Fields of Screams: 2017 youth baseball/softball thread

The weather (nice, at last) and my work situation conspired Monday to allow me to hop in the jalopy and truck the 90 minutes to Starrville and catch S15 and her JV team in a makeup doubleheader against one of the real weak sister teams of the league, the "Red Rovers" -- the first time I'd gotten up there all season.
I arrived 15 minutes late to find the score 12-0 for Starrville in the bottom of the first. S15 already has a pair of doubles and 3 RBI.
StarSis is held up at her office with a client conference and can't get out until the end of Game 1.
The Junior Starrs are starting their No. 2 pitcher so she walks a couple kids on, and soon it's 12-6 in the second.
Starrville gets right back to business with 6 more runs as S15 belts a bases-loaded triple.
The Starrville coach sees the margin swelling up and the mercy rule coming into quick play, so she starts slamming on the stop signs to base runners. On S15's final triple the Red Rovers are playing fumblerooski with the ball at the outfield fence when Coach slams on the stop sign.
The fourth inning arrives and Starrville opens it up to 21-6, triggering the 15-run mercy rule.
The teams retire to the dugouts for the in-between break. Apparently the Red Rovers have a discussion on the direction of their season (they're 0-17) which ends with one of their pitchers telling the coach to "F. U. B." and storming into the parking lot and into the sunset.
That throws the second game of the doubleheader into doubt, but after a home plate powwow the Red Rovers agree to play. StarSis arrives and I fill her in the details of Game 1.
In Game 2, the teams flip flop and the Red Rovers are the "home" team, but nothing much changes as Starrville rolls out 9-0 in the first. Starrville coach has apparently adopted a "nothing over a double" policy as S15 snacks another drive to the wall and Coach slams on the stop sign at second base.
In Game 2 Starrville starts their "No. 1" pitcher, an old basketball teammate of S15 from St. Sissy who has been splitting time between varsity and JV. She's not an ace on varsity, more like the No. 4 pitcher, an innings eater for weekend tournaments when you might play four games in a day. But on the JV level she's the ace, throwing strikes and holding the Red Rovers to three hits in four innings.
Game 2 is over quick at 18-3 in four. S15 has three doubles and a walk, pushing her totals for the day to 5 doubles, a stop-sign triple and a walk.

The JV team has one more date, a makeup twinbill Thursday against Starrville Catholic Central, which probably includes several of S15's St. Sissy classmates (the huge majority of St. Sis kids go to CC), but the forecast calls for rain and it's already decided if the games are rained out, they're just canceled, not rescheduled.

That will be it for the JV team; the varsity team goes into district play next week. StarSis has been told S15 is a good bet to be called up but no final decision has been made.

I asked StarSis and S15 both, "how's volleyball going?" They roll their eyes in unison and say, "one tourney left." I decide to leave it at that.

 

One encouraging thing from watching the Junior Starrs' doubleheader is that JV coaches have for the most part ditched the pitching advice of "fire it as hard as you can, and if you walk 20 people in a row, so be it."

Although there are still occasional 15-walk abominations, the coaches on even the bad teams are telling pitchers, "if you need to toss it in slow-pitch to get it in the strike zone, do that."

And happily coaches are telling the hitters, "if it's close, hit it."

At least in that case fielders and baserunners get some practice making plays rather than just standing there.

Gone for the most part appear to be your typical mediocre JV softball innings of:

Walk-walk-walk-walk called strikeout, walk-walk-walk-walk called strikeout, walk walk wild pitch, walk walk hit by pitch, walk walk called strikeout for an inning total of:

12 runs, 0 hits, 14 walks, 3 called strikeouts, 1 HBP, 0 plays by any fielders, 0 baaes actually advanced by runners, inning pitch totals of 56 balls and 26 strikes (7 foul balls).

 

We won 8-1 with a really strong game. Started slow at the plate and ran into a double play but scored 3 in the 4th and 5 in the 5th to take control. Our pink-haired pitcher was phenomenal again even with the daughter of the opposing coach umping the game. And the defense was excellent with routine plays, a double play, and the girl with a rough life who's lazy caught a hard-hit flyball in left, which made just about everyone smile, especially her. We're the first semblance of a family that she's ever trusted to have her back. The other newbie, a natural athlete, again showed that she might remain our shortstop, even if she throws lefty. The third newbie, who's about 4'2 and 48 pounds, made a seamless play during her only inning at second. Our lefty catcher gunned a runner down at third for a strike em out throw em out.

