Fields of Screams: 2017 youth baseball/softball thread

Sounds good. Always fun to win the opening games, and not by ridiculous mercy rule romps over helpless hapless basket case opponents with a zillion walks and errors, where you don't learn very much even if you win. So you can feel good about the wins but still have things to work on in practice.

Sounds like your catcher problem is sorting out. Now just don't get her hurt!! (And of course it means you have to give somebody some reps in practice as your backup C).

Back in legendary Starrville, it's been a hectic few days as the rosters have been hammered out and everybody gets out on the field for their first practices. Our first meeting/semi-practice Wednesday started out kinda shaky as we had to move from one diamond to another when a boys' PONY league team arrived, but whatever. After 15-20 minutes of pretty unfocused milling around, we got things somewhat organized.

Eventually 9 of my 12 players did show up, and one had an "excused" absence. But I am a bit concerned about the two other unexcused absences -- one is Lucy, the big power forward from Starrville Starrs basketball and the other is Aly, one of the players from Kurt's Krimsons basketball team at St. Sissy.

Lucy is known to be moody/a headcase/a discipline-coaching problem from basketball -- she pretty much does what she wants, when she wants. And Aly (or her parents) may be affected by a carryover of the the intramural basketball dispute between Sis' Sizzlers and Kurt's Krimsons -- although that did seem to have worked out by the end of the season.

I frankly don't know what kind of softball player Lucy is, but she is an awesome natural athlete for 11. She is a big strong heavy bulky kid who early in the basketball season got winded after three minutes of play, but during time outs would do ballet/gymnastics handstands and walkovers/roundoffs on the sidelines. Frankly she looks like Babe Ruth's great great great granddaughter, so I suspect she can play a little bit. Aly was a damn good basketball player (although she wasn't as good as the Travel Twins on the Krimsons) and I suspect she's good in softball too (she's the one with the dad who played AAA). She's supposedly a C/P/3B/SS, kinda like Jaylen.

So I'd guess both Lucy and Aly are pretty good, but as much as anything I just don't want to lose the live bodies on the roster. If everybody on the roster shows up, we have 12 players, just about a perfect roster. But if either or both of them drop out for any reason, we're down to 11 or 10 players, which is a paper-thin forfeit margin if anybody gets sick or hurt or goes to granny's cottage for the weekend.

So I'm hoping their no-shows Wednesday were just an aberration.

 

Had Opening Day today, which for the tee ballers, was just a parade march to the field and introductory ceremony. The older kids played games afterward.

Nothing like trying to herd six 4- and 5-year-olds for an hour while the LL president acknowledges the contributions of damn near everyone in town. And, of course, it came with the requisite honoring of military and police, which has now apparently trickled down from every professional sporting event to fucking tee ball.

Funny they had a 13-year-old perform the National Anthem on electric guitar and he played the Hendrix version from Woodstock, which is an amazing piece of music and he performed it admirably, but I had to smile a bit inside thinking that Jimi played it as an anti-war protest and this kid played it moments after they honored the military with nobody batting an eyelash.

 

That's still kinda awesome that a 13-year-old can play the Hendrix SSB (or would want to).

Meanwhile, I'm trying to cook up a mixtape of pregame/between innings/walkup music to play in the dugout that would be softball/baseball related, would fire up a bunch of 11-13 year-old girls, and would still be tolerable to the 30s-40s parents (and late-50s me).

You can tell we're detail-oriented with this outfit.

I'll throw in a couple of real oldies and moldies from MY generation (Fogerty's "Centerfield" is about unavoidable), but the sad truth is, I am the age of some of these kids' grandparents. Maybe older.

Very happily, I have quite a demographic mix on this team. A lot of white-bread suburban kids, a couple of farm girls, but also some urban and Latino backgrounds. So I can cover a pretty wide cultural range.

 

Went over to the StarSis and Hubby house tonight for dinner, and Sis A and Sis B gave me a complete breakdown on the afternoon's MLB game on teevee.

I asked if they had seen Aly at school. "Oh yeah, we saw her at church today," Sis A said.

"She got the cast off her hand," said Sis B.

Hang on, I didn't know she had a cast ON her hand. Oh yeah, apparently it was a sprained wrist.

