30:35
  It's a cool little armband with a squeaker inside of it.
• 30:38
  Like a dog toy. Yeah, kinda.
• 30:41
  So how does it work? Well, you slip the armband onto
• 30:45
  the pitcher's forearm and you set it so the squeaker is where
• 30:48
  the brush contact should happen. Then when the pitcher goes into
• 30:52
  release, she tries to get it to squeak like this.
• 30:56
  If she makes it happen, she got brush.
• 30:59
  If there's no sound, she knows immediately and can make a
• 31:02
  correction. Wow cool, so she gets immediate
• 31:05
  audible as well as tactile feedback.
• 31:08
  Oh, there you go again, showing off with those big and technical
• 31:12
  words again. But yeah, she can feel it and
• 31:15
  hear it. Does it really work?
• 31:17
  You bet it does. I use it with my students all
• 31:20
  the time and it helps them learn how to get brush contact pretty
• 31:23
  quickly if they practice with it.
• 31:26
  Sounds neat. Where can I get one?
• 31:28
  Oh, it's easy, Ken. Just e-mail
• 31:30
  support@pitchsqueak.com and Jason, the inventor of it and a
• 31:36
  Poly Girl certified pitching coach himself, will ask you how
• 31:39
  many you want and send them right out.
• 31:41
  I'll do that today. Thanks, Jay.
• 31:44
  What's that address again? Oh, you bet, Ken.
• 31:47
  It's support@pitchsqueak.com one more time for those of you who
• 31:52
  are listening, support@pitchsqueak.com.
• 31:56
  And don't forget to mention in the e-mail that you heard about
• 32:00
  it right here on From the Coach's Mouth podcast and you'll
• 32:03
  receive 10% off play ball. I want to ask you because we
• 32:10
  have seen a few girls, most notably Monet Davis, you know,
• 32:14
  gain some notoriety playing baseball in the Little League
• 32:17
  World Series. Do you think that those players
• 32:20
  have had an effect on the number of girls playing baseball?
• 32:22
  Like in in your opinion? Yeah, so this is an interesting
• 32:26
  1 and it goes back to the infrastructure.
• 32:29
  So girls baseball has had a number of individual
• 32:33
  breakthrough players, you know, like Monet.
• 32:35
  I mean, and she's an interesting one 'cause I mean, she, yeah,
• 32:37
  tons of exposure. I mean, that was as a 12 UI
• 32:40
  think pitcher in the Little League World Series.
• 32:42
  So, you know, like very young in her athletic journey, but
• 32:45
  obviously it's like a breakthrough star.
• 32:47
  You know, now you have several women in that Savannah Bananas
• 32:52
  and associated leagues. You know, Kelsey Whitmore as the
• 32:54
  the most prominent of those. Over time, you've had those
• 32:58
  individual breakthrough stars from Jackie Mitchell striking
• 33:01
  out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig back in the 30s and a few women
• 33:05
  played in the Negro Leagues in the 90s.
• 33:07
  You know, Isla Borders made it into fairly high, you know,
• 33:11
  men's independent League Baseball, 1 games as a starting
• 33:14
  pitcher. And then really I would point to
• 33:16
  A league of their own as like the, you know, the the thing
• 33:18
  that fixed women's baseball. Oh, that that is possible.
• 33:21
  So you've always had at the high level this Halo effect and
• 33:24
  especially after League of their own.
• 33:25
  This is where I'm going to go with the the first episode of on
• 33:27
  ingrained. You know, that then leads people
• 33:29
  to say, oh, cool, so where are these people?
• 33:32
  And then they turn around and look for the thousands of
• 33:35
  women's baseball players. And those haven't necessarily
• 33:37
  existed because there isn't the developmental architecture and
• 33:42
  infrastructure that softball has.
• 33:44
  So yes, to your to your question, like, you know, did
• 33:47
  that inspire? Sure.
• 33:48
  But like, does a solar flare of inspiration immediately create
• 33:54
  youth house and travel programs? It does not.
• 33:56
  Well, that's interesting too. And I guess, yeah, when you talk
• 33:58
  about the infrastructure, you had some wealthy people, you
• 34:02
  know, you had William Wrigley in particular supporting women's
• 34:05
  baseball when it was convenient for him.
• 34:08
  And then once men's baseball came back and was in full force,
• 34:12
  he kind of lost interest in it. But it's unfortunate that there
• 34:17
  wasn't somebody else to pick up that mantle.
• 34:19
  Yeah, that era is interesting. I mean, it did going back to the
• 34:22
  industrial league we talked about before, I mean in the
• 34:25
  first years, I think it was like 19501943 to 54.
• 34:29
  That league existed in the first days.
• 34:32
  They were pitching underhand. It was essentially softball,
• 34:34
  though it was called baseball. They were drawing all of their
• 34:37
  players from the industrial league softball programs, or at
• 34:40
  least most of them. And then gradually they
• 34:42
  converted them over to baseball. They were to your point about
• 34:45
  Wrigley paying them well. But you know, the ASA played
• 34:50
  hardball in the same way that they did when there was an
• 34:52
  attempt at pro softball in that era.
• 34:55
  Essentially, you know, if you go over, you're ineligible for like
• 34:57
  the next thousand years or you know, it was it was a long time.
• 34:59
  You were basically saying goodbye to your quasi pro
• 35:03
  softball career if you went and played.
