Fields of Screams: 2017 youth baseball/softball thread

For what it's worth, the championship team would probably be better off in the tournament than the All-Stars will do. For starters, the championship team went 16-0 and outscored opponents 204-39 in the regular season, then 21-5 in the tournament. Secondly, that team has been practicing together all year. Their lineup is solid 1-9, their pitching rotation is very good (a nice mix of hard-thrower followed by junk ball pitcher) and the nucleus of that team (I'd say probably 6-7 of them) have been playing together since they were 9.

The All-Star team has six of the championship team members, so half the team is from the championship squad. They added a couple of big bats from other teams, a couple of pitchers and the fastest player in the league with the other six slots. But again, I think they'll struggle in All-Star tournament play because they'll have one week of practice, then start playing games. Chemistry is big in tournament play and I don't think they'll have it.

I can't speak for all leagues, but I think the All-Star team is pretty much selected before the season. I think the season just becomes a formality to backup what the coaches felt all along. Like I said, I still think there are a couple of kids in the league left off that team to make room for a coach's son, and it's pretty clear in our league if you're a coach (or major sponsor), your kid has a great chance to be wearing that All-Star jersey.

Oh, and on a positive note, my son was awarded the sportsmanship award for the league. That's a pretty big honor because it's selected by all the coaches in the league and given to the kid that exemplifies sportsmanship (obviously), good teamwork, positive attitude and loyalty. I'll take that kind of award any day of the week.

 

Anyhoo .... exmedia, I also enjoyed your weekend.

 

Cool story, and not to sound like a downer, but how is your son physically? Did you get him checked out by a doctor?

 

He was fine within an hour and about 30 minutes after we got home. Just needed more bananas and water.

 

My oldest plays in a rec baseball league that is a combined to-be sixth graders and seventh graders (until this year they only played with their grade level). Not a big deal in any way, except the teams are more or less based on geographical areas around town so no saying how the mix on teams are. His team is all younger kids. Their last two games have been against teams that have all older kids and it's been easy to tell. Just that extra year to get the fundamentals down, even just something simple like having the knowledge when to actually run when on base. We're still trying to instill some of that so it puts us a step behind.

Just got blasted yesterday 15-0 (and it wasn't that close) and only had two base runners. Other team's pitcher was methodical, something our team just hasn't seen yet in their playing days. My kid didn't seem to be too devastated, but it was one of the more humbling contests I've witnessed as a sports parent. I think it's good for them though and I believe it will help them grow a ton by the end of this year and beyond. Still interesting to observe the differences in level over just a year or two at this stage.

 

We won 20-12 tonight against the team we beat to start the season and lost to a week later.

Jumped ahead 3-0 in top-1 but played like crap in the bottom half -- starting slow is our bugaboo -- and gave them the max 5 runs. But we scored 5 in top-2, another in the 3rd, and then secured the win with max innings in the 4th and 5th. Finally have a hitting order that gives us balance from leadoff through 11th girl. Funniest part of the game is when our drama queen -- she's the lead in all the plays -- tried scoring from first on a shot up the middle, past the center-fielder. First of all, she's not a very graceful runner and is slower than dirt ... and she has big boobs for a 12-year-old ... and she ran in a track meet at 3 o'clock ... and it was pretty warm tonight. She was tired. She trips around third, eats a mouthful of dirt. But she won't get up even though she's trying hard as she can. After 3 seconds it looks like she's swimming in the dirt -- her body won't allow her to get up -- and by now the hitter is approaching third base. Drama Queen FINALLY gets up and slogs across home plate. Hitter has to settle for a triple. It was very funny and everyone had a good laugh but man, it was watching slo-mo in super slo-mo.

Meanwhile, Miss Feisty Pants, who always wants to get her way, shows attitude late in the game. She's a pitcher with no control and even worse concentration and I've pretty much taken her out of the rotation. But she's athletic so I do my best to keep her happy. For a few games she played shortstop and handled it well. But one of the newbies has improved so much and is a natural there so now I have a lefty shortstop, which is fine because Miss Feisty Pants is strong at second base too. She plays the first 4 innings at second tonight and does a nice job. We clinched the win in top-5 with 4 runs to make it 19-7; the other team would only be able to score 10 more total. Good time to move the newbie munchkin from outfield to second because one, she really loves playing second, two, has shown she can handle it and three, has a great attitude. I tell Miss Feisty Pants to play left field in bottom-5. They say the ball will always find you and it did on a hard shot. She didn't hustle to it, didn't get down low enough so it bounced off her glove, then jogged to the ball as a couple runners scored, part of their max inning.

