Fields of Screams: 2017 youth baseball/softball thread

Well, sounds like your starting catcher problem is solved. As we all know, a good catcher has got to want to do it -- getting down and dirty every game, wearing all that gear in 100-degree sun, foul tips off the fingers and arms and helmet, etc etc blah blah. You can stick somebody in there as a fallback/desperation choice, but if they don't want to be there, there's no way they can fake it. If the new kid wants to do it and has the basic tools, you can spoon-feed her through the game-calling stuff. (At this level most pitchers have only one or two pitches -- at most a fastball and a changeup -- so there isn't much pitch-calling to be done anyway.)

If the backup C/1B is dead-set she won't play catcher, I'd say, "OK, if you are hell-bent you will only play first base, then so be it; you will ONLY play first base. Some other players will play first base sometimes and you will sit. You would probably get more PT if you were OK with catching some times, but so be it."

As far as the lefty SS blowing off practice for a birthday party, I'd say, "We have to make schedule accommodations with you for the 7th grade team, we know that. If going to a birthday party is more important than practice, so be it; we will make note of it."

I know the Starrville league allows exceptions for the mandatory-PT rules for players who blow off practice without notice (you have to document it and notify the league/opposing coach before games. Maybe have her play defense only for a game or two). I'd tell her and her parents, "we have to concentrate PT on the players who show up for practice. We're not benching you or anything like that, but you may get reduced PT for a couple games. Just so you know ahead of time what is going on. If you get back on schedule and make all practices between now and the first game, everything should be fine."

Meanwhile back in Starrville, the concept seems to be filtering into Larry's mind that StarSis does not think she will have time to HC the 12U team. He emailed her today, "We think you will handle the 8U team. But another team dad wants to be a co-coach. Is that OK?"

The co-coach is the head coach of the Starrville HS varsity team, "Vinnie." He has an 8-year-old daughter.

Reportedly Vinnie was somewhat bummed that Sis-16, the oldest daughter of the StarSis bunch, a sophomore who was probably pencilled in on the borderline between varsity and JV this season, quit softball this spring to concentrate on volleyball (and also because several players on the varsity were "bitches") .

So cultivating a buddy-buddy relationship with Vinnie might be useful.

Of course, asking Sis if it's "OK" if the head varsity coach co-coaches the team is kind of passive-aggressive BS on the part of Larry -- putting Sis in the position in which she herself could put the kibosh on Vinnie coaching in the league. What the hell does Larry expect her to say?

Seriously, of course Sis is going to say OK -- obviously for her own reasons (3 more kids coming through the pipeline in the next 8 years as well as the faint glimmer of hope he might look favorably if Sis-16 changes her mind next year and decides to go back out) she wants to have a friendly relationship with the varsity coach. As well as does just about every parent in the club. But hell, Larry, you're the club president; you name the coaches.

 

Update from the wonderful world of Starrville kids sports (although no actual news; in other words, a "nothingburger"):

League Prez Larry is foot-dragging on issuing the team rosters and coaching assignments. Player registration deadline was last Friday, and he indicated earlier in that week the rosters were "95 percent set," but here we are a week after deadline and no rosters and no coaching confirmations yet, no rosters, no practice schedules, nada.

However, some interesting (to put it euphemistically) news has been developing. Seems Sis-16, StarSis's oldest, was not the only Starrville HS student to drop out of the softball program -- she was one of about 15.

As a result, Coach Vinny now has a grand total of 14 (Fourteen) players in the entire softball program. Therefore the JV team is kaput. As of last June, the thinking was that they might have enough players this season to have separate squads for varsity, JV and freshmen. The AD had gone ahead and tentatively scheduled freshman and JV games, but now that's all out the window.

And the varsity is currently 0-11, with nine mercy-rule losses, and hasn't given up fewer than 15 runs in any game.

So, one guess is the Starrville Amateur Softball Association's coach-naming procedure may be getting hung up by Vinny, who as you may recall has expressed interest in coaching (or co-coaching, along with StarSis), the 8U team.

With the Starrville HS program in near total-implosion and the varsity team getting trucked every single game, it's a reasonably good guess Vinny has told Larry, "I really don't have time to worry about the youth program right now," and stalled on giving him a firm answer on whether he wants to coach or not.

(In fact, I would guess that if any parents of current Starrville HS players heard he was devoting more than about 15 seconds to the 8U team, while the varsity team is getting monotonously smoked, they'd storm in to the athletic director and say something like, 'we're getting trashed every game and this guy is off playing patty-cake with the 8-year-olds, hire a coach who will devote full time to his varsity high school program.')

Larry, on behalf of SASA, wants to maintain good relations with Vinny, who has at least provided verbal support to the youth program, and also allows intermittent access to practice facilities, batting cage, etc etc. As well as used equipment, softballs, etc etc. But dragging out this coach selection process much further is going to screw all the teams. We're about five weeks from the first game (and one of those weeks is Memorial Day weekend, which is usually shot as far as practices etc etc).