• 35:05
  So that was, you know, that always Hanford, that league of
• 35:08
  their own league, the all American girls professional
• 35:11
  baseball leagues attempt to get going.
• 35:13
  But to this point about the architecture and like was there
• 35:17
  a corresponding youth program? So that's 1943 to 54 if I've got
• 35:24
  it right. I think it was 19.
• 35:27
  It was 1950 that, you know, a, a girl played Little League by
• 35:31
  tucking her hair in her hat. But then, like, word made its
• 35:34
  way up to Little League HQ and they codified the rule that had,
• 35:38
  you know, previously been implicit, no girls allowed.
• 35:41
  So even in this moment, you're like, oh, yeah, that would have
• 35:43
  been a great time for girls to start playing baseball.
• 35:45
  Actually, the minute one tried Little League, like put the
• 35:48
  kibosh on it formally. I mean it, you know?
• 35:50
  In other words, we're not talking about a lack of a
• 35:52
  groundswell of girls gravitating to baseball.
• 35:54
  We're talking about like when when one tried, they dropped the
• 35:57
  hammer. And yet nobody else picked it up
• 36:00
  and kind of gave them an alternative either.
• 36:02
  So I, I guess it's kind of one of those things when I look back
• 36:06
  on baseball and how it developed for a long time, the players
• 36:11
  weren't paid very well. They had to have jobs in the
• 36:14
  offseason. There were a lot of other things
• 36:16
  going on. And yet just it took enough time
• 36:19
  and they were given enough time to develop it.
• 36:22
  It seems like the same thing hasn't gone on either for
• 36:24
  baseball or for professional softball.
• 36:27
  It's like it comes around for a few years, it starts to draw an
• 36:30
  audience, but then for whatever reason, it doesn't get
• 36:34
  sustainable. So if you were going to say are
• 36:38
  you looking for baseball as a girls Baseball League to develop
• 36:44
  or are you thinking more girls playing in men's baseball?
• 36:48
  And there is this fall that, you know, the Women's Pro Baseball
• 36:52
  League is launching with its first season.
• 36:54
  And it's also worth seeing on your podcast, especially that at
• 36:59
  this point, if you look around either the pro baseball with the
• 37:02
  Women's Pro Baseball League or the USA, women's USA Baseball,
• 37:05
  there's a lot of softball in there.
• 37:06
  Like, you know, it's, it's very hard to ascend to a national or
• 37:10
  pro team level. As a baseball player, though, I
• 37:14
  am impressed at the, you know, what baseball for all has built.
• 37:17
  And the, you know, there are certainly opportunities for
• 37:19
  girls to play baseball. But if if you want to get to
• 37:21
  that level, you probably ought to have touched softball pretty
• 37:25
  significantly just in order to get the coaching and the
• 37:27
  opportunities to get to that level by the time you're 18 to
• 37:31
  25. And I've lost my train of
• 37:33
  thought that that was the high level and I was going to I was
• 37:35
  going to come back to the to the lower level.
• 37:37
  That what was your question, though, is essentially about,
• 37:39
  you know, how many Oh yeah, yeah.
• 37:40
  They just Co Ed versus women's baseball.
• 37:43
  Now we get kind of get into the the world of what I think should
• 37:47
  happen. And so, you know, a question of
• 37:50
  the show is, you know, or this investigation that I'm
• 37:53
  undertaking this season is like, all right, so baseball at least
• 37:56
  has historically been especially important in all the sports.
• 38:00
  And it totally has boxed out women.
• 38:03
  Is it worth fixing? You know, there's this moment,
• 38:06
  1970, you know, finally their lawsuits like girls are trying
• 38:10
  to play Little League and they managed to fight their way
• 38:12
  through. And then even in that moment
• 38:14
  when the rest of girls and women's sports are getting built
• 38:17
  up rapidly, you know what happens instead, even though
• 38:19
  they do allow for Coed play, but Little League immediately spins
• 38:23
  up Little League softball. So it's going to go do this
• 38:25
  thing instead. Here we've we've solved this
• 38:27
  legal problem by pushing you out of the way into this other
• 38:30
  opportunity, which happens to be an awesome sport.
• 38:32
  And you know, off everyone goes. And so, you know, we can debate
• 38:35
  that, but the question is there's not much debating that
• 38:38
  baseball has boxed out women, that it occupies a special place
• 38:42
  in American Society. And is it worth creating some
• 38:46
  sort of concerted efforts to open that up or have we landed
• 38:50
  in an OK place? But I go back to your question
• 38:53
  about, you know, the Coed thing now exists, but A, it's hard.
• 38:58
  It's socially hard, as I have observed.
• 39:00
  It's, you know, it's not that like you're necessarily exiled
• 39:04
  or insulted or, you know, told hard no, like you might have
• 39:07
  been Once Upon a time. But you, you know, like
• 39:08
  whatever, especially once you get into your teens, not even
• 39:12
  like the dynamic of being one girl on a boys team is different
• 39:15
  than getting with your friends on a softball team.
• 39:18
  And I appreciate the women who are willing to do that, who are,
• 39:24
  you know, so hardcore that they want to thrive in that
• 39:26
  environment. I think creating the other one
• 39:29
  has some value. And I also see that it has value
• 39:32
  lower. I mean, I know again, pre
• 39:34
  puberty, I think the skills are pretty similar.
• 39:37
  It's not that a girl's, you know, if she's not hacking it in
• 39:40
  practice, she's probably just not hacking it.
