Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Grass?

After watching many games over the course of a couple of tournament weekends this summer, I saw something that interests and annoys me at the same time.

What is it?

Middle infielders who are afraid of the big bad grass behind them.

This just drives me bonkers. Some of them seem to have an aversion for going after bloopers that take them away from the safety of the infield dirt onto that plush green outfield grass. Being a middle infielder myself, I just don't understand why some of them don't want to just go after any ball they can get.

Seeing this issue brings a couple of things to mind:

This IS something that needs to be worked on in practice: even infielders need to practice tracking fly balls and pop ups.

Setting up priorities really helps: making it clear whose ball it is when both the infielder and the outfielder are going for it would help when this situation is cause because the infielder doesn't want to run in to the outfielder. The infielders need to have confidence that that ball IS there's unless they hear the outfielder call them off. The outfielder needs to know that when they call for the ball, the infielder WILL back off and give them free reign to charge that ball hard. This also is something that needs to be practiced in practice so that it works during a live situation.

The ones that do it right are so much more impressive: the simple ability for middle infielders to go after any ball and even make a catch deep into the outfield grass makes them look sooooooo much more impressive than the ones that look completely unsure of themselves once they have to take a few steps back. Working on this simple skill can make you, as a middle infielder, look so much better at your position. So if this is something you're weak at, it's a simple area to improve upon. If it's not, keep going after that ball and catching everything you can!