The wrath of youth baseball

I worked at a paper near Houston that covered Little League All-Stars from the first games on up to when everyone is out. Two summers in a row I spent 5 days in a hotel while covering state. Somehow I managed to not stab myself in the eyes to get out of it. Even worse, the lunatic owner wanted every score from the districts our teams were in after each night of games.
The only saving grace was the food since they feed umpires and Little League directors fairly well. The heat, terrible level of play and drunk parents living vicariously through the kids was brutal. During one 12s game I saw a dad grab a kid with both hands on his face and yell at him to do something as tears rolled down his cheeks. Thank goodness I escaped that rag.

 

Covering youth baseball = angry parents giving you a headache

 

At the paper I work at currently we cover the college ball team here, town ball, Legion and VFW. Anything other than that we rely on submitted information.

 

I like the idea of Little League for kids.

I hate Little League parents almost as much as swimming parents.

I hate the Little League World Series with the intensity of 1,000 suns (those of you who know where I work, understand why)

 

Most baseball parents are pretty good, but there are a handful of on every single team without fail.

Found it interesting the post about a 6-week vacation....bet your readers appreciate a bunch of wire stories!

 

I might if I were where you are.

(Nah, who am I kidding. I'd still like the LLWS. )

 

He said a six-week window, which I meant to mean as a staff. That seems about normal, and I doubt the lighthouse is unmanned that whole time.
Back when we were a three-man staff we had to squeeze seven weeks of collective vacation time into about a nine-week window. Now, as a one-man staff, I have a two-month window to take three weeks of vacation. Between Memorial Day and the end of July, I will have had about 30 out of 60 days off. The rest of the year, I'll be lucky if I ever get two days in a row off.

 

Looking back at our past coverage of a big local tournament the other day, I was reminded of this bit of youth baseball ridiculousness.

It was the championship game of a weekend tournament, end of July, and about 95 degrees outside on Sunday afternoon. Each team had played at least once that day already.
Around the fourth inning, Shelbyville's second baseman starts puking all over the field. Poor kid is dehydrated. They take him out of the game and to the concession stand to cool off, and the game goes on.
We get to the bottom of the sixth inning and the game is tied. Shelbyville has runners on second and third with two outs. Springfield's coach elects to intentionally walk the batter to bring up the second baseman's spot in the order. Shelbyville had been batting all of its players, so if the kid wasn't available it would've been an out and the game goes to extra innings.
Shelbyville's coach wasn't having any of that, though. He sends an assistant coach running to the concession stand to get the kid, who stumbles the 50 feet or so, bleary-eyed and obviously not well. He wasn't even wearing shoes. They dress him, though, and send him up to bat. The umpire checked him out and figured he was at least OK enough to stand there, I guess. All in all, this delay lasts at least five minutes.
Amazingly, the kid sticks his bat out and puts the ball in play to bring in the winning run.

Almost as amazing was the reaction of the Shelbyville parents afterward. They weren't seething over their coach putting a kid's life in danger. They were mad -- vocally so -- at Springfield's coach for issuing the intentional walk. They were actually blaming Springfield's coach (a respected high school coach who was moonlighting with this 12-year-olds' tournament team) for forcing Shelbyville's guy into that situation.
I asked Shelbyville's coach about it, and he offered a weak excuse about the kid's dad being right there and being OK with it.
I'm not sure I've ever been more disgusted after covering a sporting event as I was that day.

 

Question: Did they put a sub in at second base during the game or just play in the field without a second baseman? Because the way you described it, it sounds like they either played without a second baseman for a couple of innings, or put in a sub and then were faced with a rule that the second baseman who got pulled had to get in a plate appearance or there would be grounds for a protest?

And if it was the latter, I'd be surprised if the league didn't have a rule in place that allows an exception to the "every player must get a plate appearance" rule if, during the game, a player is injured or sick to the point that he can't take the field any longer.

 

He said they were batting everybody, which means it's an 11- or 12-man batting order and they can substitute freely.

This sounds like travel ball. The rule is once you bat everybody, you have to bat. In our local league (Pony), when a player has to beg out, there's no out if he's leaving the game for good, but that isn't the way it works on the travel circuit.

 

I forget how many players Shelbyville had on the roster, but let's say it was 12, and they had all of them in the hitting lineup (but the normal nine in the field). That, and free substitution, is allowed at a lot of levels of youth baseball. So they were able to put another second baseman into the field.
However, since all of their players were in the starting batting order, they couldn't just pinch-hit for him when his spot came up in the order. If they skip over him or send up one of the other guys (who are already in the lineup) to hit, then they're batting out of order and it's an out. It'd be the same situation if the kid had been ejected or broken his leg. It's a risk you run when you bat everyone.

Springfield's coach realized where they were in the order and made the decision to walk the guy before Puker to get to what he figured would be the empty spot in the order, the final out of the inning, and extra innings. The guy he walked also had gotten a hit his previous time up. So there were a couple layers of strategy working there. It backfired on him, but it was a pretty smart move to try and get out of a jam. By all rights, it should have worked.

And yes, LTL, this was travel ball.

 

OK, I may have missed the part that everybody batted, regardless of whether or not they played in the field. That makes sense.

I'm probably too used to Little League rules because I covered it for so long, and Little League has the rule that every player on an all-star team must have a completed plate appearance or it can be used as the basis for a protest.