• 39:41
  But I did watch the way that my daughter got coached
• 39:43
  differently, responded to coaching differently.
• 39:46
  So in other words, she had a Co Ed league experience where
• 39:50
  she's, you know, bottom of the roster and getting coached like
• 39:52
  it then has this like fall ball experience in a girls league and
• 39:55
  then comes back and Co Ed the next year is is competing at a
• 39:58
  completely different level. And obviously that all girls
• 40:01
  experience in between where she was coached, like the clean up
• 40:03
  hitter changed how she thought of herself in the diamond and
• 40:07
  what she was able to do. So I for those reasons, I don't
• 40:11
  love the Co Ed world. And then also like we talked
• 40:13
  about before, I think for Co Ed players.
• 40:16
  If you're a transcendent woman player, you're just kind of on
• 40:20
  the team. I mean, another woman that we're
• 40:22
  going to feature in Episode 1 eventually chose college
• 40:25
  basketball. And she makes this comment like,
• 40:27
  I was a really good baseball player, but I was a transcendent
• 40:30
  basketball player. And to me that was like an
• 40:33
  apples and oranges comment. What you what you just said is
• 40:35
  you were a transcendent women's basketball player, but you were
• 40:39
  throwing 88 is a lefty. You were a transcendent women's
• 40:43
  baseball player. You just didn't know it because
• 40:44
  you were playing high level California men's baseball or
• 40:47
  boys baseball. Yeah.
• 40:49
  And, you know, and I think that this goes back into some of the
• 40:51
  societal stuff to where you look at, you know, not to get too
• 40:55
  controversial here, but when they start talking about, you
• 40:58
  know, men playing women's sports, if it's OK for girls to
• 41:01
  play boys sports, why can't boys play girls sports?
• 41:04
  Why can't we just make it 1 sport?
• 41:06
  Well, there are some size and strength differences that come
• 41:08
  up up once puberty hits and, you know, that makes it difficult.
• 41:14
  But I think there's another thing that goes into it too.
• 41:17
  And I don't know how you feel about how much you have the
• 41:19
  softball you've watched. But you, like you said earlier,
• 41:22
  softball is a different game. It's a faster game.
• 41:25
  It's, you know, the field is shorter.
• 41:27
  There's, you know, a whole lot of other things going on.
• 41:30
  There's some strategic differences to it.
• 41:32
  And it's an exciting game. And I know, you know, several
• 41:36
  men who coach softball came from a baseball background and said,
• 41:40
  yeah, I would never go back. So, you know, there's a place
• 41:43
  for all of that, I guess. There's an argument.
• 41:45
  So one of the interesting things to look at in this show is, you
• 41:48
  know, Once Upon a time, a lot of women's sports look different
• 41:52
  from the men's version. I'm going to spend a whole
• 41:53
  episode on basketball because Once Upon a time women's
• 41:56
  basketball had like different rules.
• 41:57
  You can cross or one, maybe only one player can cross half court.
• 42:00
  It was a fundamentally different game than that is high school
• 42:04
  girls basketball than high school boys basketball.
• 42:06
  And then eventually those rules fell away and the games aligned.
• 42:10
  And I think you can make a case that there are similarities
• 42:13
  between baseball and softball. But in this case, we have stuck
• 42:16
  with both versions. And you know what, like
• 42:18
  softball, I mean, softball has evolved past really modest
• 42:22
  beginnings where it was literally, you know, touted as
• 42:24
  like this. This is the, you know, indoor.
• 42:28
  Yeah, well, or for guys, but it was like indoor if you're not as
• 42:32
  good or whatever, you know, and then like.
• 42:34
  But hey, it was given, you know, back to our conversation about
• 42:36
  what you. What you might discover at age
• 42:38
  27 is when you, you know, finally are able to tap into
• 42:41
  your. So softball had the the leash to
• 42:44
  evolve into this fundamentally different but elite game that it
• 42:49
  became. And I think, yeah, I think
• 42:51
  there's, you know, there's room to hold those things up next to
• 42:55
  each other. So I would love to see girls
• 42:58
  baseball. And again, I'm I'm going to
• 42:59
  deliberately. And it not gets to like your
• 43:03
  point about the, you know, there's difference in bodies and
• 43:05
  like, hey, if we managed to spin up girls baseball, I don't know
• 43:09
  how much need we have for the Coed opportunity.
• 43:12
  Cuz, you know, I don't think we see a ton of elite women's
• 43:15
  basketball players pushing for their shot to play in the NBA
• 43:17
  right now, for example. But in the world that we do live
• 43:20
  in right now, I, you know, only respect for the, the women
• 43:23
  pursuing Coed ball, you know, all the way through.
• 43:25
  I want to talk about men's fast pitch for a bit.
• 43:28
  You know, back in the day it used to be popular.
• 43:31
  I mean, everybody would go watch.
• 43:34
  It was just what you kind of did on the weekend.
• 43:36
  What do you think caused the game the the decline in the
• 43:39
  game? And that's something I'll say,
• 43:42
  there are things we're talking about right now where I'm like
• 43:44
  20 interviews in and you're in my wheelhouse.
• 43:46
  This is one that is we will, we'll be covering it.
• 43:49
  And I am like a couple hours of, of thought into this, but I, I
• 43:51
  think there's two things. So first of all, I would point
• 43:53
  out that internationally, like you go to Australia and New
• 43:57
  Zealand and these men's fast pitch is still a thing.
