High School Baseball SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS

Why didn't you just get there around the time the second game was supposed to start? Focus your story on the second game, summarize the first and give yourself a couple hours of your life back?

 

This might be a big reason I like high school baseball so much. All of our local coaches are on good enough terms with me that they let me sit in the dugout during games. Some have even said it's weird when I don't do it.
I look at it the same way as standing on the sideline during a football game. If you can get that type of access, go for it. It's even better in baseball, because there's so many little things going on during a game that you pick up on only when you're in there. You might get a little extra of an umpire-coach exchange, hear a coach explain to a player what he's doing wrong with his swing or why they're trying to do something, or be able to ask a player immediately why the game is going a certain way.
I can't tell you how much my understanding of the game has improved since I started covering games that way.

 

Of course, if you have two good pitchers you could end up with a 27-inning 1-0 game that's decided on a throwing error.
I guess there's a certain amount of drama in seeing who blinks first and every baserunner being the potential winning run, but I like a little more offense.

 

It is a rule; I can't say I ever enforced it, or saw it enforced.

 

Our softball can be horrible. This was a linescore of a recent game.

Winner 200 20(15) 5 — 24 14 8
Loser 132 304 3 — 16 12 11

Yes, this is fastpitch softball. Fortunately, I didn't have to cover this.

 

I did my prep duty in LA, so I saw about two dozen prep players who went on to the majors, and another 50 who played pro ball. It was pretty cool.

As for softball, the chanting... oh my god... make it stop.

 

Well, since this school has no SID and the coaches can't seem to be bothered with sending me stats this year, the only way to know anything about the first game is to be there. I might just as well be there for the whole damn thing.

I think my particular irks are the changes the conference made this year. The first is this stupid seven-nine doubleheader*. It used to be two sevens. The second is that instead of home-and-home doubleheaders, all four games of the season series are played at the same site the same weekend. I didn't have so much of a problem with the old way. That was only about 5 to 5 1/2 hours one day of a weekend.

* - made even more stupid by the fact that if the first game goes extra innings (even if it's only eight innings), then that counts as the "nine-inning" game and the second game then becomes the seven-inning game, bringing up the question everybody asks: "Why don't they just make the first game the nine-inning game in the first place?" And the run-rule in the nine-inning game doesn't take effect until the seventh.

 

This.

Seriously, WTF? What moron came up with playing a seven-inning game and then a nine-inning game? And how the hell do you figure ERA? Divide by seven or nine?

What's worse, they do it on Saturday and again on Sunday. So there's four games to write about.

 

Once heard a clueless softball assistant call for more chanting when her team was in the midst of getting its collective arse beat,

 

Did a JV game last night ... Hit in the left arm twice, right shoulder once, face twice and shin once.

It would be different if they were all foul hits. They weren't.

Impressively enough, one team had to play with 8 players after I ejected one for a malicious hit at the plate in the second inning. They held the lead until the seventh.

 

On Wednesday, the assistant softball coach for the juco I cover told her team before the second game, "We have to be louder than them."

No, you don't. You have to play better than them. You can yell your goddam heads off if you want but when your team just struck out 20 times against a pitcher from China, the only noise that's appropriate is stunned silence.

They still only lost 4-1 in nine innings. But then they went out and lost to a pitcher from the Czech Republic* in the second game, 9-3.

* - Yeah, the Czech Republic. Who knew? She played first base in the first game.

 

It's RBI time, It's RBI time, It's hit the ball time, It's RBI time.