The Lucadello plan

The Lucadello plan

Like many scouts, Lucadello believed that modern players were weak in the fundamentals of the game. For many years he had proposed that young players could constantly improve their skills by using concrete walls to work on their arms and take ground balls at the same time, with or without supervision, similar to the way young basketball players spent hour after hour shooting at a basket. With the help of some high school coaches who worked as part-time scouts for him, he developed and published a series of training drills using the walls in a booklet called "The Lucadello Plan" that he believed could help change the game.

In 1984, American League president Dr. Bobby Brown, also believing the game's skills were in decline among its young players, began seeking a low-level way to reverse the trend. Among the ideas he received from major league baseball scouts was Lucadello's description of his "plan." With encouragement from former Phillies manager Dallas Green, who had seen clinics run by Lucadello in Puerto Rico, Major League Baseball created an instructional video in 1987 called, "A Coaching Clinic," that demonstrated the drills. Orders for the video came from all over the world, and it was given to officials from the former Soviet Union who visited spring training in 1988 in preparation for the creation of an Olympic team.

The Lucadello Plan lists six rules for young players to follow to maximize the benefit of practicing with the wall:

1. Learn to position your feet for ground balls.
2. Keep your head and glove down.
3. Grip the ball across the seams.
4. Throw with a strong, over-the-top delivery.
5. Take 100 grounders off the wall every day.
6. Play with enthusiasm.