As we come in to hit, she walks to the dugout. Walks. Walks. Approaches me and says, in full throaty attitude, "I told you I don't like playing outfield." Really now. "OK, then," I said, "I'll have Lazy Newbie From Broken Home play there in the 6th and you can sit." Miss Feisty Pants brooded on the bench as we closed it out. Afterward I talked to her and her mom. Mom said they talked about this very issue on the way to the game. Moments later, Mom said she agrees with my decision and that this is an issue at home too -- my way or no way. It's kind of a tough situation. Parents are getting divorced and she spends half the week with one and the rest of the week with the other. She has no stability and no control over her life, and she's 12, and hormonal.

Anyway, we matched our season high for runs. The other team had only 2 losses so this was nice. We need to work on defense, but we're a good team.

We're 6-4 and play the undefeated team tomorrow. They've beaten us 3 times though once on Opening Day, 14-13, when time (cough) ran out 3 minutes early and we had a runner on first and second with one out.

 

The undefeated team whipped us 18-8 last night. Gave up 10 runs in the first 2 innings and never really caught fire. Pink-haired pitcher threw well though.

We're 6-5.

 

Heading into final two weeks of tournaments. For my son and I, I'll remember 2016 as the year he came back to love playing baseball again.

Much of the youth baseball here is a form of gray shirting, the "bait-and-switch" recruiting pitch, only to find that your son is one of three left-handed first basemen by the time the first practice starts. This was the first year (14U) that he hasn't been jerked around about being the starting first baseman since 8U.

Given our Royals fandom, son and I have probably watched about 200-210 Royals' games on TV since mid-2014 (when they became worth watching again). Around last April, he wanted to return to baseball after taking the 2015 season off due to burnout and getting tired of watching his teams lose, in large part, because of errors at first base. (My son has two truly "plus" categories in baseball -- a sharp eye at the plate and being extremely good at first base on digging out throws, positioning for pickoffs, etc).

As much as we love watching Eric Hosmer, I told him to use Hosmer's mannerisms with his teammates as a guide/role model should he ever go back.

Copying this has turned him into an immediate leader for 2016.

For all the "athletes aren't role models" talk, in this case we found it with Hosmer and how he related to his teammates. I couldn't be prouder of our son and his leadership with his pitchers in the field and in the dugout. He's having a great year hitting but, when he does get out, instead of being angry, he trots back to the dugout and tells his teammates about the pitches and sequencing -- and whether or not the ump is squeezing a strike zone. (All of this unsolicited from me).

It's made the year so incredibly fun because of his maturity (even though he's still 13 in a league of 14 and 15-year-old young men) where we can talk strategy that I cannot with the rest of the team.

Next year, he wants to play at the high school level and I'm trying to make sure that he doesn't set himself up for disappointment -- it's a 2,000-student school and just making a team is highly competitive.

Yet what a wonderful final chapter for the two of us in this last year of youth baseball. (He "could" play 14U again next year but I'm not up for another spring of endless travel and tournaments. Perhaps... if he gets a summer job!).

No tournament title last week but we did face the state's top team in our class. Lost to them 5-1 on Saturday, came back on Sunday to an 8-7 walk-off loss. They had to steal home against a left-handed pitcher to freakin' beat us. Son and I spotted it right away but the pitcher got the ball home a nanosecond too late. One of the best youth games I've ever been around -- we were down 4-0 early, 6-5 late, then we got ahead 7-6, gave up one to tie at 7. Final inning, they held us before getting their speedster on.

I told the boys "the best team in the state needed to steal home to beat us. We didn't win but we'll know what to see if we play them one more time." If nothing else, they were freaking out and burned up all their pitchers on little ol' us.

Emerging into the final two tournaments with a 23-22-1 record (Note: 1-8-1 above our class) but playing superb baseball once pool play is over. The boys aren't always a joy to coach -- we have three or four future prisoners on our team -- but it's been a positive year...finally.

 

My closest friend has a son who was a pretty good LL/club player, but he wasn't the brightest bulb in the box and he also struggled with dyslexia. By the time he approached high school, he had largely checked out academically. While he was probably good enough to make/play on the high school team, the coach said he couldn't risk a roster spot to a No-Pass-No-Play possibility. Which is pretty unfortunate, because perhaps -- and this is a big perhaps -- the fear of losing baseball might have got his head back in the academic game. He would have never been college material, but he might have been able to actually graduate from that high school (he stayed an extra year and then his parents got him into/through some alternate high school/diploma mill down the way).

