Have you ever made a dedicated effort to learn to catch? I find that the limiting factors are usually (a) a suitably easy ball to start with, (b) the modesty to use it, and (c) a patient enough partner to make easy throws to you. If you are of average klutziness for a geeky engineer, you can probably learn to catch, say, a volleyball in about three hours. Start with a small beach ball or medium-sized kickball, and work your way down to smaller and harder balls. Don’t be afraid to make incredibly easy throws with easy balls at short distances for about 100 reps before moving on to an incrementally harder exercise. The nice thing about catching is that a ‘rep’ takes anywhere between 1-5 seconds, so you can fit in a surprisingly large quantity of reps in a 15 minute practice session.
I think that catching also relies on having good eyesight/depth perception, so I have a feeling that some people who can’t catch very well probably need glasses (i.e. practice only goes so far).
Have you ever made a dedicated effort to learn to catch? I find that the limiting factors are usually (a) a suitably easy ball to start with, (b) the modesty to use it, and (c) a patient enough partner to make easy throws to you. If you are of average klutziness for a geeky engineer, you can probably learn to catch, say, a volleyball in about three hours. Start with a small beach ball or medium-sized kickball, and work your way down to smaller and harder balls. Don’t be afraid to make incredibly easy throws with easy balls at short distances for about 100 reps before moving on to an incrementally harder exercise. The nice thing about catching is that a ‘rep’ takes anywhere between 1-5 seconds, so you can fit in a surprisingly large quantity of reps in a 15 minute practice session.
I think that catching also relies on having good eyesight/depth perception, so I have a feeling that some people who can’t catch very well probably need glasses (i.e. practice only goes so far).
For fly balls, maybe not. http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.com/2011/10/prospective-control-i-outfielder.html
For line drives, probably more so, for footballs, even more so.
Not really. I think I used to be a bit better when I was little and played catch with my father...