Offseason

Well it’s finally over… nothing but 250’s and festival tournaments and an abundance of free weekends to look forward to… damn it. As you can imagine it’s both great and depressing that the season is over. This happens every year. You’re glad it’s over because of the wear and tear from the traveling, but at the same time, it’s hard to get as excited about a festival or 250 as you do about a Conference or World event.

So what do you do? Well for the most part, here’s what I do to keep myself in shape and to get ready for the next season.

For the rest of the year here is what I generally like to try and do:

1. Cycle down off any boosters you’re on. In my case I take Pro-Hormones. These are best taken in 30 days on, 30 days off types of cycles. At the end of the season though I like to do a flush and detox.

2. Reduce your BP schedule, but don’t stop. You can take a break for a few weeks, as I always like to take two weeks off right after the Major World Series then ease back into BP once or twice a week, until after Snowball (January).

3. Adjust your diet. Let’s face it…winters coming and with fewer games to play and less outside activity it’s a good idea to adjust your calorie intake and types of calories (protein, carbs, etc).

4. Get into a gym routine. Yes, most of the season we work out, but after the season you can scale down the work outs and try to focus more on conditioning and rehab work rather than getting bigger and stronger.

5. Get any treatments, surgeries, etc done now so you can start rehabbing and preparing for the coming year.

Then in January I start a different schedule:

1. Begin building my vitamin and pro hormone regimen. Look at new products that may help with new problem areas so that I can get stronger and quicker with the least amount of side affects and possible health issues as a result of using these products.

2. Increase the BP schedule. Time to start hitting more balls per week and getting to work on any areas of your swing you feel you should focus on.

3. Get into a core workout routine. Increasing your core will help with driving the ball and increase your power.

Best of luck to you guys in the offseason, and we’ll see you out there.

Players, Sponsor, Money and the State of the Game

I had no idea how to title this one…because it’s about a touchy subject, one that is going to draw fire no matter which side you are on.. Players feeling they should be paid.

Personally I sit on both sides of the fence on this one. However, one thing is clear, paying players is destroying the game. Paying players has always been around as long as I can remember. Obviously the big boys (Major Players) generally get compensated, some earn a decent living just from softball.

Here is where I think this goes wrong. You have a team and you have a successful year. No one on the team is being paid. At the end of the season because of the team success individual players get offers to play with other teams and those offers include money. So they leave. This is a common scenario that we see play out almost every year in some fashion.

So what’s my issue? There are several:

1. Do you want to play the game for the love of the game or for the money? Simply put, if you’re playing for money, then you should quit. The top 1% of all of softball across all associations are the ones getting paid. Even then we’re not talking huge money. No one retires from Softball to go be an analyst on ESPN.

2. When you pay players after a good year you are not allowing for bad years. What do I mean? Well just because Player A does great this year, doesn’t mean he can repeat the performance next year. Once you pay him, he’s never going to want to play for free again. So when he stinks it up, then you have a player you cut next year. Well he now thinks he’s worth money…anywhere he goes he’s expecting to be paid.

3. It hurts the game because Sponsors are getting burned out. Players already get airfare, hotel, food money, rental cars and equipment paid for at the upper level, and now you want to add weekend money? This is forcing out smaller sponsors, and forcing other sponsors to partner up. The end result is you have fewer upper teams with fewer sponsors. The game shrinks…

You only have to look at the lower local tournament teams to see this. Yes, there are some even in the lower levels that will pay players (I’ve even heard of it in E…E?!?! can you imagine?), but by and large for the most part the players will fight hard for the guy that paid the entry fee. Sometimes they work even harder when the sponsor only pays for the uniform and it’s there money for balls, entry fees, gas, hotels, etc.

Sadly there is no answer for this dilemma… Because it doesn’t matter what you do as either a sponsor or player. As a sponsor if you don’t pay players, then you have to keep finding guys who want to play for the love of the game and where you can help them advance …but once they make it with your team, and they get their first money offer, what’s going to happen? As a player if you’re offered money to play a game you love then why would you turn it down?

In the end this fight will wage on, neither side willing to see what it does to the game, yet all the while the number of sponsors dwindle and the game continues to decline…