Baseball Pitching - Feeling Safe in Your Workplace

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By Larry Cicchiello

As a baseball pitcher, don't be bashful about inspecting or fixing a mound yourself before you even throw a warm up pitch. Two very important areas are where your landing foot will hit the ground and the pitching rubber area.

Don't hesitate to fill up a hole that quite often is present where most pitchers land with their landing foot. I've seen this landing spot sometimes a foot deep and that is unsafe. And your pitch quality will suffer also. You can easily get injured landing into this unsafe, deep hole.

The area that I have the biggest problem with is those deep holes just in front of the rubber where your pivot foot moves. Unfortunately, they are very common at amateur levels of play. They are very dangerous and risk injury to the pitcher's foot and also to his arm. Many baseball pitchers have injured their throwing arms by releasing a ball awkwardly and these deep holes in front of the pitching rubber are encouraging just that to happen.

When I was about ten years old, my father taught me how to deal with this hole that is right smack in front of the pitching rubber and does not belong there. He taught me to fill up the hole myself, using my feet to move the dirt from other areas of the mound. Sometimes if the mound is too hard you can't do this. It didn't happen often, but occasionally I would hold up the baseball game, spending close to five full minutes filling up this dangerous hole. It makes no sense at all to twist an ankle or possibly getting an injury even more severe.

I asked my father what should I tell the umpire if he says something like, "come on, we have to get this game going." He told me to very politely tell the umpire that this hole should not be there and I'm concerned about breaking my ankle. I must have delayed ball games on about a dozen occasions and not once did an umpire ever say a word to me because they all knew that this hole should not be present if the mound was properly maintained.

Don't hesitate to make sure the mound is safe and don't let anybody rush you when your are doing your maintenance. Don't allow anyone talk you out of it. The more intelligent umpires will be in total agreement with you and may actually join you while you fill up the hole, as was the case with me several times.

You are not entitled to a pitcher's mound that is perfect like professional levels of play. But you are very much entitled to a pitcher's mound that is safe and will not inhibit your pitching. Baseball pitching is tough enough on a pitcher's throwing arm and don't allow yourself to be put at even a higher risk of injury.

Don't ever hesitate or let anyone stop you from making your workplace safe!

Larry is the president of Larwenty Online Enterprises Inc. and also the author of "Excellent Baseball Coaching: 30 Seconds Away." If you are a baseball player or are involved in baseball coaching at any level of play or a parent who wants to help your child improve, you will be fully equipped! His baseball website offers several FREE baseball tips from his very informative and very fairly priced eBooks.

Larry's baseball website is http://www.larrybaseball.com/

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