1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Fields of Screams: 2017 youth baseball/softball thread

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Starman, Apr 20, 2016.

  1. exmediahack

    exmediahack Well-Known Member

    Coach Wife apologized to me before practice yesterday but now, Head Coach, has just informed me that "it's your team for the next three weekends" because he just doesn't want to coach until the final tournament but with orders to not pitch his kid anymore.

    Wonderful... just wonderful.

    I love youth baseball.
     
    doctorquant likes this.
  2. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    S15's JV season wrapped up last night with an 8-7, 7-13 split with Starrville Catholic Central, giving the JV a 10-8 final record compared to 12-15 for the varsity.
    The varsity coach told StarSis that S15 wouldn't be coming up for tournament play, because she'd be the 6th outfielder and unlikely to see action other than maybe courtesy running.
    Two other girls -- one a part time catcher and LH hitter, and the other the JV ace pitcher -- did go up. S15 missed the cut because she really can only play the outfield.
    S15 did lead the JV with a .542 average, 37 runs, 43 rbi, 12-14 stolen bases (one of the two outs came when she fell down in a mud puddle), 3 home runs (of a team total of 5).
    Not bad for a kid who on March 1, pretty much had no plans to ever play softball again.
    The varsity is stacked pretty heavy to the junior class; of the 15 more or less full time players on the varsity roster, 5 were seniors, 7 juniors, 2 sophs and one freshman.
    Varsity Coach assured StarSis that S15 is very much in the plans for the next three seasons. Starrville is entering a team in the summer rec league which should play another 25 games or so. That will carry S15 up to the opening of volleyball team camp in late July.
    StarSis says the schedule demands of playing multiple sports are really starting to hit home: S15 doesn't have more than four consecutive off days on the calendar all summer long.

    Remembering back to her own Starrville HS days of 24-28 years ago when she played three varsity sports, StarSis says the opportunity/expectation/requirement for kids to play on offseason club/travel teams today is the biggest difference.
    "Seriously, I can't see how the hell anybody could possibly play three sports today," she said.
    S15's schedule for only TWO sports is insane enough. "If she had also played basketball -- travel team in the spring and fall, then school team in the winter -- oh, my god," StarSis says.

    "The only way it would really work today would be if the kid is such a superstar in one or more sports she really didn't have to play club; she could show up, or not, for club games or practices whenever she felt like it, " StarSis says.

    (S15's schedule only became remotely passable when she effectively went to part-time status on club volleyball and started blowing off games and practices when conflicts arose.)

    And that kind of flies in the face of the whole stock rationale for club sports: that they allow the "average athlete" to get a leg up on the supremely-gifted natural-talent superstars who traditionally run amuck and dominate kids' sports, and give them the edge in experience to help them make the varsity teams.

    But it turns out in the end the natural-talent superstars have all the advantages in making the club teams too. Club coaches and school coaches can talk all they want about wanting complete 12-month commitments to the sport, but it all goes out the window when the 4.4 40 and 6-8 power forward types show up at practice.

    The saving grace is that none of the StarSis kids are such awesome physical specimens that playing in college is anything more than a pipe dream, so really for them the ultimate objective to playing on offseason club teams is to make the HS varsity team.

    From the looks of things, S15 will probably meet that goal in both sports by next year (sophomore year) so there won't be that much reason to keep playing club ball in either sport other than on a just-staying-in-shape rec league basis.

    If she were a bonafide college prospect it would make sense to try to hook on with one of the statewide U18 elite-level high-competition teams, but she's not, so it doesn't.

    Looking into the future S15 is a little nervous about Twin A and Twin B, now 10 1/2 and heading into fifth grade, when the intensity of club sports ramps up significantly.

    Right now they are both pretty good in all three of the traditional "ball sports" (VB, BKB and SFB) and Sis gets 2-for-1 value from having them both play on the same club teams.

    What Sis is worried about is that at some point one will get dramatically better than the other in a given sport, leading to the possibility one will be playing on a club team and the other won't.

    The real danger is if one got interested in a different sport during the same season, which would commit StarSis to following two completely different club programs at the same time for probably 2/3 of the year.

    For instance Starrville has very active and aggressively expanding girls soccer and lacrosse programs, both of which compete/conflict directly with softball in terms of scheduling and participation numbers. (Their girls track program is usually pretty good too.)

    She allowed the twins both to fool around with soccer in 1st/2nd grades, but since then Sis has steered them pretty firmly to the big three sports.