And, to put it really bluntly, the fact is that unless Vinny gets the varsity program at least somewhat straightened out pretty soon, whether or not SASA has "good relations" with him will be irrelevant. He'll either be long gone -- or the program will collapse completely.

 

From the pages of SJ.com to the ears of SASA Larry: He just sent out emails announcing that the coach of the 8U team will be Varsity Vinny. StarSis apparently will be a co-coach/ assistant, which will probably be a fairly hefty role at least until the Starrville varsity season ends (which should be in the first round of district play just before Memorial Day). Until then, I'd guess the amount of time Vinny has to devote to 8U will be fairly limited.

And, the head coach of one of the two 12U teams will be, uhmmm ... Me.

Happily, Larry told me my roster will consist of 13 players, so there should be few issues on PT which might ensue with a bloated bench of 15+. He also said I have 4-5 players who have at least pitched before. (He didn't indicate whether they were any good, which would be nice, but the fact they even know how to stand on the slab is a good start.)

EDIT: OK, Larry has sprung into furious action and actually fired out my roster, finalized except for one possible change (which will be decided in a couple days). It turns out of the 11 players besides Sis A/B, 7 were on their previous softball teams, 1 is from Kurt's Krimson team at St. Sissy, and 2 are from the Starrville Starrs regional basketball team. And one is Polly, the 'Big Girl' from Sis' Scarlet Sizzlers.

Who has never played softball before. Polly is the youngest of seven kids in an amazingly athletic family, with two older siblings going D-1 in football and volleyball respectively.

Polly had never played hoops before this season and started out practices banging around like the proverbial bull in the china shop and airballing free throws by eight feet, but by the end of the season she had started to become a decent rebounder and an occasional scorer. She's got the build of a big 1B or a power pitcher; hopefully her mom can get her started in that direction.

And -- holy schmoley -- one of the Starrville Starrs is Lucy, our big powerhouse center/forward who came on during the season to become the best player on the team. If nothing else I should have her and Polly play one-on-one basketball every day before practice, and wage a season-long psy-ops campaign to get her to transfer to St. Sissy before next basketball season to form a monstrous Twin Towers combination.

Lucy is big and strong and powerful like Polly, but is wide and strong rather than tall. I'm thinking Lucy could be the key to our catcher situation.

It turns out that Polly's mom is the JV softball coach at another area high school. She has indicated a desire/willingness to *assistant* coach. I had known through the grapevine that Paula had played college softball, so I did a little quick Googling:

HOLY CRAP!!! Not only did Paula play college softball, she was a D-1 college pitcher. I mean a full-time starter. And Good. So I'll have a pitching coach available in addition to StarSis (who was an OK pitcher in HS but that was it. Mostly she was a SS/1B).

Now Paula's JV teams are not smoking away the world of area softball, and she has not been sending streams of Jennie Finches up to the varsity, so obviously she is not magically bequeathing all of her own talent to her players, but all of a sudden I am a lot more confident they will learn the right motion, footwork, etc etc.

Then, I got a little tip I ought to Google one of our other team parents; seems one of our dads played in the minors for six seasons, getting up to AAA for a couple seasons, took some ABs in spring training games with the big boys. One year he hit 25 home runs split between AA and AAA. Supposedly at one point he was one DL designation away from The Show.

Maybe he can give some hitting tips. He's a LH hitter, so maybe he could help with one of my deranged schemes: converting one, or both, of Sis A-B into switch hitters.

If nothing else, if we have a game featuring coaching staffs, we ought to kick ass on the league. Assuming Mom Paula retains 5% of her pitching ability from college, nobody will touch her. Unfortunately no word on when that classic will be scheduled.

One thing is for dang sure, I won't be able to bamboozle the rest of the coaching staff on my technical knowledge of the game. But there will be some pressure too; if THEY have suggestions that I'm doing something wrong, I'm more likely to take it seriously. It won't just be Al Bundy shooting off his mouth.

One minor note of caution/concern: Of our 13 players, 8 are 11 and 5 are 12. The other 12U team has 10 12-year-olds and two 11's. So we're definitely a young team for 12U. And another warning sign: only one of our players indicated she had ever played catcher before.

So I feel Songbird's pain on having to dig up a catcher. Or create one from scratch.

 

Made it through my first practice as manager of my son's tee ball team today. Everything went pretty smoothly, and the parents all seemed nice. We have one player who refused to play today and her mom said she's considering not coming back. I told her my son did the same thing last year and I encouraged her to keep trying, but we may have lost our first player this season.

It's definitely different this year as a coach, as opposed to last year when I was on the field with my kid most of the time. I was focused almost completely on him and hoping he'd enjoy it. Running the show today was stressful, but very fun, and my son was a little leader on the diamond as the only player with any experience.

I've had zero coaching experience until today, but it made me want think I'll be doing this for awhile.