We didn't win a game last year.

This year we're 5-4.

 

Had to "fill in" as the head coach for 14U baseball this weekend as the main coach was out of town.

Main coach's wife does the scoring/keeps the stats.

We are a .500 team that should be sponsored by Ritalin. Played three games on Sunday -- blown out in the first (giving up 9 runs in one inning always makes winning difficult), played out best game of the year in Game 2 and were in a 2-1 struggle with a team full of "growth spurt kids" who could hit 80 on the gun.

Down 2-1, 5th. Our starting pitcher was out of gas and walked the bases full yet needed his bat. I pulled the main coach's son out for the last inning -- he came in hitting fourth for average but is mired in a slump and was 0-for-6 on the day with 5 strikeouts. The only player who wasn't a "plus" for the day in either hitting, fielding or leadership (those are my three main criteria).

Coach Wife walks over.

Coach Wife: Why are you taking (my son) out?

Me: It's just not his day. The other nine guys have been hitting today.

Coach Wife: But his family is all here (it was her hometown, 90 minutes from where we all play). We want to watch him play.

Me: It's one inning. One at-bat. We need baserunners. He's been struggling.

Coach Wife: Well, I don't agree... but (with the most passive-aggressive tone) you're the coach.

Me: Actually, I'm not the coach. Your husband is. He prints out the lineups and the starting pitchers. We just make adjustments if he's not here.

I'm shocked that Coach Wife is not backing down. Not a centimeter.

Coach Wife: It's just too bad that you have to think that way. Especially swapping him out for (Different Player). You know the stats on him, right?

Me: He has three hits today.

Coach Wife: And his grandparents won't get to see him play anymore today.

Then I played a card I didn't want to.

Me: His grandparents were here for the first game, right?

Coach Wife: Yes.

Me: Then they got to see him plenty today. Your son give up 9 runs in the second inning that lasted 37 minutes. All because you and your husband are the only ones here who think he should pitch. The rest of team groans when they see his name as the starting pitcher because it means we're going to need a dozen runs to win and we'll be pulling him by the second, down 9-1 like we did today. When he pitches, we may as well just light our gas money and our hotel money on fire. That would at least be a dumpster fire worth watching.

Coach Wife: Go to hell.

Me: Tell me that later. We still have a game to try and salvage.

I love youth baseball...

 

My daughter's 5th grade team came back from trailing 11-1 last night to win 12-11. To score those 11 runs, her team put a total of 5 balls in play, one of which was caught. The winning run was scored when a throw on an attempted forceout at 2nd was dropped by the second baseman, and no one went to pick it up.

 

There is a section of Conroy's Prince of Tides about the protagonist's brother playing on the first integrated team in their town.
It is a fine piece of writing in that it adds so much depth to the character of the brother and in helping define that era.
Every young man or woman who plays a TEAM sport should read that passage.

 

I wish I could like exmedia's post twice.

It reminds me of David Sedari's "Holidays on Ice" story about working as an elf at Macy's (?) Christmas village. He does (or doesn't do) something, and a woman with a kid says, "I'm going to have you fired." And Sedaris says he wanted to say to her, "I'm going to have you killed."

 

Never discuss substitutions/ strategy with parents during a game. Just walk away.

 

Yeah, I wouldn't have gone there either. No good can come of it.

 

I know it's easier said than done, especially when Pushy Mom is also a scorekeeper, but if Head Coach Guy leaves you in charge, that's it. If he intends that Pushy Mom gets final call over lineup decisions, mske her the coach.

 

In SonofQuant's brief Little League career, there was one instance when the coach pulled one kid (who'd reached safely three times) to make sure that another kid got to play an inning and get a plate appearance. The father of the kid who got pulled was just livid ... and this was the one and only scheduled at-bat his son missed that season! The coach -- who wasn't my cup of tea, mind you -- handled it better than I would have; "You want to coach a team, I'm sure the league will find you one, but I'm the coach of this team."

 

Between basketball, baseball, softball and football, I coached about 15 team-seasons in my own illustrious career, and I don't think I can ever remember a parent getting into substitutions/PT issues during a game.