Dear dimwit on the phone

This is a call a colleague of mine received, not me, but it's a classic:

Phone rings. It's a BASEBALL coach calling. A BASEBALL coach, mind you.

My colleague: "Okay, can you run down your lineup, at-bats, runs, hits, RBIs for each player?"

Long pause.

Confused coach: "Does a guy get credit for a run when he crosses the plate?"

My colleague: Totally speechless.

 

Dear Asshat baseball coach,

When you read your fucking box, it's at-bats, runs, hits, RBIs. Baseball has been around for 200 goddamn years, and this is the way box scores have always been read.

So when I hear you say, "Johnny Fatass, um, two runs, one double, two hits, three at-bats, a walk, two stolen bases, one RBI" when I'm asking you to read your box score, you can fuck yourself.

Of course, I'd say that if I hadn't been laid-off and been scraping together as much freelance work as I can while also working as a part-time cashier with a bunch of people who didn't fucking make it past 8th grade.

 

You act amazed that a coach doesn't know how to assemble a box score. In 15 years of doing this, I've never met a coach that knows how to assemble a box score. Some of them don't even know the terms; "past ball" always amuses me. The other day, I got "pass ball."

I've got a coach this year sending me his play-by-play sheets from a program on a Palm Pilot, which I may have mentioned earlier in this thread (if not in another one). This program tells me every pitch that happened in the game, but it doesn't total anything!

Know what I gotta do? I gotta get out a scorebook and recreate the game in order to have any stats! Be grateful your coach can even tell you who got a hit.

(P.S: Box scores haven't always read like that; RBIs didn't become an official stat until the 20's )

 

Yeah, it's brutal.

I didn't mean to imply that I'm amazed baseball coaches get box scores all fucked up every time. It just bothers me because it's so simple. Add it up, call it in.

You do get the occasional coaches who are good about it, though. I had one guy who would always call in on the bus ride after the game, and he was the best. If a kid went 0-4 with nothing, he'd just say "Four thousand." If a kid was 1-4 with a run and an RBI, he'd say, "Forty-one eleven." Made it real easy and real quick, and he always called right away.

They're not all idiots, but most of them are.

The other ones I love are when they have no clue how to read a scorebook. Like when their team wins 3-2 with a run in the last inning and you might ask them how they scored the run, and they can't for the life of them figure out what the fuck happened. Or they'll tell you EVERY AB of the inning: "Well, Jones struck out, Smith flied out to left, Johnson walked....um.....then Smith ran for Johnson, etc."

Can't you just say, "Johnson doubled with one out and Smith, the next batter, singled to score him." Guess that's too much to ask. I think a lot of coaches don't even remember what the hell happened in the game they just coached, either.

 

You know what helps?

"Hey buddy, total these up or we can't run them. Thanks."

 

That would be great. But this is the main team in a high-school worshipping town of 7,000. Parents ask. But I've been telling them up front, "This is what he does and it's not working. And he sends it in a day late. Sometimes two. I've talked to him. I even referred him back to the form I gave him at the beginning of the year. He insists on using the Palm Pilot. I can't get through to him. But you know what a coach hates dealing with? Mad parents. Maybe you guys can get through to him for me."

Hasn't worked. And I have left out about four games this season because I just don't have the time.

And what really get me is that the information as it's printed has to be as useless to him as it is to me. If his program can't total the stats, how does he know anything about what his own players are doing?

 

Dear coach,
If you insist on adding your box score up on the phone, this is the sound you'll hear.













Love, Slappy.

 

h.s. box scores = big waste of time

 

Maybe he (or whoever is in charge of it) doesn't know how how to make the program add them up. One of my softball coaches uses what must be a similiar program and it adds it up just fine.
But then, there are the coaches who are clueless. I also provide each baseball and softball coach with a form to copy and use and I just know some of them simply have no idea what to do.
One team will fill out the form, but won't bother to add in all of the subs or pinch runners. The box will add up, but the stats will be attributed to starter.
Another team sometimes sends in the scoresheets from the book -- totalled up, which is nice -- but trying to decifer how four runs scored in one inning when the team had only two RBIs and no passed balls or wild pitches marked down is a chore.
This next one is for any sport -- Names!? My gosh, could you give me a FIRST and LAST name, please, especially when two more kids have the same last name? Sure, we can usually track down names for teams we cover, but it takes about two extra seconds per kid when filling out the book at the start of the game to get everyone's first and last name. I'm sorry, Coach, but
'Back-to-back two-out doubles by pinch hitters Smith and Jackson in the bottom of the seventh by Podunk the 7-6 win' just isn't good enough.

 

Winner winner. Especially when you have the backup 3b serving as the "official" scorer. It would be miraculous if the two opposing books were to ever match.

 

I'm sure there is a thread on this somewhere...but this seems to be a good place for this as well since we are on the subject of call-ins.
How do you handle a coach when they don't call in?
We are a small daily with three main local and five out-of-county teams.
I am in the camp of: If it's not called in, it's not getting in. The other guy feels that we need to track down every coach and get every recap of every game...and he does that...and shoots me dirty looks when I say the recaps are finished and we are missing a local baseball box/recap.
I can see two ways of thinking here:
1) We are reporters, our object is to get and give information. So if a coach doesn't call, we need to go and get. Meaning call them and their assistants until someone picks up and gives us what we want.
2) Whatever gets called, faxed and e-mailed...gets in. The rest of the stuff? Oh well, pick up a phone or turn your computer on coach!
I am in the second mindset. These coaches know we are there to answer phones from 6-10 p.m. each night except Saturday (we have no Sunday edition), so if the out-of-county tennis coaches can e-mail their stuff in and the track coach can fax his stuff in by that deadline...why should I go and bug a local softball coach for the same info?

 

I am with the other guy. It's great that the coaches call in and probably is their responsibility. But people forget, don't realize your deadlines, etc., etc.

So as long as it's within your deadlines and work schedule, I would call and bug the coaches to get as complete a report of high school games as possible.

This is your bread and butter, right? You are a small daily. People will look to your for high school results so you need to suck it up and make the calls.