Dear dimwit on the phone

This was a part of the well-organizes (at least seems to be) Women's Football Alliance semi-pro game. We covered their home opener. Everyone was great, but I had to talk with the players to get any real comments about the game. The coaches seemed to want to treat it like powder puff or something.

Me: "So coach, how did that big first half affect how your approached the game after the break?"

Coach: "Well, we don't look at wins and losses. I just want them to work hard and play the right way."

Okay then...back to my question????

 

Dear baseball sectional semifinal official scorekeeper,
I truly appreciate you faxing in the scorebook pages from the two games at your site. You included first (for most players, but we have the rosters) and last names, positions and numbers, marked down who did what when, and totalled up what needed to be totalled up.
However, at-bats and plate appearances are not the same thing. When a player draws three walks and is hit by a pitch, he did not finish 0 for 4.

 

I finally feel as though I was initiated completely today. May I preface this by saying I've had all of three parents communicate with me in some manner since my tenure began here. All three have been from the same school/community.

...his choice of wording used when describing Little Johnny's pitching. He mentioned that he "struggled" and in my opinion as well as others, that is not true. This was his last game as a senior baseball player for Timbuktu so I was hoping to have read an article that reflected a more positive vibe than what was published.

Dear angry baseball mom:

I apologize you felt I was unfair to your son. I only mentioned he struggled in the story because he gave up 5 earned runs in four innings and walked 7 batters. The wording used was completely accurate, followed by a quote from the coach saying the team was "not as dominant on the mound as we'd liked to have been."
Please accept my apology for reporting what happened and not churning out press releases for your child.

Sincerely,
YG11

 

I noticed the number of stolen bases for one of our smaller schools went down considerably when they got a new scorer this season (perhaps this one read the portion of the rule book describing wild pitches and passed balls). And even better, the email on their last game described a triple play as going 4-3-6-2. (sob, sniff)

 

Is this high school? If so, that lady can suck it. If it's Little League or lower, I probably wouldn't have used struggled. But for high school and anything above, they can deal with it. As I often say, their lives will go on.

 

Yes. It was high school. He was a senior.

 

According to the Twitter, a high school team near me just turned an 8-6-2-5 triple play.

 

Center fielder catches the ball, throws to SS, who relays to the plate to get the runner out who's trying to tag up, and the catcher then goes to third base to get the guy trying to go from second to third...? (I do a lot of basketball scorebook work, and like baseball, but I'm always fuzzier on it.)

 

I guess that's what happened. It's more believable than the 4-3-6-2 one ...

 

A question to you editors who deal with these calls: When somebody calls in a baseball play that maybe gets seen once in a million lifetimes, or emails it in or whatever, do they ever indicate they thought it was unusual to you?

 

One time, a coach followed up with us on a call made by a parent - A three-base passed ball to end the game, essentially. Pitcher throws a wild pitch for ball four, and the catcher initially can't find it (walked hitter gets to second, halfway to third on the play) and then the catcher booted it, and no one was covering the plate (run scored). It was a middle school game, and the passed ball won the game for the other team in the bottom of the sixth or seventh, and completed something like a five or six run collapse in that inning. It sounded like a cluster-eff of nerves culminating in the game's final play.

 

This is why I no longer cover high school sports. I tried really, really hard to report the facts, but most of you morons just want your ego massaged. Another few years of letters and calls like this and I would have been a hopeless alcoholic. Get a life, people!