Fields of Screams: 2017 youth baseball/softball thread

We won 8-7 to improve to 5-0. It was well played by and large. Our teams always play tight games.

My lefty shortstop wasn't there to be with the 7th-grade team up north (they won by 27 runs). The wrestler/baseballer who was going to fill in at shortstop wasn't there because she got sick earlier in the day though I didn't find out until just before game time. That left me with 10. The other team's coach said he'd be missing players so I said we'd let them borrow one of ours so that it could be 9 v. 9.

We were really flat in top-1 and they went ahead 3-0 thanks to some errors. We scored 5 in the bottom half then they tied it in top-2. After that we held them scoreless for the next 3 innings but we didn't score for a few innings either. It was 8-5 in top-6 with the bottom of their order coming up so it seemed like we'd close it out easily but things are never easy with us and they scored 2 runs then loaded the bases before my pitcher snagged a little flare to close out the win. We'll take it. We're the only remaining undefeated team in the 5-team league.

The girl we let them borrow is a first-year player, terrific and fun personality, a gymnast who's always twirling and contorting and standing on her tippy-toes, and she can be quite flighty because of ADD. The great thing is she made contact in all 3 at-bats, which is a breakthrough, and the best part of the game is when one of my sluggers plowed a fly to right -- the kind that you have to go get -- and she went and got it. It's funny because she's never caught a flyball, including practice. Fun moment for everyone. She giddily pranced back toward their bench, past our players, and as she approached me she playfully said "SORRY!"

Because she was willing to play for them, and for her effort, I gave her the game ball.

They have a girl who is super talented and will be a varsity stud.

I rotated 2 girls at shortstop and they did pretty well considering they never played there.

 

The kid who got thrown out won't play next week. That's my punishment for doing what he did. I know it wasn't intentional, but it was malicious, if that makes sense. I was at third, I saw his face change from "shit I'm caught to I'm about to truck this dude." He knew better, because I've gone over it with the players before that they can't run over a player. He's fine with the punishment and his parents are fine with the punishment. Now, the question will be when we get to the postseason tournament and if we match up against these guys again.

As for playing them again next week. I have a feeling they're not going to want to travel back to our place. Then again, we'll be down to 8 players (three out of town and ejected player sitting), so maybe if they get wind that we only have 8, they may try to play us, thinking they can get an easy win.

He tried to apologize to the third baseman almost immediately. I can understand how the third baseman didn't want to talk to him. He also started to walk toward the coach to apologize, but I told him to just go outside the fence. The coach was seeing red.

Before the last inning, I talked to the head umpire and asked if that kid could join us in the postgame handshake and he said he could, as long as he didn't incite anything. The kid wanted to be a part of the handshake so he could apologize to the kid and the coaches. But, alas, they didn't want to shake hands.

I talked to my league commissioner after the game to let him know about the whole thing. I wanted him to know before he got second-hand information. I told him everything, from the ejection to the players bowing up on each other to their coach and I getting into it. Of course, he's my league commissioner and he told me I handled it properly. He said he would reach out to that team's league commissioner, but he feared the head coach may actually be their league commissioner. Sadly, I never got their coach's name. When I introduced myself at our first game, he just said "Nice to meet you" like I should know who he is. If he's in fact their league commissioner, nothing will happen. His behavior that night (and the first time we played them) leads me to believe he's convinced everyone is out to get him.

 

Lost our first game tonight, 11-10, to the team with a speed thrower. She got hers but we worked her for 12 walks.

We were super aggressive on the bases and it backfired when runners were out at home twice after wild pitches.

We were down 9-6 late but went ahead 10-9 only to give it right back to them with a few dropped balls.

It was a really good game. We should've won but you can't win 'em all.

We're 5-1 going into tomorrow's home game.

 

Well, just to update what happened last week with the crazy coaches. They decided not to play us this week, so we've got one game left in the regular season. We play the team we're tied with in the standings, so the winner gets the No. 1 seed in the tournament and loser gets No. 2 seed. Funny thing is if we win tomorrow night and get the No. 1 seed, guess who we'll be playing in the first round of the postseason tournament? Yep, that team that caused all that mess a week ago and didn't want to play us this week. That's going to be fun.

As a side note, our other league team went and played that team Monday night and the coaches said their coaches couldn't be any nicer. They said their coaches were going out of their way to be nice to them. I thought that was pretty funny.

 

We won 14-9 last night. Third time we've beaten this team, which didn't have their future varsity stud.

The good: I gave 2 girls a chance to pitch for the first time ever after the starter went 3 innings. They'd been clamoring to try the circle. First up in relief was the 3-year third baseman, the sweetest girl you've ever met, who threw relatively well despite nerves and a decent crowd. She walked 'em loaded, some high and some low, though many of the called balls were right there. She struck out a girl with the bases loaded, and then another but the ball got away so a run scored and the batter reached first. The next girl slugged a grand slam to give them a 5-run max inning, which tied it 7-7. We came back to score 4 in the bottom half with a bunch of infield hits, walks, and steals. Next into the circle was my second baseman who's 4-foot-5 with a 10-foot personality. She had cancer as a baby and part of a lung was removed. She's a real spitfire and loves to run run run, always wanting to do something new. It's her second year on the team and she worked her way into becoming the second baseman. The other night she sends me a message: I want to pitch. In practice a few days earlier she showed she can get get the ball over the plate and with a nice little natural curve to it. I put her in to start top-5 last night and she immediately throws it over the plate. She works fast, too fast, Little Miss Quick Pitch lol and you can see her little motor spinning. Had to slow her down a bit. First batter she faces reaches on an infield hit. She walks the second batter. Girl on second tries to steal but my catcher throws her out. She gave up a single and walk to load 'em up. She threw a wild pitch but the catcher got to the ball and easily tagged the runner who tried to score. She walked 2 more (a run scored) but got out of it with a dropped strike 3 that the catcher again retrieved and tagged the runner from third.