• 44:00
  And it certainly has continued to be a, a huge deal well past
• 44:04
  when it's tapered off in the US. So then the question is why, You
• 44:08
  know, one of the hypotheses is that that was, you know, slow
• 44:12
  pitch became such a thing and, you know, drew enough fast pitch
• 44:16
  players away. And I mean, this to me is a
• 44:19
  whole like, you know, we're talking about the potential
• 44:22
  equivalency of baseball and fast pitch softball.
• 44:26
  You can put baseball in the middle, fast pitch softball with
• 44:30
  this emphasis on, you know, quickness and speed is over
• 44:33
  here. And then this other sport that's
• 44:34
  also called softball, slow pitch softball belongs on the other
• 44:37
  side of baseball where it's like, you know, like the premium
• 44:40
  on pitching vanishes, basically doesn't exist and it's all about
• 44:44
  power. It's like an unrecognizable
• 44:45
  game. But I think, you know, softball
• 44:46
  obviously in the 80s, nineties had this huge moment and drew
• 44:50
  enough players away that I think that's part of the story.
• 44:52
  And then somewhere in there too, I think is dislike gender is a
• 44:56
  it's the flip side of what we're talking about.
• 44:58
  If softball is baseball for girls, then it starts to feel
• 45:02
  wrong for a boy to play softball.
• 45:05
  So, you know, that dynamic did not exist.
• 45:07
  Softball was softball was baseball for girls in the early
• 45:10
  days, in the industrial league days only because it let them
• 45:12
  in. But that did not diminish from
• 45:14
  the popularity or enthusiasm around the men's game.
• 45:18
  But then somewhere in the same era, like, you know, 70s, like
• 45:21
  we really build up softball and it becomes the hey, where is
• 45:24
  girls base that doesn't exist that softball.
• 45:26
  Well, then all of a sudden a new generation of guys starts to,
• 45:30
  you know, a generation that did not know Shifty Gears isn't
• 45:34
  jumping in. Well, and don't you think
• 45:36
  there's also some element of it? Again, follow the money like
• 45:39
  anything else is, you know, USA Softball certainly saw an
• 45:43
  opportunity there to make money off of it and they saw the
• 45:46
  growth of the girls game. It was new ground.
• 45:49
  And and I I think that a lot of times that's what ends up
• 45:52
  happening is that somebody sees a business opportunity there,
• 45:55
  another area maybe gets ignored a little bit and then it starts
• 45:59
  to fall away and then, you know, locate.
• 46:02
  So here's our profit opportunity.
• 46:04
  So we're going to put more resources and more resources
• 46:06
  into it. Yeah, well, and you know, think
• 46:08
  about like I'm in a watershed moment for softball was the
• 46:11
  inclusion in the 96 Olympics. But it's somewhat rare to add a
• 46:17
  sport and not add the equivalent sport and the other gender, you
• 46:22
  know, so that that's like a moment when you when you say
• 46:23
  that we recognize women's softball as a thing, but not
• 46:27
  women's fast pitch softball, but not men's fast pitch.
• 46:30
  You've kind of said this. 1/2 of this matters more than the
• 46:33
  other. Yeah, good point.
• 46:34
  What do you think would be the biggest argument in favor of
• 46:36
  steering more girls toward baseball?
• 46:40
  Well, first of all, not to siphon them away from softball.
• 46:43
  This whole, you know, awakening for me around the Oh yeah, why
• 46:46
  did why have I never noticed the absence of girls baseball?
• 46:49
  To some extent it owes to the awesomeness of softball.
• 46:52
  And no part of, you know, trying to address that should be
• 46:57
  diminishing, you know, that awesomeness and what the what
• 47:00
  softball has built and is. And to me that should be pretty
• 47:03
  self-evident and not this like tug of war because they're
• 47:07
  different sports and you can do it.
• 47:08
  And Rachel Gansner, who started that fall league in Chicago,
• 47:11
  very specifically made it a fall league, not only so that girls
• 47:15
  from our Coed spring Baseball League could have this all girls
• 47:19
  experience, but also so softball players could try baseball and
• 47:24
  consider developing them together.
• 47:26
  And I know that, you know, you guys come from the high level
• 47:29
  travel world college where hey, baseball and softball have
• 47:32
  developed into this highly specialized 365 days a year
• 47:36
  situation, as have a lot of other sports.
• 47:39
  That's not how I come up and it's not really, I don't have
• 47:41
  that much conviction that that's the right way to train yourself
• 47:43
  as an athlete. I think basketball was very good
• 47:46
  for me as a runner, etcetera, etcetera.
• 47:48
  You know, we're not wired that way, but I don't, I think you
• 47:50
  could argue that, you know, trying out baseball might be
• 47:53
  good for you, you know, one fall, things like that or being
• 47:56
  able to bounce back and forth. So we, you know, we can have
• 47:57
  that conversation too. But that's the, you know, I I
• 48:02
  would like the the why goes back to, hey, this didn't just happen
• 48:08
  accidentally. I don't think this was like a,
• 48:10
  you know, free market choice And all the girls of the world
• 48:12
  decided to play softball instead of baseball.
• 48:14
  I don't think that's how we got here.
• 48:16
  I also think that, well, softball is great.
