Alright, so today I wanna talk a bit about something I got myself into a while back, this whole “Ben Anderson baseball” thing. It’s not about some pro player you’ve all heard of, not really. This Ben Anderson, he was more of a coach, maybe some college guy, who had these theories about hitting. I stumbled across some of his stuff online, just some grainy videos and a couple of forum posts, you know how it is.
My First Brush with Ben’s Ideas
I was helping out with my kid’s little league team at the time, and honestly, we were struggling. Lots of strikeouts, kids getting frustrated. The usual coaching advice – “keep your eye on the ball,” “swing level” – it just wasn’t clicking for a lot of them. So, when I found Anderson’s material, it was… different. He talked a lot about rhythm and a quiet body, letting the bat do the work rather than trying to muscle everything. Sounded a bit out there, but hey, what did we have to lose?
I spent a weekend just diving into what little I could find. My practice, in this case, was basically me trying to decode his philosophy. I jotted down notes, tried to make sense of his drills. He had this one drill, the “soft toss from the side, focus on just meeting it” thing, which seemed too simple, but he swore by it for developing feel.
Putting it to the Test: The Early Days
So, the next week at practice, I decided to try some of it. Talk about confused looks! I told the kids, “Okay, we’re gonna try something new. Forget about hitting it hard for a bit. We’re just gonna focus on making clean contact, nice and easy.” You could see them thinking, “Coach has lost it.”
The first few sessions were rough, not gonna lie. My initial attempts to explain Anderson’s core ideas were probably a bit muddled. I’d say things like, “Feel the barrel, don’t force it!” and they’d just stare blankly. It was a real exercise in patience, for them and for me.
- We started with super slow tee work. Emphasis on a slow, deliberate load.
- Then we moved to that soft toss drill Anderson liked. Ball after ball, just trying to tap it cleanly.
- I kept telling them, “Relax your hands, relax your shoulders.”
Recording the Journey: Observations and Adjustments
I started keeping a small notebook. Nothing fancy, just observations. Who was getting it, who was still trying to kill the ball. What cues seemed to work. For instance, I noticed that for some of the smaller kids, telling them to “swing easy” actually helped them generate more bat speed because they weren’t tensing up so much. It was counterintuitive.
One kid, little Mikey, he was always an automatic out. Tensed up, swung from his heels, missed by a mile. After a week or so of Anderson’s drills, he started making contact. Not line drives, but foul tips, then weak grounders. But it was contact! That was a big win in my book.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing. Some of the naturally stronger kids got frustrated. They wanted to hit bombs. I had to adapt, mix in some of their usual “grip it and rip it” stuff with Anderson’s “feel” drills. It became less about strictly following Ben Anderson and more about taking his principles and fitting them to the kids we had.
What I Learned from the Ben Anderson Experiment
So, did we suddenly become a team of all-stars? Nope. But we did see improvements. Fewer strikeouts, for sure. More balls put in play. And more importantly, some of the kids seemed to be enjoying hitting more because they weren’t under so much pressure to crush every pitch.
My big takeaway from that whole Ben Anderson baseball deep dive was that there’s no single magic bullet in coaching. His ideas had merit, absolutely. They provided a different way to think about hitting, especially for kids who were overthinking or trying too hard. But the real “practice” for me was learning how to take those ideas, experiment with them, and adapt them. It wasn’t about blindly following a system, but about using it as a tool. And yeah, I still use some of those drills today. It was a good experience, a good record to keep in my own coaching journey.
