Cage Etiquette: An Unwritten Rules Guide

You bought 20 pitches. You get 20 pitches. You do not get to stand in the cage “getting a feel for it” for four minutes between rounds while six families wait behind you. Swing. Collect your balls if it's that kind of cage. Step out. The line is real and it has feelings.

This is the most important rule and the most frequently violated. Unless a parent specifically asks for your input, your job is to mind your own business. You might have the best intentions. You might have coached for 15 years. You might be absolutely right about their elbow angle. It does not matter. Keep it to yourself.

Exception: if a kid is genuinely in danger of getting hurt. Safety trumps etiquette. Everything else doesn't.

It takes bills. Sometimes it takes crumpled bills slowly. It does not take your frustration. Feeding a wrinkled dollar into the machine 14 times at increasing speed does not improve the machine's performance. Bring quarters. Bring exact change. Bring a card if they take cards. Plan ahead like the responsible adult you pretend to be at work.

The cage provides them. They look terrible. They smell worse. Wear one anyway — or bring your own. Nobody has ever looked cool getting hit in the head by a 55 mph pitch from a machine. The machine doesn't care about your comfort level. The machine has one job.

If balls scattered everywhere when you were done: pick them up. If you brought water bottles, wrappers, or a small child's snack debris: take it with you. The cage is not your living room. Although based on some cages I've visited, some people treat their living room the same way.

You do not need to hit in the fastest cage to prove anything. If you're working on mechanics at 45 mph, that's smart training. If your 9-year-old wants to try the 70 mph cage because their friend dared them, that's not brave — that's a trip to the ER waiting to happen. Match the speed to the skill. Nobody is impressed by the wrong thing here.

Every facility has one cage that's better than the others. The machine is newer, the lighting is better, the balls aren't held together by hope and duct tape. If there's a line and you've had your turns, rotate out. Cage-hogging is a real thing and the universe keeps score.