• 48:19
  Baseball is special. It's been, you know, for all the
• 48:21
  reasons I just said. I mean, it's been like a part of
• 48:23
  the national identity. The president's always there to
• 48:26
  throw out opening day. I mean, the baseball, whatever.
• 48:28
  I don't need to read the Mark Twain quotes.
• 48:29
  I'm sure you all know so is like, so it's the national
• 48:35
  pastime. It's never been open.
• 48:37
  Should we just try to open it and see what happens?
• 48:40
  You know, create this developmental pipeline, you
• 48:42
  know, so that without harming softball, I think it's my dream.
• 48:45
  So do you think a sort of hybrid world could exist where males
• 48:50
  and females go back and forth between both sports at at
• 48:52
  younger ages? You think that's a possibility?
• 48:55
  I do. And I think I mean like,
• 48:56
  especially at younger ages, I mean, I think it's going to be
• 48:59
  harder to convince the people who are more advanced to, to not
• 49:02
  pick a sport to begin to specialize in.
• 49:04
  But you know, you're figuring it out at that point.
• 49:06
  You know, what if you, I mean, if someone who love, hey, if a
• 49:10
  girl falls in love with baseball, my daughter discovered
• 49:12
  she's an awesome softball pitcher.
• 49:13
  Well, hey, there's no real equivalent in this other thing
• 49:16
  that would be a great lane for you to go ahead and get into,
• 49:19
  but also vice versa. Or you know what, I've really
• 49:22
  discovered that I am never going to get on top of that rise ball,
• 49:25
  but I can handle a curve. You know, like there's just
• 49:27
  opportunities to discover who you are as an athlete, even in
• 49:31
  these two more related sports. And like, why not have the
• 49:35
  exposure and if nothing else, playing on fields with different
• 49:38
  dimensions or you know, like related to, I mean, these are
• 49:40
  like similar experiences that cannot do worse than having
• 49:44
  relevance as a drill. You know, that kind of like, oh,
• 49:46
  this is speed up. I'm now I just learned what
• 49:49
  ready position means because I played third base in the
• 49:51
  softball game or or vice versa that I I think you know, why not
• 49:55
  expose yourself? Yeah, well, I think one of the
• 49:57
  other things too that comes into it.
• 49:59
  You know, we've talked a lot in the past about how when girls
• 50:04
  get started, you know, there's the thing about throwing like a
• 50:06
  girl. And that a lot of times comes
• 50:09
  from the fact that, you know, you have a boy who's got a
• 50:12
  little 9 inch ball that weighs 3 oz and then you have a girl
• 50:16
  who's got an 11 inch ball that weighs, you know, close to 6 oz.
• 50:22
  You know, so it's twice as heavy, it's twice as big.
• 50:25
  There may be a little bit smaller in a lot of cases.
• 50:27
  So they just can't lift the arm in the same way naturally to
• 50:32
  make that throw. So it would seem like maybe, you
• 50:35
  know, opening more opportunities for baseball might help
• 50:38
  fundamentals. Even if girls decide ultimately
• 50:41
  to go into softball, they could establish those fundamentals
• 50:44
  early a little bit better. Yeah, this is something I've
• 50:47
  encountered a lot reporting this with just telling the story to
• 50:50
  people who do not come from either of our worlds.
• 50:53
  So, you know, they, it's like when when someone who is not a
• 50:57
  baseball or softball person thinks about why they think it's
• 51:00
  appropriate that softball is baseball for girls, often it
• 51:04
  seems one of the first places they go is, well, they can't
• 51:07
  throw, right. There's a reason why they, they
• 51:09
  do that underhand pitch because they can't do the overhand
• 51:11
  pitch. And it's, I mean, I just that
• 51:13
  aggravates every girls baseball, but also softball player.
• 51:17
  Like, have you seen any of the other positions?
• 51:18
  Did you know, did the shortstop throw underhand?
• 51:21
  They did not and so it like that, but there's but there is
• 51:25
  that cultural idea and obviously you can coach through that with
• 51:29
  a softball and you can coach through that with a baseball and
• 51:32
  you're going to get there. But that is one of those like
• 51:34
  that. You know, there's that latent
• 51:35
  idea in the public imagination and it's easily enough
• 51:39
  destroyed. But you're right, you know, like
• 51:41
  the size of the thing you're throwing and the weight of the
• 51:44
  thing you're throwing. Does, you know, especially when
• 51:46
  you're talking about little girls matter.
• 51:49
  Yeah, You know, it's funny because I remember, and I'm sure
• 51:52
  Jay had the same experience. I don't see this much anymore,
• 51:55
  but I would have a dad catching for his, say, his 10 year old
• 51:59
  daughter in softball pitching lessons.
• 52:03
  And the girl would throw the ball.
• 52:04
  She'd be trying to throw it pretty hard.
• 52:06
  And the dad would just be lobbing that ball back as soft
• 52:09
  as he could to her, you know, as if she was this fragile little
• 52:12
  thing that couldn't handle it. And I would go down by the dad
• 52:15
  and when he was catching and say here, can I have that ball for a
• 52:18
  second? He'd give me the ball and I just
• 52:20
  taken that, toss it. You know, I'd Chuck it at the
• 52:21
  girl and she catch the ball just fine.
• 52:23
  And I'd say don't lob it at her. Don't you know, don't lollipop
• 52:27
  that ball to her. She can catch it.