 

Small-town Illinois mayor loses it during a little league game.

Illinois Mayor Accused of Punching Umpire, Breaking His Jaw During Son’s Little League Game

 

We traveled 10 miles up the road last night and played one of our best games, winning 15-3. A few things clicked on defense, and our lefty shortstop, new to the game, really stepped up. Early on she was hit 2 or 3 tricky grounders but hung with them and barely missed throwing the runners out. Another looper just eluded her glove. The ball was finding her. She hung tough though. She snared a blistering liner -- oh the smile she had -- and made 2 or 3 other routine plays. On another play, runners at first and second, she booted a grounder, no chance at first, but had the wherewithal to try for the force at third. We haven't even taught her that. She's a natural athlete and a natural softballer. To be fair, the other team isn't very strong -- huge turnover from last year's strong team. But you've still gotta field the ball, and make the plays. We did. Our pink-haired pitcher was on top of her game too. Best thing we did was give her the ball full-time.

Really nice effort. We're 7-5.

 

With graduations, confirmations and a bunch of year-end stuff out of the way, the StarSis brood launched into summer action last night with three kids in two games.

Sis-6 made her tee-ball debut with the Loco Mosquitos, slapping three doubles and turning a double play at shortstop. Of course, in tee-ball half the kids have no idea what base to run to or to throw the ball, so S6 has a huge edge from having watched games involving her older sisters virtually all her life.

Somewhat surprisingly, they do keep score in tee-ball in Starrville, in contrast to basketball where they don't keep score until fourth grade. So there wasn't any mystery when S6s fifth inning double drove in the winning runs in a 10-9 win over the Flying Turtles.

StarSis delegated game-watching duties for the Mosquitos to Sis-15, whose own summer league play won't get under way for another week after she flies out to Cali and back for a college-visitation tour with StarBro-17 and dad StarHubby, so StarSis could concentrate on assistant coaching duties for the 10U Starrville Streaks 20 miles up the road in Apple Corners.

The Streaks are kind of a summer auxiliary of the Pandas/Squirrelly Girls basketball bunch, with about 5-6 players in common, and Assistant Coach Mike from hoops doing the HC duties while Sis is the assistant.

Anyway, Eleni, the tall but shy and reserved forward from basketball, has hit a growth spurt and now towers at about 5-4, Manute Bol dimensions for 5th grade, and has suddenly discovered a batting eye. She's a 10 year old version of Dave Kingman; lots of strikeouts but towering moon shots when she connects.
Sis-A and Sis-B have settled into the 1/3 slots in the batting order, and rotating between pitcher and the four infield positions.

Sis-A starts at pitcher and throws a pair of shaky shutout innings, giving up five hits but keeping the Apples off the board by fielding a hot bases-loaded comebacker and winning a foot race to home plate.

Eleni hits a third inning solo homer that sails over the head of the Apple Valley left fielder to put Starrville in a 1-0 lead, then in the fourth, AV scores twice for a 2-1 lead.

Sis-B comes in to pitch the fifth and sixth innings, striking out four.

The fifth inning features a weird little sidelight when the Apple Valley pitcher suddenly goes on a beanball jag, hitting four batters in a row. Amazingly the umpire claims the league rules do not specifically award first base for HBP, and at this level there are no walks, so effectively the HBPs are simply "no pitch."

StarSis points out this sets a very bad precedent: "What if our pitcher decides we're tired of getting hit, and next inning decides to plug a few batters of her own?"

The umpire shrugs and says "if I think somebody's intentionally throwing at people, I'll throw them out of the game."

Mike and Sis reply, "well why not just go with the established rules of fast pitch and give first base for a HBP?" The umpire says in his opinion, no base for a HBP unless the rule book specifically said so.

It'll go to the league commissioner tomorrow.

Anyway back to the game, Apple Valley takes a 2-1 lead into the 7th, when the 8-9-1 (Sis-A) Starrville hitters load the bases with 1 out.

A strikeout brings Starrville down to its final out, and Sis-B clears the bases with a 3-run double to give the Streaks a 4-2 lead.

In the bottom of the inning Sis-B strikes out the first two AV hitters, slaps down a line drive and flips the ball over to Sis-A at first base to end the game.

It'll be a fractured season for the twins; they're taking a week off in midseason for a camping trip in Maine with their grandparents, but at least the season seems off to a decent start.