What's up guys? Coach Madden, YouGoProBaseball.com here with Doug
Bernier, former major league infielder had a fielding percentage of 1000 in the
major leagues so when we're talking about fielding this is the guy you want to
listen to he's also got a YouTube channel Pro Baseball Insider so check
him out there but he's going to share with us some fielding drills that he
loves to do and that can help you be a better fielder right yeah for sure well
you got so all right so there's a couple variations of the same drill that I like
to use I call them daily drills because this is something I will do every single
day and it always starts with me on my knees so kind of to start I'm gonna
throw my glove to the side I'm gonna throw the baseball to the side and we're
gonna use a tennis ball now the reason I like using tennis balls is if you've
ever tried to catch a tennis ball with a bare hand it can be difficult at times
you have to have soft hands you have to not be hard and like just you know go
after the baseball you have to be able to you know be relaxed with your hand
and so that's what I like to do it so I get on my get on my knees here and I
have a partner throw me the ball and what I'm working on is there's gonna
throw me a short hop and I'm just gonna work on going through the baseball and
or the tennis ball and secure it I'm gonna do maybe about ten of these I'm
not gonna overdo it but I'm just gonna do that if you're by yourself throw a
throw a ball off a wall throw it off a garage door do it in your house you know
do it away so your parents don't get mad at you but throw it off the wall and
just work on securing the baseball then do forehand same thing
turn it around do some backhands and just using a tennis ball with your bare
hand you will find that over time at the beginning if the ball is not gonna stick
the balls gonna hit and just fly out but after a while the balls gonna start to
secure the book you're gonna be able to start to feel the ball you're gonna
notice when you put the glove on your hand and your fielding a baseball how
much easier it actually is so that's where I like to start then from there
I like to put the glove on and use a baseball same idea I want to have my you
know a partner or whatever and I'm gonna be up on my feet and I'm gonna work on
feeling through the baseball I can do four hands I can do backhands but it's
the way just it's a way to get a lot of reps in in a
short amount of time and make sure I'm doing it right so those are the two
things that I like to do just to get the day started I feel like that's a good
kind of hand-eye coordination get everything working and go from there
those are awesome one other one I like to do when you're down on your knees
with a wall is actually have a guy behind you throwing it so you don't know
where it's going and you have to react more to that ball I really like the
tennis ball on to because you have to be real soft with that yeah well let me ask
you this when you were growing up yeah where you always thrown the ball off the
wall off the off the thing all the time all the time like I I set up a IIIi
taped up my garage door you know and I would throw I'd have targets I'd be
throwing balls off that thing I would do you know ground balls off it all the
time I would have a tennis racket in my hand and I'd be hitting balls off the
wall and everything and even actually until the last I mean even up until the
last year I played I mean this is kind of a funny story but with the gym we
work out at I would take my wife there sometimes and she just launched racquet
balls at me and I would just sit there in the racquetball court and just try to
catch it barehanded and that was kind of a way to get used to seeing velocity and
just trying to react and so yeah I've always kind of like tried to think a
little bit outside the box when it comes to fielding that's awesome that is so
cool yeah my parents I remember growing up
would you know my mom didn't want me doing stuff in the house too much but my
dad was like just let him you know throw him wherever as long as I didn't break
any rate so if you're a parent you got a young kid who's high-energy and he's
throwing balls all around maybe just give him an area one spot in the house
that he can't really break anything because I think that I think a lot of
baseball players are the same always playing with a ball just having a ball
throwing it around yeah I think it's a good thing like obviously there's times
when we want to get coached and work on mechanics and stuff but I learned a lot
just by throwing the ball off the wall and just trying to be creative and work
on things and it's funny because in my in my baseball career I was very
mechanical and I worked a lot on my hitting and the hitting was always the
part of my game that was you know was suspect you know sometimes it was there
sometimes it wasn't but with fielding and throwing it
more of a feel I developed a feel overtime just okay I'm trying to hit a
target how am I gonna do it and I just did it and over and over again all of a
sudden it kind of became you know natural and I wasn't thinking so much
about it and so I think it's good just go play man I mean that's that's good
stuff when it's fun that doesn't seem like work right actual like you know
when you have to go to practice and you and you're made to do things it's it's
hard to get into it sometimes but when you make it a game yourself and you're
doing it for fun I'm used to go out there for hours just because it was fun
right remember it's a game like go out there and have fun with it because
that's what it's all about my dad and I used to play a game called we called it
errors but it was just against the wall yeah and we would throw it as fast as we
could and try to get it by the other guy so like we would take turns I would
throw one and you would have to chase it down wherever I threw it filled it if
you made an error then I got a point right and you will get it throw it as
fast as you can I would try to field it if I made an error you would get a point
and we played two you know 21 or something and we'd be there for hours
man I remember my arm would be hanging after that that's one thing you gotta
watch out for is throwing too many but right man it was so much fun so just I
guess that's the biggest thing I could tell you because I don't know much about
fielding other than that I'll stick the pitching yeah we used to play like we
had a bunch of friends that were in the neighborhood and we'd go out and we'd
play in the street and we would do that for hours we would just be hitting balls
we'd be throwing to each other we'd be catching and just that stuff just just
when you can develop good habits by having fun and not thinking too much
about it you get better pretty quick and so you know sometime I mean like I
said all that other stuff is good but sometime just go out and have fun and
don't think too much about it just enjoy the game for what it is so now you
talked about going bare hand with the tennis ball using a baseball with a
glove I see you got a mini glove on here you have one that's mine but you have
one similar at home do you tell us about using a smaller glove what do you like
about that okay I like using the smaller glove because it forces you to
concentrate a little bit more on the baseball when you have like um you know
just your normal glove it's larger so you can get away with some things you
know if you have some bad habits but this you got to be locked in or that
ball is either gonna squirt underneath your glove or it's gonna kind of bounce
out so just the concentration is a little bit higher when you have a
mini glove that's awesome that's good stuff that is good stuff
thank you dog yep guys if you want to follow more from Doug check them out pro
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