• 52:29
  She's going to have to catch it if he gets hit back, you know,
• 52:31
  let her develop those skills. But I think that that again,
• 52:34
  it's a society thing of, oh, we have to protect these girls from
• 52:38
  it. And that, you know, if you're
• 52:40
  talking about the younger ages, I think that crosses the gender
• 52:43
  lines. You know what?
• 52:43
  When do I start challenging this kid versus making sure that they
• 52:47
  don't, you know, catch a ball in the nose that makes them want to
• 52:50
  never play again? Yeah, I mean, you don't want to
• 52:52
  throw it as hard as you can, but you can certainly throw it at
• 52:55
  them on a line instead of a rainbow.
• 52:58
  Yes, and you know, we all wish the rainbow came at you in the
• 53:01
  game a little bit more often. Than yes.
• 53:06
  So from the people you've spoken to then, Steve, how ingrained is
• 53:10
  this really? Is this something that's pretty
• 53:12
  deep? And what would it take to kind
• 53:15
  of breakthrough that? That's an interesting question
• 53:17
  because I think it's really ingrained, but I don't think
• 53:20
  there's like conviction behind it in the same way that there
• 53:22
  was, right? I mean, you know, like the back
• 53:25
  to that AG Spalding quote. Once Upon a time it will even
• 53:28
  through 1950 through 1970. It was like inappropriate.
• 53:32
  Do not let girls into this game. I just don't think that many
• 53:36
  people feel that way now. They're just used to it.
• 53:38
  And this gets back to the question of well, we're used to
• 53:41
  it and we now have this high level, awesome bat and ball
• 53:44
  sport for girls and women. Do we just let it go or are they
• 53:49
  different enough? And by setting this dichotomy
• 53:53
  up, or this would to me is a false equivalency between
• 53:57
  softball and baseball. We say they're the same, but
• 53:58
  they're not. And yet the girls can't quite
• 54:00
  play the one and the guys don't play the other.
• 54:02
  It's it's a weird situation. We killed men's fast pitch
• 54:05
  softball for no, you know, for, for out of this idea.
• 54:08
  And we never really created an opportunity for girls and women
• 54:10
  to play baseball out of this idea.
• 54:12
  Is it, is it worth doing something?
• 54:14
  I mean, hey, you guys are coaches.
• 54:17
  You can also think through this logistically, like I can't like
• 54:19
  what are the fields that would be required to do this?
• 54:22
  How much coaching infrastructure, you know, like
• 54:24
  you don't want to just take a bunch of boys baseball coaches
• 54:28
  like the Physiology a little different.
• 54:30
  You know, there there are a bunch of things in place that
• 54:31
  you would need to create in order to like rapidly expand
• 54:35
  opportunities for girls in baseball.
• 54:37
  Probably not at the youth level. I think you know, like there's
• 54:39
  there are more similarities and you could pull this up to, you
• 54:41
  know, 10/11/12 you without breaking the world.
• 54:44
  But you know, beyond that, you would need to figure out what,
• 54:47
  you know, again, women's basketball, for example, changed
• 54:51
  from the version that, you know, nobody could pass half court.
• 54:55
  It was this like fundamentally different game.
• 54:57
  The game that we have now is 97% like men's bad.
• 55:00
  But the ball, the size of the ball is different.
• 55:03
  The size, the distance to the three-point line is different.
• 55:05
  That might be it. That might be the only two
• 55:06
  things. But like, you know, what are the
• 55:07
  accommodations and what would be the needs to like the
• 55:10
  infrastructure of the parks of America to accommodate that?
• 55:13
  I know I'm not saying it's nothing.
• 55:15
  You can think through that then and it's there.
• 55:17
  But to me, I'd love to see that. And I bet you anything like,
• 55:21
  hey, if the AUSL does take off and the College World Series
• 55:24
  continues to build on the ratings, like people are going
• 55:28
  to discover softball, they're going to notice that it is a
• 55:30
  different game and guys are going to want to play it too,
• 55:32
  right? I mean, like, to me, these
• 55:33
  things are going to naturally follow and we're going to want
• 55:36
  to figure out how to accommodate them.
• 55:37
  Yeah, well, I think too that there's some things that have
• 55:40
  been going on recently in the softball world where used to be,
• 55:43
  if you were on a team that had a mix of 13 and 14 year olds, so
• 55:46
  8th graders and freshmen, the freshmen went off to play
• 55:49
  freshman softball in high school and the 8th graders sat around
• 55:55
  and waited for them to get done playing freshman softball.
• 55:57
  Now you have combined teams, you know that you have little
• 56:01
  leagues that have popped up so that the 8th graders can
• 56:03
  continue to play. You know, I think that there are
• 56:06
  other things going on like that as well.
• 56:08
  So maybe it's just kind of a need or just having the will to
• 56:13
  say, you know what, here's an opportunity, here's something
• 56:17
  that maybe makes sense to try, and let's see if we can put a
• 56:21
  structure together. Yeah.
• 56:22
  Well, and back to, I mean, the fundamental ingrained idea that
• 56:26
  we say softball is baseball for girls.
• 56:28
  Well, a lot of where my narrative is going is that that
• 56:32
  costs girls baseball opportunities, but it also hides
• 56:35
  what softball is. You know, we just pretend that
• 56:38
  it's girls baseball with a but with like all kinds of rules
• 56:41
  changes. You know, like I said, so many
• 56:44
  that it's a different game and so like nobody really sees that
• 56:48
  sport or do you know, not not enough people see that sport.