 

It can go both ways. It can become very addictive and you want to do it every year. Or it could make you want to remain on the other side of the fence and not deal with the BS.

It's become addictive for me. Of course, it helps that I don't have a job right now, so I'm able to put a lot of time into coaching my son's 14U team. But I've done all three of his sports (football, basketball and baseball) this year and it's been an enjoyable experience for the most part. Our 14U team is 5-4 right now with two very close losses and a couple of stinkers. But I generally like most of the kids (I have one turd that is just an attitude problem) and I like being out there. It's keeping me young.

 

Said 3-year 1B/backup catcher is in a soft cast after taking a throw off her left wrist the other day.

Her parents are my main assistants; her mom is unstable and I have no doubt she blames me for the injury -- I'm the one who threw the ball -- that'll keep her from playing on the 7th-grade team. There's a chance it's just a bone bruise and she'll bounce back in a week or two. Her dad is fine and I really need him there but I doubt I will see any of them again.

My 3-year horse-jumping lefty catcher is her besty. She came to practice the other day for the first time but didn't show yesterday. I don't think I'll see her again either.

 

Well, I checked with Coach Mike, and it turns out he has coached nine of my 13 players on previous teams.
And of the four others, either the twins or StarSis know two of them from previous basketball teams. So really there are only two players for whom I don't have a pretty good breakdown (and one may be switched to another team anyway).

I got into a discussion with Mike about player positions. The registration forms are pretty vague and didn't give me much info as to who had any experience at which positions -- according to the signup forms, I had no catchers.

Mike gave me the happy news that two of the players on the roster had indeed caught before, and were actually decent at it (he said one was passable and the other was GOOD).

Both Twin A and Twin B have caught occasionally, and they catch for each other practice-pitching in the back yard, and they both have good arms (they can make the throw to 2B on a line) so they were fallback possibilities if all else failed. But they are both very slender and not at all the traditional catcher-type. They are both tough and I am sure they could probably do it, but I was hoping to avoid having to have them catch. Happily Mike informs me I should be OK.

He also says i have his two leading pitchers from last year's 10U team -- and one has good control. So hopefully we won't be facing any interminable walkathons. If a pitcher is getting hit, that's life in the big city, but a parade of endless walks is just a pain in the rump.

EDIT: Now League Prez Larry emails me with a roster switch -- he has assigned me a new player ... who happens to be a catcher. So in the case of about 18 hours I went from having no confimed catchers on the roster to THREE.

I may go from having to "dig up" somebody to catch, to having to cook up a platoon to get them all playing time.

Larry also informs me my final roster will probably be 12 players. I like that a lot; we can survive one or two players being off at granny's cottage, etc etc, but we don't have 18 kids to work into the batting order.

 

My son is in 3rd grade. He is very smart, nice and cute, but is very baseball challenged. He's had the same coaches since kindergarten, who have worked so hard with him with little reward. He and I have practiced almost every day the past month because he didn't make contact last year during the parts of his game which were kid pitch.

Today was his first game. The other team's pitcher struck out the first 8 batters. My son comes up and on the first pitch he pulls a line drive down the right field line for a double. He gets another single, got the game ball from the coaches and hasn't stopped beaming for hours.

Little victories.

 

You must be beaming too, Webster. Cool little father-son moment for sure.

Meanwhile, all 3 of my assistant coaches bolted despite everything we've been through the last 2+ years. Their daughters -- two of my 3-year players and among the best in the league -- are gone with them. I have a lot of scrambling to do with the season-opening doubleheader next Saturday.

 

Sometimes the light bulb just goes on.

I couldn't hit a damn thing in my whole life until seventh grade, when I decided I was sick of being the pity case in the neighborhood pickup games. I started concentrating a lot more on contact and a level swing and suddenly started to hit. And it was in the span of a few weeks -- actually a few days.

Heck, in my storied coaching career, I've seen it happen with lots of kids. So it's fun to see when it happens.

 

All is proceeding as I have foreseen: All SASA coaches have received their rosters and practice time signups.

StarSis, who has volunteered as 8U assistant, has reported that Varsity Vinny has done nothing regarding practice times, contacting parents, sending out emails, etc etc. Nothing as in zero zip zilch nada.

StarSis and I suspect her "assistant" coaching role is going to develop into her handling all the nuts and bolts and grunt work (and preseason prep) and Vinny will be a "celebrity coach" who basically shows up for games and that's it.

So I'm expecting Sis will be somewhat limited in how much time she can assist with the 12U team.

StarSis says all of a sudden she has three rabid baseball fans in the family. Sis-A and Sis-B are now watching all the MLB games on cable. And Sis-7 is joining in too.

Sis-16 is too cool for that. She just took her driving test.

 

Argh, that sucks. From the sounds of things the lefty horse jumping catcher might be salvageable -- the root of the problem sounds like the marital fireworks between the parents of the 1B/C.

Not to take sides in that whole drama but it really sucks if ripple effects from one family spill over to affect other kids.