Fields of Screams: 2017 youth baseball/softball thread

SUMMER PRACTICE '16

I invited the starting varsity pitcher to today's practice. She's a 16-year-old sophomore lefty who led the team to the state title game and earned All State honors. She's very good and throws very hard. She provided a ton of insight to my pink-haired pitcher, whose hair is now turquoise. Varsity pitcher's dad is the 8th-grade coach in town. He too offered a ton of tips to my players. One of my veterans, who can play anywhere in the field, caught the varsity pitcher the entire practice and didn't miss a single beat, and now I have options behind the plate because we have a talented lefty catcher who is going into her third year with me. All of the girls who showed today stepped up to the plate to face the varsity pitcher. As expected, none of them connected terrible well but they started timing her better and made contact, fouled some pitches off. One of my girls made 3 solid contacts. This kind of experience -- 11- and 12-year-olds standing toe to toe with an All-State 16-year-old -- is invaluable. Her dad invited the team to his house to swing in his custom-built batting cage. This was such a great experience because he's going to be coaching several of my players in a few years. He's pretty excited about the prospect of coaching my turquoise-haired pitcher.

 

Played in an adult softball tourney tonight, went 1 for 3 with an RBI-single, missed a homer by about 8 inches. It was fun.

So, my lefty catcher is at tonight's game to watch but completely ignores me for the second day in a row; last night she refused to say hi to me when we adults were practicing. Something's not right. I think I know what it is: I posted on our team FB page about last Sunday's practice when the varsity pitcher showed up. Lefty catcher couldn't make it. She read the post and saw all the photos, including the one where varsity pitcher is throwing to my utility player, who I praised for the way she handled the varsity pitcher. Utility girl pulls me aside tonight before the game. Utility player and lefty catcher are besties. She tells me why lefty catcher won't acknowledge me -- she hates the idea of not being able to play catcher; only position she wants to play; doesn't want to play first base under any circumstance. We have a very good relationship but she doesn't know how to talk to me about this situation.

 

This is some funny shit. I know this guy!

Dad Thinks Son Has What It Takes To Become Embittered Alcoholic Minor League Journeyman

NORMAN, OK—Watching the 11-year-old play shortstop for his Little League team, local father Mark Garrett reported Wednesday that he thinks his son, Nathan, has what it takes to become an embittered alcoholic journeyman in the minor leagues. “If he keeps working hard every day, I know Nathan has the talent to spend a few years bouncing around farm system teams while gradually developing a serious drinking problem,” said Garrett, adding that his son clearly has the arm strength and raw athleticism to spend half a decade growing increasingly bitter and self-destructive as he plays in front of only a few hundred spectators every game. “There’s no doubt in my mind that he could get all the way to Triple-A, screw up his shoulder, and drink away the rest of his life while resenting every choice he ever made. I just need to stay on top of him to make sure he gets there.” Garrett added that with enough determination, his son might eventually even grow estranged from his family before he turns 30.

 

2017 team signup deadline is Friday.

Bullet points to launch the Starrville softball season:

1) Sis-16, a soph who appeared ticketed for a role as a varsity reserve (or a full-time JV starter), has quit the Starrville HS team to concentrate on volleyball. She reports most of the players on the softball team are "bitches." From various independent reports this does appear to be true. The last thing mom StarSis wants to do is get entangled in 16-year-old girl catfights, so she has washed her hands of it. "If she quits, she quits," she said. "You can't make someone want to play." So that's it with Starrville HS softball for at least 3-4 years until current 5th graders Sis-A and Sis-B get there. First-grader Sis-7 tore up co-ed tee-ball last year and is raring to go on 8U.

2) StarSis enjoyed the basketball coaching experience over the winter but was stretched very very thin on time demands between work and other school activities for the kids. To some extent she controls her own office schedule but there are some limits to how much she cean shove things around. Coaching the regional 12U Starrville Softball Club team gets to be a big time suck for a couple of months so she doesn't think she can commit that much time on a full-time basis. She thinks she probably could handle 8U, which requires much less practice and preparation time and less travel. The Club Director, who is supervising teams in four age divisions, says they are short on 12U head coaching candidates and has sounded, gulp, ME out for the job.

Tenatively, StarSis and I have punched around an arrangement where she would head-coach the 8U team while I would be a part time assistant, with the roles reversed on 12U. I'd be head coach, she would show up for most games and SOME practices.

3) The age cutoffs for the Starrville Softball Club are 8, 10, 12 and 14, based on age as of Jan. 1 of the current year. This creates problems in the fifth grade class at St Sissy, where some kids, including Sis-A and Sis-B, turned 11 before Jan. 1 and some did not. So the 10U team of last year will be split up, with some going to 12U and some remaining in 10U. The Starrville Softball Club team will also draw players from the public schools.

4) Coach Mike, who assisted Sis on the the Scarlet Sizzlers in basketball, has been coaching 10U for the last couple seasons and will handle the 10U squad this year with his daughter in that age group, but Sis-A and Sis-B are now in 12U, which is a quantum leap in play, with doubleheaders, real-live pitching (balls and strikes!!), base stealing (you can no longer put a gump at catcher -- they have to be able to throw) -- and, for god's sake, bunting (with its attendant defensive headaches), so it will be a huge adjustment.

