Fields of Screams: 2017 youth baseball/softball thread

@poindexter what's a cop doing coaching his kid's team in a very affluent suburb?

 

Boy, little did I suspect. Although League Prez Larry claimed the roster shuffling was over, it was barely begun.

Between Tuesday and today, four or five players (I lost track) were -- at least on paper -- shuffled on, then shuffled off, of my team. At one point, our roster was looking like it might go to 15.

I said to LPL, "If we're really to the point of 15-player rosters, maybe it's time to go to three teams." He blanched at that suggestion.

Out of consideration of the readership, I won't recount the shitstorm of sudden roster move possilbilities LPL pumped into my email boxes on Wednesday and Thursday. I probably coudln't if I wanted to. But by Thursday, the smoke was mostly cleared, and we have what we are solemnly assured is our final, Twelve-Player Roster.

We've also managed to squeeze in three at least rudimentary practices, although a couple players at the first two have been shifted to other teams, and we've picked up three new players. We're still very very young-- almost all 2005 birthdays while the other Starrville team in our age group is almost all 2004s.

Lucy, the big rough-tough PF from basketball, has shown up, but she's been snotty much of the time. Unfortunately, she's one of our two catchers at the moment. The other is Sasshie, the younger sister of Samma, who was supposed to be on my team but moved up to 14U.

Sasshie is a catcher/IF like her older sister. She's got her own gear, helmet, mask and shin guards, she likes to catch and she can knock down most of the pitches. The only problem is, at least at this point, she cannot throw the ball to 2B on the fly. Pretty much always it's a two-bouncer. And there is base stealing in this league.

Lucy doesn't exactly throw it on a rope, but she can throw a high sailing fly ball that does eventually get to second base. But she doesn't really like to catch, and also tends to sit down directly on the ground while catching. (And of course, she gets snooty when you point out this is a bad thing to do. In addition to base stealing, in this league base runners can also advance on WP/PBs, so if the catcher is sitting on her rump while the pitch rolls loose, the base runner will be in the dugout drinking gatorade by the time you get off your booty to pick up the ball.)

We're still waiting on one player to finally show: Aly. Who reportedly also catches as well as plays 3B and pitches.

We -- well, I -- have still heard nothing at all personally from Aly or her parents. StsrSis knows her mom socially and talked to her on Friday on the phone and was reassured she was in, but still I, the coach, have received no personal email or phone response. Until I actually see Aly on the field, I'll be kinda nervous.

Our practice today (Saturday) was pretty much a fiasco. We had seven of 12 players show up, although four of the absentees were by prior notice by the parents (including Sis A/B and StarSis who were involved in a church charity event). Nobody could throw a strike and there was way too much standing around.

Good points: Polly and Mom Paula showed up, and Mom Paula may be the savior. She's a former D-I pitcher herself and she knows what she's talking about. She worked with four or five pitchers and things did seem to improve a bit. (Slightly disturbing side note, I asked Paula her thoughts on developing pitchers, and she said her opinion was that pitchers should probably throw 100 pitches every day at this age. That would burn up probably half of our practice time all by itself.)

And, although Polly hasn't ever played on an organized team before, she does have good windmill form (although not control), she can catch the ball at 1B, and at bat when she connects, she can crank it a mile.

Oh ... a consensus seems to be developing for a team name: "Power-Cats."

Not what I would have picked, but I can go with it. I was just hoping against some real foo-foo cutesy nickname.

 

Hallelujah: email from Aly's mom Alanna. She is in. (And, supposedly all healthy.)

She'll miss about half our practices playing travel volleyball until the season starts, but that's ok. Unless I'm way way wrong, she'll be our only catcher who can really snap the ball to second base.

Mom Paula our former D-1 pitcher mom and I were talking it over yesterday; we may just concede the steal of 2B most of the time. (Both of our present catchers can get it to 3B so maybe we'll try to get the runners there.)

But I hate the damn idea that if you walk somebody (which will be common enough), in essence in two pitches they are on third base. I've coached in leagues where essentially that's the case, and it sucks. It's hard enough to get kids to concentrate on getting the batters out, with the base runners running absolutely wild on the bases it drives them crazy.

