The thing is I try to be a PC kind of person especially when dealing with parents and their children however I believe people should be honest when being paid for a service, in this case a pitching lesson....So I would appreciate a little feed back on this one maybe I'm missing something or maybe I'm too callus, nonetheless a little feedback would be appreciated.
So here we go, for starters I'll give you all a little of my philosophy when it comes to pitches and pitchers: There are 3 pitches I recognize, a riseball, a dropball, and a changeup. All pitches fall into one of those categories the point is pitches are either dropping, rising or changing speed this helps me to simplify's things. Now there are Pitchers and there are Throwers. A "Pitcher" has command and location of her pitches, she has the "correct spin" on her pitches and she can throw a changeup in any count. Then there is a "Thrower" now she in most cases can throw hard (but not always) and is effectively wild, but has little control or command of her pitches nor does she have correct spin. And almost always has had at least 4 different pitching coaches....
OK now, lets get to my lesson, a dad contacts me saying he would like to get with me and bring his daughter to me for a lesson and she is 16yo she is a solid pitcher but needs a little fine tuning she has had several instructors but none have shown her anything new.....Soo I meet up with them we do a little warm up and I ask her to show me what she has and how she warms up(father is chiming in the whole time). She shows me her drop ball (wrong spin) shows me riseball (same as dropball) shows me fastball (dropball spin) shows me changeup (slows down everything) shows me screwball (same as drop and rise). At this point I told him she needs a little more then just fine tuning. The only pitch she threw correctly was her fastball which was technically a peel drop. I told him granted she throws hard but if she wants to be considered a pitcher and not a thrower she needs to learn how to throw pitches correctly and have command of them. Also whoever it was that told her that her riseball and dropball had the correct spin, is not somebody they should go back to regardless if they choose to stay with me or not. I went on and demonstrated a riseball, dropball, curveball, and offspeed for them to see the correct spin. Needless to say he told me that it was not possible for a girl to spin the ball the way I do because their hands are not as large or as strong , he then went on to tell me he would not be returning and that I had no right to say that his daughter was a thrower and not a pitcher because she is the starting pitcher in high school and the number #1 pitcher on their travel squad and is currently being recruited by several schools.... I tried to refuse payment but he insisted and told me that I was nobody to pass judgment on his kid!!!