God help the children: I'm coaching T-ball this year...

You should consult with creamora on the best PEDs to improve the kids' performance.

 

Slip hormones into their juice boxes.

 

Well, the story wasn't verbatim. But she's been known to give Jesus a new middle name every now and then. She's no saint.

Our last e-mail conversation:
Mike: Jesus. You should go professional (at gambling).
Mom: You forgot his middle name....

 

My dad cusses like he belongs in a newsroom, but he usually only gives Jesus a middle initial.

 

Pack heat ... the other parents will turn on you and it will be a throwdown.

 

Be sure to phone in the scores to the paper. And complain about how your kids practice and play just as hard as the MLBers and deserve coverage in the local(!!!) paper.

 

My dad often coached the teams of me and my brother (4 years diff.) Most of the best stories came from my brother's teams.

They had a draft every year to divide up all the kids in town, and my dad would always take this one weird and dirt-ass poor family's kids. One was pretty darn good — he could really swing a bat. The other though ... he was God awful. Of course he had to play, so they put him at catcher (competitive t-ball at this point, so the catcher never had to do anything). He actually got up and left once, went around the backstop, through a line of trees to a wheat field and went to sleep. He was gone about an inning before anyone noticed.

 

I have coached kids at every level from T-ball to high school and I think the most fun I had was T-ball. From a competitive level, you will be amazed at what they learn. Things at the start of the season that they can't comprehend they will be doing by the end of the season. Others on the board have already said you can't take it seriously, and you can't. But, you can have an awful lot of fun watching them learn.

Someone above suggested leading the kids around the bases to teach them. You can also put a parent at each base and let them run by themselves to each parent.

As long as you are having fun, the kids will be having fun, and really, that's all you want for them. If it sucks, if people are mean, if it isn't any fun, they wont be back next year.

Finally, a favorite T-ball story: It was my first team and we were about halfway through the season and had just started working on picking up ground balls and trying to tag runners. My daughter was at 2nd base with runners on 1st and 2nd and no outs when the batter hit a ground ball right at her. She picked it up and tagged the runner coming off first, then tagged the batter as he ran to first...


Then tagged the runner coming from 2nd as he ran the wrong way back toward first. Triple Play! We couldn't have been more excited...she was listening when we talked...it was awsome.

She then went on to tag the dad playing umpire, and headed toward the other teams bench to keep tagging people before we got her stopped. We told her to tag people after picking up a ground ball and she was by god going to tag people.

 

A couple of ideas:

1. Ask a parent or volunteer to sit on the bench while you are occupied with helping the batter to help control the kids. They get restless after a while.

2. Switch infielders and outfielders every inning. Lots of kids can't hit the ball far, and that's when you get bored outfielders picking the flowers.

3. Talk real baseball with the kids. Discuss the merits of Yankees/Red Sox or why the Mets blew the division last year, or why the Pirates haven't contended since 1992. It'll help them want to learn the game.

 

I coached Little League for several years. That was my favorite level because the kids are old enough to start to understand the game and all the fundamentals and how to do the little things like footwork while turning double plays, hitting the cutoff man, etc.

One year I had two 12-year-old lefthanders and one of them could throw a curve (we didn't have a no-curve rule in our league). We didn't have much else, so we lost a lot of 2-1 games.

 

If you're "coaching" third, make sure you go through a series of signs.........watch the little bastards eyes pop out of their heads.

 

Until one little smart ass motions for you to roll the signs again