    Basically she's said, "If anyone ever shows up at our front door with lacrosse sticks, I'm throwing them off the porch."
     
    Last edited: May 27, 2016
  3. StaggerLee

    StaggerLee Well-Known Member

    Regular season is over, we had a pretty good postseason run. We finished third, and lost to the No. 1 team in the league in a close game in the semifinals. In fact, we played them closer than the championship game. It was 1-0 for three innings, and 3-1 until the last inning when they scored six runs to beat us 9-1. In the championship game, they scored 6 runs in the first and won 12-2. Kids left the field feeling pretty good about how they finished out the season. My son was a little pissed because he didn't get a chance to pitch in the postseason, so he ended up going the final two weeks without pitching. But the good thing is that as we were walking away from the field, he said 'Daddy, I'm a little upset I didn't get to pitch today, but I was happy for Johnny, because he hasn't pitched all year and got a chance today. I'll get my shot, I just have to keep working."

    All-Star team was announced yesterday. Of the 12 players, eight are either a head coach or assistant coach's son. We only have one representative from our team on the All-Star team and that's, you guessed it, the coach's son. I'm certainly not saying my son deserved an All-Star nod, but there were a few kids that got passed over so they could put a coach's kid on the team. And they wonder why the league has gotten the reputation of being a "daddy ball" league. Either way, we're (my son and I) are going to go to their first tournament next weekend and root them on. He's got some friends playing on the team and I think being around that environment might spark something in him.

    A few more weeks of baseball, then we're on to football (first year of playing for the older kid, so that will be interesting).
     
    Songbird likes this.
  4. Webster

    Webster Well-Known Member

    I tell my parents in soccer and hoops that I have three rules which can't be broken. You have to tell me if your kid isn't going to be there; you can't ever criticize the refs and you cannot criticize my substitutions. The coach that I replaced in soccer periodically e-mails me about how he would change our lineup (mostly that his daughter should play more and in her preferred position) and I told him that if he sent me one more e-mail, I was banning him from coming to the games.
     
  5. exmediahack

    exmediahack Well-Known Member

    Wild weekend as head coach... with all the drama - good and bad - expected.

    Played five games on Sunday as Saturday was rained out. 8 am until 7:30 pm under the hot sun. Also my first as the "head coach"... or so I thought.

    It's 14U, Class AA baseball (we travel but not are obsessive - some days we can hang with the local AAA teams, some days we can't.)

    Win the first two pool-play games easily, get the top seed for the round of 8.

    Quarterfinals: We stink it up with nine, count 'em, nine errors (seven in the first two innings). Down 5-1 in the bottom of the 7th. Manufacture four runs to tie at 5-5, bring in our reliever for the 8th (where each team starts with one out but runners at 2nd and 3rd), he strikes out two and we score one to win 6-5. "Nine errors and you still won," I started the post-game talk.

    Semifinals: Up against the team that cut quite a few of our players over the previous four years (it's our school feeder team). After we won a state tournament in 10U on that team, the head coach made it to keep his son and his son's friends, leading to the more talented kids going to the real travel teams. Just a quagmire as the feeder team disintegrated from a state winner into a losing outfit. I told the boys "if there was ever a day to take out any slights from the past, this is it." We won 8-1.

    Finals: We're just happy to be here. It's US-USSR Lake Placid. Playing a AAA team from out of the region but the common opponents alarm me. They beat a team 18-0 that we lost to 9-2 the week before. This may not be good.

    To win this, I have to tighten the lineup and defense. We cannot afford any errors on defense now any automatic strikeouts. I drop the lineup from 11 to 10, subbing in the two hitters who are at about .061 and major liabilities in the field.

    First inning, my son (first base) gets run over by the opposing first basemen (a 14-year-old who is 6'4' with eye black -- the "Urlacher Look" as I call it) on a play at 1st. Son gets the out but he's "out cold". I run out there, he's face down in the dirt, ball still in his glove. He wheels around, sand on his cheeks and gets up.

    "Want me to sub you?" I ask.

    "I'm good."

    The ump runs through some questions. (Where are you? What's the score?)

    I leave him in.

    We're playing flawless baseball but cannot hit their 75-80 mph pitchers. Yet they can't hit our soft-tossing junkballer. And they're getting pissed that a 100-pound rail-thin kid is striking them out.

    It's 0-0 in the middle of the 5th. Son comes back in the dugout... and throws up his Noodles mac-and-cheese all over the garbage can. I look at the lineup. He'll get one at-bat in the 7th. I give him ibuprofen and refill his water. He says it's a migraine.

