Just as very few people are natural athletes, very, very few are hopelessly uncoordinated. Kids that have poor coordination can usually be helped by lots of catching and fielding practice, trips to the neighborhood batting cages, and by exercises like skipping rope.

(Yes, SKIPPING ROPE. Skipping rope is a very effective way to build coordination. Boxers do it. If you are having trouble with your tennis serve or your golf swing, try skipping a little rope every day. You'll be glad you logged onto this web site!)

With a lot of patience, hard work and encouragement, the typical "Klutz" can become an average baseball player. The key word is "encouragement," specially avoiding discouragement.

Uncoordinated kids can quickly become the butt of jokes and cruel remarks by other members of their baseball team.

A good baseball team manager will put a stop to that.

Kids have fragile egos, and it doesn't take much humiliation to make a kid quit baseball, and possibly all sports.

If the first kid who makes fun of the Klutz ends up running laps, the wisecracks will stop forever after the first practice.

A good manager will then assign a coach (NOT a Klutz's parent) to work with the Klutzy kids separately, to patiently build up their confidence and coordination.

Unfortunately, some managers will actually participate in the humiliation. Why? to drive the Klutz off the baseball team as quickly as possible.

Remember that Little League Baseball managers are volunteers. We owe them a lot. Without them there would be no Little League.

They are not professional Physical Education teachers, and they are not social workers. They are only human. They want to win baseball games because they get a substantial amount of grief (from the parents) when they lose. They know from long experience that their baseball team's chances of winning are much better with a small elite baseball team, than with a larger baseball team with a few kids that can't catch or throw very well, and that strike out every time they get up to bat. They do what they think it takes to win. (See "Weeding out the weak players" below.)

If this happens to your kid, get him into another sport as soon as possible. Don't try to fix him yourself. Don't get in the manager's face or go running to the League Officials. They will not fire the manager and they will not let you change teams. You won't win that battle.

Baseball takes an unusual amount of coordination. Other sports - like running or swimming - rely more on strength and stamina. If your kid is a bit klutzy, try one of those.