• 56:50
  So I I think the more you like tease these two things apart,
• 56:53
  you create visibility and opportunity all over the place.
• 56:56
  Steve, if you can tell us where and when what, where can people
• 57:00
  find this on ingrained and when will this be out?
• 57:03
  Jay, I can do that. Thank you so on ingrained
• 57:09
  ingrained, but with on in front of it.
• 57:11
  That's a.com with the website. It's right now there is a
• 57:14
  trailer and I don't know how long we have between this
• 57:17
  conversation and when this thing goes live, but.
• 57:19
  About a week. About a week, OK, that so that
• 57:21
  right around then is when the first proper episode will go up
• 57:24
  as well. So if you head to your podcast
• 57:26
  player to wherever you're listening to this thing on
• 57:28
  Ingrained, you can search and subscribe to that.
• 57:30
  There's also the website. I also want to there there's on
• 57:34
  ingrained.substack.com and I want to specifically call that
• 57:38
  out and the UN ingrained YouTube because as I mentioned earlier,
• 57:42
  these are like, you know, half an hour documentary style
• 57:44
  episodes where I'm just pulling in a quote.
• 57:46
  A lot of it's scripted. Each story is going in in a
• 57:48
  specific way for a general interest audience that, you
• 57:50
  know, I I think certainly baseball and softball fans will
• 57:53
  enjoy. But on the sub stack, I'm doing
• 57:56
  things more like the conversation that the three of
• 57:58
  us are having right now where I'm going to go back to that.
• 58:00
  You know, it's a little more edited like like the maybe there
• 58:03
  was an hour, hour and 15 minute interview and I'm going to crush
• 58:06
  that down to, you know, the best 30 or 45 minutes or something
• 58:09
  like that. But I just have talked to too
• 58:12
  many from Lori Ramsey from the mid century industrial league.
• 58:16
  First the Caterpillar D silhouettes and then the pecan.
• 58:19
  Let's I mean, like, you know, I just heard about her career for
• 58:21
  a long time and it brings up this way to do quasi pro
• 58:25
  softball that, you know, we're not going to stop and spend 45
• 58:28
  minutes talking about that. But it's so fascinating to tell
• 58:31
  that story and learn about it. You know, we've got a 96
• 58:35
  Olympian, we've got AOSL star as lots of, you know, people from
• 58:39
  the softball world, and we're not going to quite go into the
• 58:42
  depth on the main show. So yes, please listen to the
• 58:44
  main show, but I also just want to plug that sub stack because
• 58:47
  especially if you are a baseball or softball dork, I think there
• 58:50
  are, you know, there, there's goodness in those expanded
• 58:53
  episodes too. So I have one more question for
• 58:56
  you, and that's just kind of after all the talk and, you
• 58:59
  know, the people from different parts of softball, baseball and
• 59:02
  all that. Have you received a lot of
• 59:04
  pushback from either side on the idea of baseball for girls, or
• 59:10
  has that been something that people have been open to?
• 59:13
  I have not I have heard, you know, like the compared to all
• 59:16
  of the very obvious pushback that has happened to different
• 59:18
  areas. Now the Max pushback here is
• 59:20
  like, do we need it? You know, as opposed to this
• 59:23
  should not be. I mean, I'm interested.
• 59:26
  What's what's the two of your reaction?
• 59:29
  I've now kind of made the case. I've tried to, you know, put it
• 59:32
  next to softball in a in a world in which everything can coexist,
• 59:35
  does this seem plausible? Have I moved you?
• 59:38
  You're like, this is an interesting way to spend an
• 59:39
  hour, but we're good go. Ahead, Ken, you first.
• 59:42
  Oh, OK. I was looking at you.
• 59:44
  I thought maybe you'd want to go.
• 59:45
  It's an interesting thought. I mean, I'm, I'm very ingrained
• 59:49
  into the softball area and I have two boys as well who played
• 59:52
  baseball. I don't have a personal
• 59:55
  objection to it. So I think the more
• 59:58
  opportunities there are for girls to play sports in general
• 1:00:01
  or do whatever else they want to do.
• 1:00:03
  I think the better. So it's it again, it's, you
• 1:00:07
  know, from the softball standpoint, I think their best
• 1:00:09
  opportunities right now are softball, their best path.
• 1:00:14
  They want to go to college. There's probably not a lot of
• 1:00:16
  baseball scholarships. There's more softball
• 1:00:20
  scholarships available. So that's a thought.
• 1:00:22
  But not everybody that plays softball wants to go to college
• 1:00:25
  to play either. So I think that from that
• 1:00:28
  standpoint, you know, why not? If there are people who want to
• 1:00:32
  play, if there's enough people who want to coach it, there's
• 1:00:34
  people who want to support it, you know, I'm all for it.
• 1:00:37
  The more opportunities for kids in general to play, the better.
• 1:00:41
  Yeah, I will. I'll only just say this.
• 1:00:43
  I feel that we live in a world where you should be able to be
• 1:00:47
  what you want to be and do what you want to do, and nobody
• 1:00:50
  should tell you. No.
• 1:00:52
  That's what I firmly believe. You know, I you know, I have
• 1:00:55
  three daughters myself. They want to play baseball, go
• 1:00:58
  do it. You want to be the best.
• 1:00:59
  You want to play the piano, go do it.
• 1:01:02
  Don't let others dictate what you want to do, right?
• 1:01:05
  And again, I think that's the biggest thing.