    "Pulling you for two innings. Can you give me one good at-bat in the 7th?"

    He nods. The flawless defense keeps up. I'm shocked. They finally get to our pitcher in the seventh, squeezing one across and loading the bases. A diving catch in left field saves us and we emerge down 1-0.

    Son is the leadoff hitter in the bottom of 7. The pitcher... Urlacher.

    "Just give me 90 seconds of focus," I say.

    "I'm swinging at the first good pitch."

    And he does. A blooper that bounces off the shortstop's glove. He's on base. The next batter rips a single. Son scores on the following single. A sacrifice fly to deep center wins the game 2-1. We're pretty shocked. The hog pile at first base. Son wraps an arm around me as we walk to the pile. "We did it," he breaks into a smile.

    The team is thrilled... but one parent is not.

    As we walk off, the dad of one kid who only played three innings is livid.

    "Why didn't (Son) play more?" he demands.

    I look at my son. "Here are the keys. I'll catch up with you."

    "Can you handle the answer if I give it to you straight?"

    He nods that he can. I was ready for this.

    "You're aware that you're son is hitting .061 and, on defense, he makes an error 40% of the time the ball is hit to him? Three errors in the first game. He quits when he's down 0-2 in the count. Also, your son spent most of the time laying down on a bench, trying to take a nap instead of being alert. When I ask him to pinch-run or go to left field, he acts like it's a huge inconvenience. I assume that he doesn't behave like this with his high school team, right?"

    Dad shakes his head. "We may just not finish out the season."

    "I can understand that. You've already no-showed us twice this year. No text. No phone call. But, let's see how serious you are."

    Knowing that one of two parents may be angry, before the day I put $140 in a money clip and kept it in my pocket. I pulled it out.

    "This is $140, a refund for the rest of the season. If you're serious about not finishing it out, you can walk away right now." I placed it two inches from his hand. "But, the refund goes down to $100 tomorrow. If you leave the team after Tuesday, no refund."

    "Let me think about it," Dad says.

    "I'm glad that you're so thrilled the team won the title today," I said. "You do know that, if we have just one error today, we lose that game."

    Oh... and the former head coach (who abdicated after last week when I benched his son for one inning) now wants to come back as HC after we won the tournament. He can as it is his team. :)

    I love youth baseball...

    (That being said, my son and I had a marvelous experience on Sunday -- as did 10 of the 11 boys).
     
    HanSenSE likes this.
  6. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    Cool story! Plus, you get to retire at the top ... So you got that going for you, which is nice.
     
    exmediahack likes this.
  7. exmediahack

    exmediahack Well-Known Member

    Thanks for making it to the end.

    Two great elements from it. Yes, I can go back to being the bench coach, which is fine.

    The other is that the boys got rings and not trophies. Let's just say there were some ring selfies from some of our players tweeted out to the team they all wanted to be playing for.

    Also enjoyed that the team played ONE perfect game. No errors. Worked out of two bases loaded jams before the seventh. As long as they play, they'll probably never have a game as close to perfect as that. For eighth-graders, that was the biggest accomplishment. Even down 1-0, I said to the guys "you've put yourself in a perfect position. Win or lose, it doesn't even matter because of how well you held them. But you still get this window to pull the upset." And they did.
     
  8. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    On a side note, I've always hated All-Stars teams that are selected. To me, it makes the season little more than an extended All-Star tryout. I'd rather see the championship team represent the league in the playoffs.
     
  9. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    So the third through 12th best players in the league are off for the summer? Makes sense.
     
  10. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    So 70 players are playing ball in the spring so 9 kids can play ball in the summer? Makes sense.
     
  11. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    But you don't have a problem with that. You're fine with a team going on, you just don't want it to be an all-star team.

    Anyway, Little League has something along the lines of what you want. The Tournament of Champions brings each league winner together for a district title.

    I'm not going to get too deep into this, because your idea sounds typically Baron, but the eighth through 12th best players on a league team are pretty bad at baseball, even for a league champion.
     
  12. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    What is so typically me about it? In high school ball, do they have a sectional champion, then an All-Star team representing the section in state competition? Nope. In college ball, do they have a team win the conference tournament, then have the conference All-Stars represent in the NCAA tournament? Nope. Yet somehow, Little League should be different, according to you.

    Having the league champion represent the league instead of all-stars gives the season title more prestige than just treating the season like a two-month tryout for a dozen all-star spots, half of which end up going to coach's sons and daughters anyways.
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page