"Does she know she's on the team?" I asked.

"Oh yeah, she says she'll be there Tuesday," both replied.

All righty then. So our only real worry now is whether Lucy will show up. And, the forecast for Tuesday is 44 degrees and raining.

 

I'm an assistant coach for my 7-year-old's baseball team, which picked up its first two wins of the season over the weekend. And the boy hit the first home run of his life on Saturday (with the caveat that it was very much of the Little League variety), matching his dad's career total. It was a great Proud Dad weekend.

I've also been roped into helping with my 5-year-old's flag football team, because that's the only way he'll play. But we have fun.

 

A general observation that the practice of leaning over the plate and trying to get hit by pitches has reached epidemic stages at all youth levels. Umpires need to get back to the rule that a player must try to avoid the pitch, and especially they need to start calling strikes on those pitches that clip an elbow that's in the zone.

Also the next dad I hear yell at a kid to "Wear it!" might prompt me to chuck a ball at him from 60 feet and see how he likes it.

 

Hmmm. In our league, 12-under fastpitch, the first level with actual pitching (balls, strikes, walks) there is apparent disagreement on whether a HBP does (or should) give you first base. One coach contends, "these girls don't have good enough control to drill people;" my answer is,"you'd be surprised."

(A somewhat secondary argument to this is whether you get first base if you are hit by a pitch that bounces first. I believe in HS softball the rule is -- or at one time was -- that once the ball hits the ground it is dead and you cannot be HBP if it hits you on the bounce. I know a pitch that bounces cannot be called a strike.)

Anyway I agree that trying to lean into HBP is an annoying trend that I hope stops, but removing the base penalty for HBP is just crazy. Whether the girls have good enough control to really do it or not, they should at least be taught to try to avoid hitting the batter.

 

Went to check out the teams we haven't seen yet: the 4-time defending undefeated champs (the red team) -- which gave us 6 of our 7 losses last year -- and the team that gets every player back. The red team lost a ton and is young. The team that gets everyone back had the second-best story last year ... didn't win a game in the regular season then won 3 games in the tournament to make the semifinals, where we beat them 13-0. The difference this year is their pitcher went to camp and throws JV-level hard. But she's still learning to throw hard and can be all over the place, including dirt balls. But when she's in proper form and hits that release point, she can whiz 'em in there. We play them Thursday. They're basically a pitcher-catcher team on defense. I didn't get to see too many fielding outs in the 2 innings I stayed. Should be interesting. I'm going to pitch to the girls at practice tomorrow and get them used to fast.

 

Stopped in to League Prez Larry's last night and was hit by a revoltin' development: Jaylen, the just-turned 13-year-old who looked to be our best player, asked (and was allowed) to switch up to the 14U team.

I can't really argue too much with it; in our brief semi-scrimmage last week she looked head-and-shoulders in front of most of the players.

I'm being assigned a new player to replace her: Sophee, a mystery newcomer nobody knows much about. She could be great, or awful.

Larry dangled the possiblity of us adding yet another player; all else being equal, I'd rather not. A 12-player roster, assuming most players are going to show for most games, allows you to rotate people in and out without too much headache. With 13 or more, it gets to be a PITFA -- you are switching half your defense every inning.

At this age group, I think you're out of the foo-foo "everybody gets to play shortstop" stuff.

 

We won 12-8 tonight against the team that brought everyone back and won both games in last weekend's opening tournament. We played really well on defense with 2 double plays and several other excellent plays. We did well with the bat, including one girl smashing the shit out of a pitch -- made that sweet ping sound -- for a bona fide homer. Granted, they started their back-up pitcher, who is 4-foot-3 but she gets it over the plate and we took advantage. Their fast pitcher played for the 7th-grade team today and got to the field just as our game began so there was no real time for her to warm-up. She started the 5th inning and the difference was obvious. She K'd the side but the last one was on a 2-strike bunt that barely went foul or else it would have been a sweet squeeze. Their first two batters reached in top-6 but my pitcher snagged a liner and doubled the runner off first then induced and caught a game-ending pop-up. We're 3-0.

 

There were no reports of complaints about the pitching:

 

I saw a uniformed cop pitching to coach-pitch aged kids at a local park the other day. Coincidence or is that something police are doing now?