• 1:01:07
  I want to live in a world where people don't tell you what you
• 1:01:10
  have to do. You go and do what you want to
• 1:01:12
  do. And, and I firmly believe in
• 1:01:14
  that. And I and I live by that every
• 1:01:16
  day. As an educator for a long time,
• 1:01:19
  I couldn't imagine that when kids walk into my classroom that
• 1:01:24
  I'm going to say, well, you can't be a doctor and you can't
• 1:01:26
  be a mechanic and you can't be this.
• 1:01:28
  That's the wrong profession for me then, you know, And so I, I
• 1:01:32
  firmly believe that you, if you have a dream, you go chase your
• 1:01:36
  dreams, regardless of what it is.
• 1:01:38
  Well, and to that, the last question, then it's just like,
• 1:01:41
  you know, the last objection because who can listen to that
• 1:01:44
  and not be like, Amen. It's just yeah.
• 1:01:46
  But does anybody are do enough people feel this way to create
• 1:01:50
  the opportunity? And we went last year to the
• 1:01:52
  Baseball for All tournament. It was a high level, very
• 1:01:54
  competitive travel tournament. It was in suburban Reno last
• 1:01:58
  year, more than 500 kids. And I have no idea how many of
• 1:02:02
  them are. You know, again, lots of those
• 1:02:05
  kids were crossing over from softball.
• 1:02:06
  And in fact, our team got to sign the, you know, like some
• 1:02:09
  amazing 12 you softball player from Reno, just like read about
• 1:02:12
  the tournament in the paper and came out and jumped in was
• 1:02:14
  immediately awesome. But 500 kids, and that's today
• 1:02:19
  as we know this landscape, you know, where most people don't
• 1:02:21
  even think about this as an opportunity or as a, you know,
• 1:02:24
  sport that exists. There are still, you know, that
• 1:02:26
  many serious players. And I'm, you know, that's the
• 1:02:29
  number who are willing to fly to Reno and plan a travel
• 1:02:31
  tournament, not just the number who might otherwise care.
• 1:02:34
  So I do think there are enough people out there who might
• 1:02:36
  wander into your classroom and want to do it.
• 1:02:38
  Definitely, if that's something you want to do, don't restrict
• 1:02:41
  the opportunities. Get out there.
• 1:02:44
  Give everybody the opportunity to do whatever it is that that
• 1:02:46
  floats the boat. Yeah, right.
• 1:02:48
  This been awesome. Thank you.
• 1:02:49
  Thanks for letting me make the case and hopefully all of these
• 1:02:53
  sports go on to to grow and thrive.
• 1:02:55
  Well, yeah. Well, we're definitely looking
• 1:02:56
  forward to seeing that. Again, it's unengrained.
• 1:02:59
  It should be out in the beginning of May.
• 1:03:01
  So about the time this podcast hits, you should be able to go
• 1:03:04
  out and find it. So after you're done with us, go
• 1:03:06
  out and give that a listen wherever you get your podcast.
• 1:03:09
  Thanks again guys. Thank you, Steve.
• 1:03:11
  Jay, you want to talk about the T-shirts?
• 1:03:13
  Yeah, just have a few more left, Ken, and I think I'm going to
• 1:03:16
  have to make another order here. Like we always say, if you'd
• 1:03:19
  like a free T-shirt, we'd be happy to mail you one.
• 1:03:21
  All you've got to do is go to Spotify, Apple Podcast or
• 1:03:24
  wherever you listen, click give us a follow and then also share
• 1:03:28
  an episode out. Just introducing somebody out.
• 1:03:30
  This would be a great episode to share out there.
• 1:03:33
  Let people do that. Just let us know that you've
• 1:03:35
  done that. Send Ken or IA message and we
• 1:03:38
  will happily get you out a free T-shirt.
• 1:03:40
  Mail it out to you. Yeah, thanks to everybody who's
• 1:03:42
  been listening and and sharing. We appreciate it.
• 1:03:44
  And again, we've got a few left. We might do another run of
• 1:03:47
  T-shirts. So if you're interested in
• 1:03:49
  getting a free one, go ahead and do that.
• 1:03:51
  Yeah, and I just want to add that I had somebody send me a
• 1:03:54
  message the other day was talking about it and said that
• 1:03:56
  we are the only podcast that he and his wife can agree on to
• 1:03:59
  listen to. So, you know, definitely worth
• 1:04:02
  sharing. Absolutely.
• 1:04:03
  I'm stealing this. I'm stealing this free T-shirt
• 1:04:06
  idea. It's great.
• 1:04:07
  That's all Jay, but yeah, we're we're happy to do it.
• 1:04:11
  Get the word out there. The more the people that know
• 1:04:14
  about it, the more we can share great content like this.
• 1:04:16
  All righty. So that's it for us this week.
• 1:04:18
  Thanks to all of you for listening and the kind words
• 1:04:21
  you've been sharing with us. If you like what you're hearing,
• 1:04:23
  please give us a like leave a comment and share this podcast
• 1:04:26
  on your social media channels. Make sure you never miss an
• 1:04:29
  episode by following us on your favorite podcast platform.
• 1:04:33
  If you're so inclined, you can also leave us a great review on
• 1:04:36
  Apple Podcast to help more people find us.
• 1:04:39
  On behalf of the From the Coaches Mouth podcast, have a
• 1:04:42
  great rest of your week and weekend.