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Hatton All Stars12u, Town Creek, AL (2026)

01/31/2025

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Highschool age girls softball team. One team, One body, One goal. Have fun and succeed!

07/20/2023

I promised myself years ago, every time I saw this I would re-post. I promise you, it's worth taking a few minutes to read. Rings true EVERY.SINGLE.TIME.... Here goes!!!

Most people won't take the time to read this all the way to the end. I hope that you will. 👇

17 INCHES" - you will not regret reading this an excellent article to read from beginning to end. Twenty years ago, in Nashville, Tennessee, during the first week of January, 1996, more than 4,000 baseball coaches descended upon the Opryland Hotel for the 52nd annual ABCA's convention.

While I waited in line to register with the hotel staff, I heard other more veteran coaches rumbling about the lineup of speakers scheduled to present during the weekend. One name kept resurfacing, always with the same sentiment — “John Scolinos is here? Oh, man, worth every penny of my airfare.”

Who is John Scolinos, I wondered. No matter; I was just happy to be there.

In 1996, Coach Scolinos was 78 years old and five years retired from a college coaching career that began in 1948. He shuffled to the stage to an impressive standing ovation, wearing dark polyester pants, a light blue shirt, and a string around his neck from which home plate hung — a full-sized, stark-white home plate.

Seriously, I wondered, who is this guy? After speaking for twenty-five minutes, not once mentioning the prop hanging around his neck, Coach Scolinos appeared to notice the snickering among some of the coaches. Even those who knew Coach Scolinos had to wonder exactly where he was going with this, or if he had simply forgotten about home plate since he’d gotten on stage. Then, finally …

“You’re probably all wondering why I’m wearing home plate around my neck,” he said, his voice growing irascible. I laughed along with the others, acknowledging the possibility. “I may be old, but I’m not crazy. The reason I stand before you today is to share with you baseball people what I’ve learned in my life, what I’ve learned about home plate in my 78 years.”

Several hands went up when Scolinos asked how many Little League coaches were in the room. “Do you know how wide home plate is in Little League?”

After a pause, someone offered, “Seventeen inches?”, more of a question than answer.

“That’s right,” he said. “How about in Babe Ruth’s day? Any Babe Ruth coaches in the house?” Another long pause.

“Seventeen inches?” a guess from another reluctant coach.
“That’s right,” said Scolinos. “Now, how many high school coaches do we have in the room?” Hundreds of hands shot up, as the pattern began to appear. “How wide is home plate in high school baseball?”

“Seventeen inches,” they said, sounding more confident.
“You’re right!” Scolinos barked. “And you college coaches, how wide is home plate in college?”

“Seventeen inches!” we said, in unison.
“Any Minor League coaches here? How wide is home plate in pro ball?”............“Seventeen inches!”

“RIGHT! And in the Major Leagues, how wide home plate is in the Major Leagues? “Seventeen inches!”

“SEV-EN-TEEN INCHES!” he confirmed, his voice bellowing off the walls. “And what do they do with a Big League pitcher who can’t throw the ball over seventeen inches?” Pause. “They send him to Pocatello !” he hollered, drawing raucous laughter. “What they don’t do is this: they don’t say, ‘Ah, that’s okay, Jimmy. If you can’t hit a seventeen-inch target? We’ll make it eighteen inches or nineteen inches. We’ll make it twenty inches so you have a better chance of hitting it. If you can’t hit that, let us know so we can make it wider still, say twenty-five inches.'”

Pause. “Coaches… what do we do when your best player shows up late to practice? or when our team rules forbid facial hair and a guy shows up unshaven? What if he gets caught drinking? Do we hold him accountable? Or do we change the rules to fit him? Do we widen home plate? "

The chuckles gradually faded as four thousand coaches grew quiet, the fog lifting as the old coach’s message began to unfold. He turned the plate toward himself and, using a Sharpie, began to draw something. When he turned it toward the crowd, point up, a house was revealed, complete with a freshly drawn door and two windows. “This is the problem in our homes today. With our marriages, with the way we parent our kids. With our discipline.
We don’t teach accountability to our kids, and there is no consequence for failing to meet standards. We just widen the plate!”

Pause. Then, to the point at the top of the house he added a small American flag. “This is the problem in our schools today. The quality of our education is going downhill fast and teachers have been stripped of the tools they need to be successful, and to educate and discipline our young people. We are allowing others to widen home plate! Where is that getting us?”

Silence. He replaced the flag with a Cross. “And this is the problem in the Church, where powerful people in positions of authority have taken advantage of young children, only to have such an atrocity swept under the rug for years. Our church leaders are widening home plate for themselves! And we allow it.”

“And the same is true with our government. Our so-called representatives make rules for us that don’t apply to themselves. They take bribes from lobbyists and foreign countries. They no longer serve us. And we allow them to widen home plate! We see our country falling into a dark abyss while we just watch.”