Talking to LPL we might try to push through some kind of rules tweak to slow down the nonstop track meet on the bases; maybe say you can't steal on the first two pitches of an at-bat, or maybe that you can't steal two bases in a row.

I am sure some Bobby Knight/Vince Lombardi disciple will say, "suck it up buttercup, that's your problem to teach catchers to throw to 2B," and yeah, to some extent it is, but I have coached BOYS (cough cough) at considerably higher levels than this and allowing base runners to just run wild completely distorts the game and prevents kids from concentrating on what's really important (i.e. getting batters out).

But if the final judgment is, "tough crap, we're gonna let 'em run wild," so be it -- we have a damn fast team. Only four of our 12 players are slow, and about four are freaking speed blazers.

 

Don't tweak the rules. Let them run. That's what we do ... take every base we can. Walk, take second, take third ... and right now we're the only team who bunts so we've been squeezing. That said, catchers in our league can wing it to third relatively well so there are a good amount of plays there.

 

In all previous discussions on similar topics (running up the score etc.), that Bobby Knight/Vince Lombardi type has been you.

 

Uh uh uh uh, I am not crying that it's unfair to steal bases on poor little US -- read all the way to the end, where I state quite clearly my intention to steal as many bases as anybody else. If that's the way it is going to be, we'll run wild too.

I doubt very much my poor little team will be any worse than anybody else throwing runners out at second. From talking to some veteran league coaches it sounds like base stealing is effectively automatic -- 90%+ success level.

But allowing unlimited base stealing screws up the game for everybody. Essentially it means every walk becomes a triple in two pitches. (And then the next batter is 2-0, too.)

 

We finally beat "the red team" 15-12 ... first time we've beaten them in my 2+ years as coach.

Last year, 6 of our 7 losses were to the red team including 18-5 in the title game.

They're 4-time defending champs with a handful of returners and several newbies.

Tonight was gratifying, back and forth, and then we had our first "bad" inning of the year in bottom-4 when one of their veterans, a big girl, hit ever living shit out of the ball for a 2-run homer. I've been in this league 2+ years and that was the most Ruthian of shots yet. We went into defensive meltdown mode the rest of the inning -- to ruin a great pitching effort -- and they finished with a 5-run max inning and 12-7 lead. Here we go again, I thought.

But we came back in top-5 with our own max inning when girls reached on dropped strike-3 and hustle down the line, walks, bunts (including a squeeze) and bases-loaded 2-run double by my 3-year third baseman who finally kaboomed the ball.

They didn't score in bottom-5, we scored 3 in top-6, then held them scoreless in bottom-6 though they put runners at second and third.

My 3-year pitcher had 12 strikeouts. My catcher was solid on dropped strike 3s and her work behind the plate impressed the ump who happens to be league commish who had to step in at the last minute to work the game. At one point my catcher tried to nab a runner at third, just missing, and the commish gave me that look as if to say this girl's got some talent. There was a bit of a poetic ending when my first baseman, who dropped some gimmes to keep innings alive, scooped a grounder and stepped on the bag for the final out.

We contained our celebration but were giddy as all get-up. This was a long time coming. Felt good to finally beat the red team.

We're 4-0.

 

Two of my girls are sisters from the worst side of the tracks. One played for me last year and it took all season to make a breakthrough.

This is her sister's first year of any organized sport. She an even bigger project -- times a million -- but I'm making a much quicker breakthrough. Big strong girl whose swing still needs a ton of work but because she's big and strong the other teams don't expect a bunt. We worked on bunting for an hour last week. She was petrified for the first 15 minutes and then fell in love with it the final 45 minutes.

Tonight she asked if she could bunt so I called a squeeze and she put it down during our max 5th inning to tie the game.

THAT was a moment of moments.

 

That's fun to finally beat the longtime nemesis.

