Pitching great Mike White back helping Kiwi softball hurlers

December 16, 2016

---

Former Black Sox pitcher Mike White - home in New Zealand to run pitching and catching clinics - watches New Zealand women's team pitcher Rita Hokianga in full stride.

ORIGINAL STORY by Tony Smith

Former Black Sox ace Mike White says New Zealand's male pitchers have "raw talent" but need to improve their control, but there is a lack of depth among women's hurlers.

White - head softball coach at the University of Oregon, one of the United States' top college programmes - is back home to run a series of pitcher and catcher clinics for Softball New Zealand.  

In his prime White - whose pitched at the highest level from the late 1970s to the 2004 world championships - was ranked alongside Kevin Herlihy and Bill Massey as New Zealand's greatest male pitcher.

READ MORE: 
* Eyebrows raised at diamond sports funding
* Black Sox beaten in Argentina* Black Sox bounce back
* Touring team changes 
* Raemaki in doubt
* Enoka new captain

He threw a perfect game - no hits, no walks, no runners on base - to lead the Black Sox to the 1996 world championships grand final and collect his second career gold medal.

Few team sports rely on an individual as heavily as softball leans on its pitcher.

New Zealand once possessed a proud pitching production line - each year class containing gems such as Herlihy, Massey, Owen Walford, White, Steve Jackson, Peter Meredith, Paul Magan and Chubb Tangaroa through to Marty Grant and Jeremy Manley.

The women's game had its own golden lineage - Cheryl Kemp, Debbie Mygind and Gina Weber, who helped the White Sox become one of the world's best teams from the late 70s to early 90s.

But, in recent years, the seemingly incessant flow of quality Kiwi pitchers has slowed to a comparative trickle - hence Softball New Zealand's desire to pick White's brain and stimulate a revival.

White - who signed a six-year $US 1.4 million ($NZ 2 million) contract extension at Oregon in 2015 - has held clinics in Auckland and Christchurch and is set to run sessions in Wellington - his former hometown - this weekend.

He says softball has had a boost with the sport's return to the Olympic Games programme and he feels it is "important come down and improve New Zealand softball if I can and help give back..."

White's ambition to become a pitcher was "tweaked" as a schoolboy while watching the classical 20-inning pitching duel between New Zealand's Kevin Herlihy and the United States' Ty Stofflet at the 1976 world championships in Lower Hutt.

As he made his own mark on the mound, he had plenty of pitchers to look up to - including Herlihy and his Miramar clubmate Kevin Henderson, "who was the first guy who showed me how important location was".

'LOCATION, LOCATION'

White's not sure contemporary Kiwi pitchers have as many mentors. "I asked some of the guys in Auckland and several had role models, but they were all hitters.

"We are known for our hitting now, not our pitching."

But the New Zealand men's game still has "some really good talent".

"There are big strong guys that spin the ball and throw hard with good movement. The physical abilities are there, I just don't think they've been keyed on locations and how to get hitters out. They need to work on the other side of the coin.

"I wasn't known for blistering pace, but I think I was very good at picking apart hitters' weaknesses and really analysing how I could get people out. That's what made me somewhat I consistent - I didn't have to have my great stuff to be effective, I could use off-speed pitches, locations and just try to outfox [hitters] a little bit.

"I've talked about the three tools we have, as pitchers, to get hitters out. One is speed - both fast and slow - another is movement, with spin and everything, and the third component is control.

"I really think that's what's hurting us right now - from what I've seen on tapes I've been sent - is our control. It's not where it needs to be."

White says "control is what made Herlihy great" - and other Kiwi pitchers, including Grant, Jim Wana and White himself also had it.

"Right now, with the new style of pitching - the leap and the push - it's a little harder to develop that control. Some of these guys have been trying to find consistency of release. It's kind of a like  golf swing - if you have three different swings, or three different timings, it's hard to be consistent.

White believes the solution is plenty of practise to perfect the art.

When he first broke into premier softball in the 1970s, "we would only play two or three games a week, if we were lucky, and then the other days were practice".

The current generation are playing more games and are "just throwing and throwing" but aren't "spending the time to develop their craft".

 White says the top New Zealand  White Sox pitchers - Rita Hokianga, Taylor Paige-Stewart and Courtney Gettins - have good skills, but he senses a lack of pitching depth in the women's game with young hurlers "struggling a little bit in the three components", including velocity.

"Some of it is to do with mechanics, not being taught the right mechanics - body posture, strength and positioning - to be able to throw.

"There's some work to be done there."

White says with more American college and international softball on television young Kiwi female pitchers have more opportunity to develop role models.                

 'LIVING A DREAM'

A US resident since the 1980s, White has been head coach at the University of Oregon since 2010 and has guided his team to three College World Series finals - the American softball citadel.

"I never thought I'd be in this situation, it's surreal. Every now and then I pinch myself when I walk out my office and there's a $17 million stadium out there," White says.

"I've got a nice budget, we travel and play the best [teams in the US] and stay in the best hotels.

"When I first started to get into it, I knew it was going to be a long, long road - a lot of hours with little money - and it just kind of developed from there.

"I've been lucky enough to build some really good networks of people to help me and I had the foundation I built through my [pitching] career."

White took a "big paycut" when he gave up his own business in America's mid-west to become a paid coaching assistant at Oregon in 2003 on $US26,000 a year.

Told "Oregon was a lot like New Zealand," he went west.

"The first thing I learnt was coaching is more of a lifestyle than a job, there was no such thing as a 40-hour week. You'd go out there and work from Monday to Friday and travel [to tournaments] Saturday ... you get your day off when the season's done."

After two years as an assistant, he took a break for a while to spend more time with his wife and three daughters, but he has been back as head coach for seven seasons.

The ball club has never looked back, winning four Pac-12 conference honours under White's tutelage and making the College World Series for the first time since 1989.

"In my mind, I don't have a job," White says. I'm huge on competing and coaching has filled that void for me, it's very competitive at the top."

White, who has served as a pitching adviser to the USA women's national team, has a .779 winning percentage which ranks him in the top echelon of American college coaches.

Three University of Oregon graduates - pitchers Cheridan Hawkins and Jessica Moore and outfielder Janie Takeda - have played for the USA team and three of White's current charges are in the 2016-17 national selection player pool.

The US college arena is a totally different league to New Zealand's softball scene.

White says Oregon "are scouting girls at 12 and 13 to recruit when they turn 18. They're being exposed to high level softball at the ages of 11 and 12. Our [Kiwi] kids are just thinking about getting into it at 11 or 12, so they're about three or four years behind in development."

Around 20 New Zealand players are on college scholarships in the United States, mainly at community college (junior) schools or lower NCAA institutions.

White says New Zealand should develop a website that "allows kids to be seen on skills videos, via Youtube".

That would allow college coaches to scout them for opportunities in the United States.

White says the community college schools were "a more affordable option"  for a New Zealander, but if a player does well at that level they could attract interest from a top-tier Division One school looking to fill roster gaps.

He would also like to see Softball New Zealand develop a national academy - "controlled from a central location" - to ensure young players here get the best available coaching and he would dearly love to see New Zealand recognised again for producing quality pitchers.

White has been assisted in New Zealand by his daughter Nyree, 24, who pitched for Stanford University and would be eligible for the White Sox.

 - Stuff