I was amazed. At a baseball convention where I expected to learn something about curve balls and bunting and how to run better practices, I had learned something far more valuable.
From an old man with home plate strung around his neck, I had learned something about life, about myself, about my own weaknesses and about my responsibilities as a leader. I had to hold myself and others accountable to that which I knew to be right, lest our families, our faith, and our society continue down an undesirable path.

“If I am lucky,” Coach Scolinos concluded, “you will remember one thing from this old coach today. It is this: "If we fail to hold ourselves to a higher standard, a standard of what we know to be right; if we fail to hold our spouses and our children to the same standards, if we are unwilling or unable to provide a consequence when they do not meet the standard; and if our schools & churches & our government fail to hold themselves accountable to those they serve, there is but one thing to look forward to …”

With that, he held home plate in front of his chest, turned it around, and revealed its dark black backside, “…We have dark days ahead!.”

Note: Coach Scolinos died in 2009 at the age of 91, but not before touching the lives of hundreds of players and coaches, including mine. Meeting him at my first ABCA convention kept me returning year after year, looking for similar wisdom and inspiration from other coaches. He is the best clinic speaker the ABCA has ever known because he was so much more than a baseball coach. His message was clear: “Coaches, keep your players—no matter how good they are—your own children, your churches, your government, and most of all, keep yourself at seventeen inches."

And this my friends is what our country has become and what is wrong with it today, and now go out there and fix it!

"Don't widen the plate."

