Did I teach Bob how to play pro baseball? No, I gave him the tools he needed to complete his mission and he went out and did the work. I made a backstop out of three small trees and placed a canvas around it so he would not have to chase baseballs.
Then I purchased a bushel basket filled with major league baseballs and marked off the throwing distance for a major league pitcher. I took the smallest utility trailer tire I could find and place it on the parts of the tree to create a strike zone. After Bob had shot through the complete basket of balls and picked them up again, I would move the tire to “low outside of the corner” and have Bob shoot another basketful and repeated this process for months at a time until he became a pinpoint accuracy pitcher.
Bob could place the baseball about anywhere he wanted it. But believe me, he did all the work by himself. I am very proud of his accomplishments.
If you had a magic wand and could change anything in our sport, what might you change?
That’s a loaded question for sure. As I’m sure you are well aware of pool players are wholly different breeds of cat. They can never seem to find common ground about much of anything in the game of pool. If they did, you would not hear so much baloney about “these rules are not fair” or the “cloth is not the right type of us to play on”.
To prove my point, the only matches you really see in full on TV are with the women. They play all the time and have a great time, and if the pro level men stop all the whining they would play more and better.
You can visit Ken's school at The Institute of Billiard Sciences for more.