When StarSis was in grade school and junior high, she was one of the two best hoops players in the city. For four straight years in the rec leagues she battled for the championship every year.
The other best player was better. She went on to be a college Div III All-American in two sports and was all-conference in a third.

The first time Sis ever went against this girl, let's call her Krista, we beat her (I was coaching the team; her mom was coaching hers) by one point.

I still remember, we got the ball with 9 seconds left, a 1-point lead, and the league had a no-pressing rule. So I signalled to StarSis to dribble the ball in the backcourt, while Krista stood at halfcourt, yelling, "come on, bring it over," and I was saying in my Firm Coach Voice, "No, you DON'T bring it over." Five, four, three, two, one, Bzzzzzz.

It was the only game Krista ever lost in rec league play. Her career rec record was 43-1 (her mom kept track). She and Sis eventually became good friends, travel team and later high school teammates, but we never beat her again.

We took them to overtime the last game of 8th grade, the only game they had closer than 15 points, and she hit a 20-footer at the buzzer to win it. Damn, it would have been fun to get 'em one more time.

So yeah, finally taking down the arch-nemesis is sweet indeed.

 

OK, that was 1984 and this is 2017, now I'm coaching the StarSis twins in 12U softball, Sis is assisting, and tonight we finally saw our whole team for the first time.

Well, almost. Sis B ("StarSis Jr.") was home sick with the flu, and Lucy our big moody head-case catcher/power hitter, blew it off.

But we did finally see Aly, the super all-round athlete we'd been playing email tag with for almost a month. Reportedly she's a great catcher and we need one.

Five minutes after everyone started warming up, I asked her to make a throw down to second.

Our catching problem is solved.

Hell, even Sasshy, our spunky 10 -year old with the perfect aptitude, mindset, etc etc for a catcher (but not the arm, as of last week) got a couple down on one bounce.

Talking with Mom Paula on the sidelines, we were chewing over the catching situation. We're going to have Aly V start almost every game at catcher, although she'll almost certainly pitch at times as well.

We figure we'll have Aly gun out a runner or two early in every game, and that will take the wind out of the sails of the opposing running games. It'll be such a shock to see anybody get thrown out on the bases, teams will just quit running if we nail a couple early. We can then run the other girls in at catcher for a few innings here and there; that's the kind of thing opposing coaches may not even notice in the heat of the game.

We'll probably have Aly catch in pregame warmups, even if she's starting at some other position. One thing opposing teams will absolutely pay attention to in warmups is whether or not you have a catcher who can throw to second. If not, the merry-go-round on the basepaths is off to the races.

The name situation is not solved. We have two Aly's, an AlyShanna (yes), an Alianna, a Mary, an Anne, a Marianne (and a coach is named Marianne). I'll probably just yell "hey you" a lot.

It won't be too hard to tell Aly V., our ace catcher, and Aly D., who will miss about half the practices with junior high track meets, apart. Aly V made a half dozen laser throws from home to second and Aly D made four or five sprinting catches in the outfield.

I leaned over to StarSis and muttered, not too loudly, "there's our centerfielder."

One minor concern is that Sis A, the twin usually overshadowed somewhat by her sis in most athletic events, looked completely awful as a solo act: listless, bored and awful in the field, where she's usually stellar. All of a sudden, shockingly, she's 'throwing like a girl' (elbow leading, off the wrong foot).

I asked her if SHE was feeling sick, figuring maybe whatever flu bug hit Sis B was dragging her down too, but she said she was all right.

But she looked really bad. It was one of the first times I've ever seen them apart, and to use a completely predictable cliche, she looked like half of her was missing.

 

The red team came back tonight and won 19-8 against the team that has everybody back but apparently they pitched the 4-foot-3 girl instead of the speed girl. Earlier today the red team coach asked if we can push our game on the 19th to this Sunday. I haven't answered. I don't think I will. He's chomping at the bit to play us right now. He hates that we beat them yesterday.

 

Nah, I'd get in a couple games against some other teams before you play 'em again. Give 'em a week to chew it over. You aren't ducking them or anything; you're just playing the schedule as originally sent out. You play them 4-5 more times, right?