07/19/2023

Here we go! THE MADNESS STARTS EARLIER AND EARLIER EVERY YEAR.
AGH!!!!
SOFTBALL TRYOUT SEASON.
I HATE IT!
TRYOUTS
Here are the ads:
1. Team looking for an “A” level pitcher Or better yet a “bracket” pitcher.
2. 12u Team looking for a pitcher that throws 63+ MPH , must also have movement.
3. We are a Gold/ platinum/ “A”/ national/ regional/ All world team looking for the “right” fit.
4. We are experienced coaches that don’t play “daddy ball” or “mommy ball”. If you get the job done, you will play. We don’t treat our daughters on the team any differently than any other team members. We are harder/meaner to our own daughters.
Will 2023 tryouts be any different than years past? I doubt it. I have be involved in this process at some capacity now for over 30 years (yes I am that old). It gets worse every year. I know players that accepted an offer to play for a new team after the 2nd tournament of the summer. There are coaches that have been recruiting players to play for them since the first weekend of summer ball.
When will this madness end?
Coaches: If you want to know the secret to enjoying your summer coaching, keeping your team together, and making sure that your players are having an amazing experience playing for you?
1. Tell them at tryouts what your expectations are and what your coaching philosophy is. Can you stand there at the end of the summer and say you did exactly what you said you were going to do and how you were going to coach?
2. Coach for the right reasons. THE PLAYERS not for the trophies.
3. The parent try-out is just as important as the player try-out. Make sure you know the parents and what they bring to the table. There is way more to travel ball than sitting at the pool drinking after games.
4. Young ladies have to feel great to play great. Learn that and live that with your coaching, Doesn’t mean you can’t yell at them or correct them. COACH THEM. But after you are finished getting your coaching point across, remind them why they are a great player.
HERE IS MY TRYOUT RANT!
It’s here...SOFTBALL TRYOUT TIME! Blah blah blah. Here we go. It brings the crazies out even worse than last minute Christmas shopping. Here comes the promises of DI scholarships, the best coaching in the State, Bracket pitching time, Starting/ full-time/ lead-off batter shortstop playing time, intense and college like practices, Top level college showcase tournament schedule, guaranteed playing time, and the grass is always greener over here because I said so, and if it isn’t, I will have fun drinking at the hotel at the end of the day with your parents!
I put this together to help you with tryouts. This is just my advice for you, while you navigate the tryout process. Please keep in my mind this is about you (THE PLAYER).
There are so many factors that you need to consider and look into when trying to figure out this entire process/mess. Guess what? No team/ organization/ coach is perfect or without problems.
TRYOUT NAVIGATION for PLAYERS and Parents.
You need find a “fit” for YOU that will help YOU grow and get YOU the PLAYING experience that will help YOU become the PLAYER that YOU want to BECOME!
When in doubt, repeat that over and over.
1. What are your goals? For next year? Next 5 years? 10 years? College?
When you can answer some of those questions, that will help you find a team that fits your needs/ wants. Keep in mind, YOUR goals. Parent goals and player goals are different. Believe me. My daughters goals are very different than my goals. I have learned through the years as she gets older, I can’t force my goals on her, no matter how hard I try.
2. If you are a pitcher, you need to find a team that you are going to pitch on. Sometimes this means you may need to play for a lower level team. You can’t become a better pitcher if you don’t pitch. At least be able to pitch a pool play game every weekend. As you get older, YOU need to be a #1 or #2 pitcher on a team and at least get 40% of the innings.
3. Who calls the pitches? If you are a pitcher, make sure you ask who calls pitches during games. Are you allowed to shake off pitches? If another pitchers dad calls pitches, be leary. Ask the questions. Also, make sure you ask if they are willing to come to your pitching lessons to find out what YOUR strengths are and what YOUR best pitches are. I have come to realize the past few years that this is the biggest complaint pitchers have with their teams. I have heard this from pitchers (not parents). They feel that they have no say in what is being called by the dad/ coach whose daughter is a different kind of pitcher than they are, and they feel that they are setting them up for failure. This is not the kind of coach you want to play for in the summer. It’s summer ball. I don’t know any summer ball coach that has lost their job/ salary because a pitcher threw the wrong pitch.
3. Ask the coaches what positions their daughters play. This is very important. Why play for a team that has 4 pitchers on it, and 3 are coaches daughters and you are the 4th? HMMMMM. Also, ask where they bat in the batting order. They will all say “I am hardest on my daughter”. Every parent/ coach says that about their kid.
4. Ask the coaches what they see your role is going to be on the team. Where do they see you playing. Why do they want you on their team?
5. Are the coaches organized? Do they communicate? See if you can attend a practice and see how the coaches run practice. This will tell you a lot! Do they have a printed practice plan? Is there a lot of standing around? Will their practices make you a better player? Do they yell or teach? Do they coach? Or do they expect you to already know how to play the game?
6. Does their tournament schedule fit into what you want to achieve? Recruiting schedule vs local schedule. Colorado tournaments vs Ohio tournaments. How much are you willing to spend vs how much can you afford???? These are big questions. There are lots of ways to get recruited vs playing Colorado.
7. Is this a coach you can play for? Ask around, what do other people think? Is this a coach that yells and screams? Do they teach or just expect you to know what to do? Does the coach humiliate kids on the field? How do they react when things go wrong? Very important questions. Are you tough and able to take criticism or are you a cupcake? My daughter is a visual learner, you can talk and talk to her, but if you don’t show her, she doesn’t understand. We have had to make sure that her coaches are willing to show her vs yell at her. She doesn’t respond to yelling she responds to COACHING!
8. FRIENDS. This is important. Girls are very social. There is nothing wrong with you playing ball with some of your friends. Sometimes it may keep you from quitting the game. At one point several years ago, my daughter asked me not to play travel ball anymore, she just wanted to play on her local Rec team with her friends. After a few months in REC she decided to go back to travel ball. We figured it was at least better than her not ever playing again.
9. Do you like the uniform colors? Make sure the teams colors are colors that you can wear all year! HAHA. Just making sure you are sill reading this! But seriously. There is no way that I would ever be caught wearing certain colors (scarlet ad grey), so it is very important to make sure the teams colors are colors that you can wear all the time and their spirit wear makes you look good! Hahaha
10. Don’t forget these are some of the best years of your life. Don’t waste them worrying about the small, insignificant things that honestly don’t matter. Sit back and enjoy the ride. Enjoy the long car rides to the field at 6:30am. Enjoy the horrible cheers that you still hear ringing through your ears years later. Cherish the family time in the car and at the hotel, the small victories, and the singing in the car.
11. You make the team, pay your deposit, practice through the fall and now they tell you that they want you to see ONLY their instructors. This is something I never thought I would have to include on this list. But after the past few years, a bunch of us instructors have talked about this and we would like to call BS on this crap. You may want to stay clear of organizations that MAKE you do this. This usually becomes a BIG money maker for the organization/ or one person. They liked you enough to put you on their team. They wanted you because you were a great player. But now they want to make you go to a different person for instruction? HMMM??? Sometimes you got to ask WHY? I can’t tell you how many of those kids come back after one year, because they didn’t connect with that instructor or because they didn’t do as well. Some of the instructors were amazing, but why change a kid that is already hitting great and leading in HR’s? Or change a pitcher that is pitching 62MPH and doing a great job? A lot of times it is a connection with an instructor. I will never understand why coaches want to mess with that stuff.
You will not remember the wins or the losses, the errors or the strikeouts. You will remember the time you spent with your parents and teammates . You will remember the fun times. You will remember the good coaches and the bad coaches because BOTH will help make you the player you become.
Tryout season is here.
When in doubt, ASK QUESTIONS and follow your gut.
There is a team out there for everyone.
Good Luck with tryouts everyone!
Y’all got this!
I believe in you all, just believe in yourself!
(Sorry for the typos, grammatical errors, spelling mistakes…etc)