With bunting and base stealing in the mix, the lah-dee-dah stuff of rotating defensive positions every inning is out the window. The catcher and infielders have to know what they're doing.

 

Please tell me she said this with a dispassionate Russian accent?

 

Well, long-time devotees of this thread (I am sure there are thousands) will recall that Sis-16 had to be cajoled into going out for softball at the last minute last year. She played OK and by the end of the season was probably the best hitter on the JV team, but supposedly there was a lot of internal friction on the team, mainly revolving around several long-term travel players (Sis-16 has never played travel teams) who have set up their own clique.

Mom StarSis says Sis-16 has enough other stuff going on, if she doesn't want to play, she's not gonna try to talk her into it. Like she says, you can't make somebody want to play.

The varsity coach has inquired a couple of times and done a medium-intensity soft-soap job; his program is still short of players and they barely have enough to make a varsity and JV team, so if Sis-16 has a sudden conversion, they'd probably welcome her back, but StarSis says, "If I push her to play and I talk her into it and she's still unhappy, then she'll spend all spring and summer moping about that, and she'll be in a pissy mood when volleyball camps get going in midsummer and that'll carry over into fall." So she's gonna leave it at that.

 

My U-12 team is favored to do well with 9 returners, many of whom are in their third year with me. We made it to the title game last year.

But one of those 3-year players -- my third baseman -- has yet to attend a practice.

Two other 3-year players, who are big hitters, don't have their heads in the game.

The season starts in 27 days but we have yet to practice outside.

 

Better cue up some Bobby Knight motivational tapes.

 

After watching for the past four years, I've thrown my hat into the managerial ring for my son's baseball team. I'm coaching a 14U team and we're about 1/4 of the way through the season already. We're 3-3, but one of our losses is to a 17U team (yep, I said 17U). We have a very strange league. Besides our two traditional 14U teams in our league, we play two teams that are basically senior league (13-17), another team that's a 15U team and then another park that is a senior league, with the exception that a high school kid can't be on the team. So, a 16-year old 8th grader can, though.

Anyway, it's been a pretty pleasant experience so far. Kids seem to like me and I like them. But I'm really struggling internally with playing time for my own son. I'm not going to ever be accused of playing daddy ball, and I think I go out of my way to avoid that label. My son definitely isn't the best, but he's not the worst either. I'd say of our 12 players, he's probably our 7th or 8th best player. But he's probably got the least amount of playing time because he's my son and I purposely sit him more than other players.

But I have to find a balance because I don't want him to lose confidence. I've talked to him about it and he understands why I lean towards playing others over him, even though he may be better than them. He's OK with it too, so far. He may end up being our most consistent pitcher, but his first outing (which I waited four games into the season to let him finally pitch) was a mixed bag. Two innings, four strikeouts, but walked five and gave up an unearned run.

Not sure where I'm going here, other than just to get some of it off my chest. LOL But those of you who have been in this same situation of coaching your kid, how did you handle the balance of playing him/her too much or not enough? I have two assistant coaches and their kids never come out, but again, they're both very good players. They keep telling me I should play my son more, but I think they know the history of our league's parents and how quickly they can start complaining about their kids not playing enough. I'm already hearing it in the crowd, specifically one parent whose kid is easily the least-talented kid with an attitude to match. But she thinks he's a star.

Anyway, thanks for listening, and any advice is welcomed.

 

No offense, but if you're not playing someone who's better than others, you should talk to an assistant about taking over as the head coach.

 

Taken to the extreme, cisforcoke is right: if you're playing your son disproportionately less than clearly inferior players, he's getting screwed.

With a 12-player roster, you really shouldn't have anybody who's not getting any PT anyway. Assuming you've got the DH, you start with a 10-player lineup anyway and with pitch limits, you probably have to use 2-3 kids pitching every game, so that should get pretty much everybody in
almost every game.

If you're coaching your kid, eventually some parent is going to get pissed at some point over how you're using them.

 

We bat all 12 players in the lineup (which I hate), so everybody gets to hit, even if they never see the field. We're expected to rotate players into the field, but we don't have any kind of mandatory play rule. It's just expected that if kids show up to practice, we work them into the rotation. You'd be surprised how difficult it is to work with 12 players. The other team in our league has 10 players (drafted 11 and lost one to injury) and he's got a very nice system of just rotating right fielders every inning.

My problem is of the three guys that usually start on the bench, two are right fielders and one is a right fielder that CAN play first base but doesn't play it that well. And through our first two games, our outfield was our most glaring weakness, so we've had to take one of our better infielders and put him in centerfield, I definitely don't trust those bench players on the infield, but I guess that's my problem. I need to work with them and make them versatile enough. But one has never played baseball (why pick up baseball at 14, I have no idea) and the other played until he was 10, then quit until this year.

It seems like the last couple of games we've done a pretty decent job of rotating players in and out without any problem. But again, I'm erring on the side of caution a lot.

Appreciate the input.