STANDING ORDERS · SITUATIONAL BASEBALL
FIELD
ORDERS
Thirty orders for the thinking ballplayer
Read the game. Know your job. Move.
10U TRAVEL BASEBALL · HALFTYME PRESS · SAVANNAH, GEORGIA
STANDING ORDERS · SITUATIONAL BASEBALL
Thirty orders for the thinking ballplayer
Read the game. Know your job. Move.
10U TRAVEL BASEBALL · HALFTYME PRESS · SAVANNAH, GEORGIA
Before the First Pitch
GENERALS —
Every play you will see this season has already happened ten thousand times. The ground ball to short with a runner on second. The fly ball two of you can reach. The throw coming home with a batter sneaking toward second behind it. None of it is new — and that is the best news in baseball, because anything that repeats can be learned, and anything learned can be executed at full speed.
Talent is loud. Everybody sees the home run. But watch a good team closely and you’ll see something quieter deciding the game: nine players who all know where the ball goes before it’s hit. A runner who was told to take third by the second baseman’s turned back. A right fielder sprinting twenty feet behind a routine throw that never gets away — until the day it does.
This book is thirty orders. Not suggestions — orders. Each one is short enough to memorize and true often enough to trust. Read them, write your reps in pencil, argue with the answer key at practice if your why holds up. Then bring them to the field, where they belong.
You don’t need to be the biggest player in the park. You need to be the one who already knows.
REPORT FOR DUTY.
— COACH
GEORGIA GENERALS · 10U
2
Read This First
EVERY ORDER IS ONE SPREAD. Left page: why the play works, the rules in rungs, and the field diagram. Right page: four write-in reps (A–D), THE TRAP — the mistake that looks smart, FROM THE COACH, and the one-line ORDER in the bottom corner. Orders marked ADV are advanced — earn the ones before them first.
The book is a ladder. Order 14 leans on 13, Order 24 repeals 22 and 23 on purpose. Skipping rungs is how ankles get broken.
Your answers will change as you get smarter. That’s the point. This book should look argued-with by June.
Half these orders are about your voice. A report written silently is half a rep. Your dog is an acceptable audience.
The answer key starts on page 74, and every answer comes with its why. Match the why, not just the answer. A different answer with a solid why is worth bringing to practice.
The sentence in the bottom corner is the whole lesson compressed. All thirty live together on the Standing Orders card in the back — pull it out, keep it in your bag.
One order per practice. Watch for it in your next game — live, at full speed, where it counts. The season log in the back is for the day each order shows up.
Say It Together
I know the count before every pitch.
I know my job before the ball is hit.
I move on contact. Nobody stands.
I call it loud, and I answer louder.
I take the sure out and back up every throw.
When I don’t know — first base.
Quiet is the error.
Keep your head up. Generals listen.
SAID TOGETHER BEFORE EVERY GAME. EIGHT LINES, THIRTY ORDERS, ONE TEAM. IF YOU ONLY KEEP ONE PAGE OF THIS BOOK, KEEP THIS ONE.