Many of us in the baseball community are part of small clubs. We often have to set up training sessions for 4 or 5 people, sometimes even fewer. I’ve long wondered how to motivate the members present while offering dynamic sessions.
The day I met some Dominican nationals, I found a solution: « Vitilla. » It’s a popular street baseball game in the Dominican Republic. Most of the big names in the MLB from the Dominican Republic have played and still play Vitilla.
The advantage is that you only need a cap from a large water bottle and a broom handle, so the cost is almost zero. Another advantage is that you can play 2-on-2 matches.
Vitilla is excellent for working on hand-eye coordination and muscle reflexes. It’s very easy to create different effects and work on various batting situations. We’ve been practicing Vitilla in my club for several years, even with the youngest players (7 years old). When my players move on to softball and/or baseball, they are used to seeing different trajectories and hit better in more traditional baseball games.
From experience, street baseball (Vitilla, stickball, wiffle ball, tag baseball, and of course Baseball 5) allows us to have very dynamic training sessions even with fewer than 10 people present. In 2021, we only had 6 young players in the section. Today, there are about twenty people at each training session with a fairly low absence rate. Pedagogically, the advantage is that everyone can make their own bat from a cant hook broom handle (thicker than a regular broom). They can use it in Vitilla matches and also for different, more specific baseball/softball batting exercises with wiffle balls of different sizes, for example.
You can order Beteyah equipment from the website below
François Garde
