Play Ball

Play Ball: 100 Baseball Practice Games is the best way to develop players' skills, execution, and on-field team play!

With more than 100 skill-building competitions, Play Ball: 100 Baseball Practice Games covers everything from the fundamentals of fielding, pitching, catching, and hitting to special situations such as rundowns, base stealing, and bunting. You'll even learn how to incorporate the games into team practices to perfect execution and prepare for opponents.

Renowned coach and American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame member Tom O'Connell includes games for individual players as well as group competitions for infielders, outfielders, and pitchers and catchers. Coaching tips and variations also allow the developmental games to be used with beginning, intermediate, and advanced players and teams alike.

From outfielder to catcher, from player to coach, Play Ball: 100 Baseball Practice Games is your guide to more productive and engaging practices, focused play, and on-the-field excellence.

Tom O'Connell has over 30 years of amateur and professional baseball coaching experience. A Major League Baseball recommending scout since 1986, O'Connell has worked for the Cincinnati Reds, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the 2008 World Series champion Philadelphia Phillies. A recipient of numerous state and national awards for his coaching, O'Connell was named the 1991 Wisconsin Baseball Man of the Year, elected president of the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) in 2002, named the 2004 ABCA Coach of the Year, and inducted into the ABCA Hall of Fame in 2007.

O'Connell is a contributing writer for the Collegiate Baseball Newsletter and author of numerous articles in baseball publications such as Touching All Bases and the ABCA Quarterly Digest. He also wrote Coaching Youth Baseball and Coaching Baseball Technical and Tactical Skills for the American Sport Education Program.

O'Connell lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

"Amateur baseball has been waiting for a book like Play Ball. Tom O'Connell has done a magnificent job in laying out the practice-to-game concept for the readers."

Ron Polk
Assistant Baseball Coach, University of Alabama at Birmingham

"Tom O'Connell, one of the most respected baseball coaches in the world, has hit a home run with Play Ball: 100 Baseball Practice Games. It should be required reading for every baseball coach on all levels of the game.”

Lou Pavlovich
Editor, Collegiate Baseball newspaper

"Coach O'Connell has assembled learning, teaching, and playing all in one book. Play Ball is a must-have for any baseball library, and I have never seen a more comprehensive book that can be used by coaches, parents, and players at all levels and all ages. You will use this book over and over."

Tim Saunders
Dublin Coffman High School
2000 USA Baseball Developmental Coach of the Year
Ohio High School Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame Member

“Making kids comfortable with competing, giving them that feeling that they must do their best and accept the result is the coach’s job. This phenomenon is the subject of Tom O’Connell’s excellent new book Play Ball: 100 Baseball PracticeGames.”

-John Miller

Coach and player for the Brussels Kangaroos