I've finally found a back-up pitcher, which will be crucial during the final weeks of the season as it gets hotter and hotter. Last night it was 91.

More good news: My lefty shortstop, who also plays on the 7th-grade team, hit her first home run ever and also retired the side in the 3rd by scooping grounders and rifling to first. Big boost for her confidence. I wouldn't have had her for the first inning or two yesterday had the 7th-grade game not been canceled.

The not-so-good: We had to use a last-second fill-in ump and he tried a little too hard, punishing my bunters by calling them out for barely stepping over the plate when they put down gorgeous bunts. I'm all for playing by the rules but there's also a time and place -- the grey area of life -- and this is an instructional league and we're the only team that's bunting and the girls he called out had their right feet an inch or two at the most in front of the plate. Sometimes you've just got to play it as it lays. My girls have worked hard to learn the art of bunting, but this ump kept punishing them with ticky-tack bullshit. We lost 2 squeeze runs because of it. That said, we'll just keep plugging away on our footwork.

We're 6-1.

 

Life works in mysterious ways. Losing my lefty catcher so close to the start of the season sucked and yet within days a natural born catcher from the team that had to disperse its few players falls into my lap. I got lucky.

She's getting better and better and better and it's a joy to watch her confidence grow. Her aunt (my only assistant, so it was a nice bonus package) said Abbie has always been too internal and self-critical but that she's growing out of it because she's on this team. Last week I asked her what she thinks we need to work on based on her perspective from behind home plate. She said she doesn't like looking at the outfielders who seem to not want to be there. I told her to take command in a game and get their attention by all means necessary. In Wednesday's game, between batters, she surveyed the field and yelled -- YELLED -- at the center-fielder to put her glove back on. She has become the vocal leader of the team and dominant personality in the battery relationship with 3-year pitcher, who has her own pretty large personality.

The other night, Abbie had 6 dropped strike 3 putouts and has 15 for the season. She has nearly 10 wild pitch tag-outs at home.

She sent me a message last night: I have two families my team family and my actual family. I've never been this happy to play for a team. I love having you as my coach because if something happens at school I know when our game or practice comes I have my other family to make it better. I'm so blessed and I can't believe I'm on the turquoise train. If I make a bad throw you make me feel better about it. I'm Arlington Abbie and I got dem dinosaur arms. I'm happy that I came to the game instead of my concert. You mean so much to me and you make me happy when I'm not and when I get hurt I'm not scared to tell you.

 

You-all down south are lucky that you can get your season going in March/April. We don't start actual games until June 5 and the buildup is interminable.
We've had like 9 practices and still never had our entire team on the field.

One week from Tuesday, we're going to have a scrimmage/exhibition game against the other Starrville team in our 12U division.
Kacee's Kats, the other team, is as much of a veteran returning team as it's possible to be in age-group softball.

They were 16-7 last year as an almost entirely 11-year-old team; they have 10 of 12 of the same players back, and one of the two newcomers is a freakin stud. So they should be very very good.

Essentially, we are what they were last year; almost entirely 11-year olds. I figure we'll probably get whomped in the scrimmage, but I want to get out on the field in game conditions before it's go time.

I did go to the Regional Baseball/Softball Association league meeting the other night as the only rep for Starrville.

Much to my disgust I did get an answer to a continuing area of endless confusion in our age division: Runners on third base are not allowed to steal home on a straight steal, but they CAN break for home on a double steal if the defensive team makes an attempt to throw a runner out at any other base.

So, effectively, if you have runners at 1st and 3rd and the runner at 1st takes off, but the catcher does not throw down, the runner at 3rd is not allowed to score.

Which means, of course, that managers will order their catchers just to let that runner from 1B go.

Throwing runners out at second is gonna be enough of a crapshoot as it is. Our stud catcher Aly has been throwing people out about maybe 25% of the time in practices; I'm quite confident that's a stellar success rate at this level. My guess is the overall league rate is going to be more like 5%.

It's going to be enough of a struggle teaching catchers to throw out base runners at all without having to forbid them to do it a sizable percentage of the time.

Actually, I'm not really worried this rule is going to hurt our team much, if at all. Out of our 12 players, 6 are blinding fast, 4 are big-slow but aggressive and only two are really slow, so we'll steal as many bases as anyone.

But it just turns the game into a circus when base stealing is almost automatic anyway, then you add this rules interpretation that makes it almost suicidal to try to throw them out.

 

Lil' Circus's team lost its last game (couple of weeks ago, for weather reasons) on a shitty technicality. We were going into the last inning (this is the 7-8 year-old league) down 4-0, then strung together some hits to tie the game, with my boy getting an RBI single in the process. However, the rules on ending innings are as such:

- The usual three outs
- Five-run limit, except for the last inning, when teams can score as many runs as they can, with the limitation of...
- You can only go through your lineup once. If the teams have different numbers of players that day, both teams bat the number of players in the smaller team's lineup.

That day, the smaller lineup was us. We had nine players and the opposition had 11. And our ninth batter could only get the lead runner (my son) to third base. So inning over, even though we didn't make three outs or hit the run limit. Both sets of coaches agreed that this was a stupid rule, although it was not the dumbest technicality that exists in the league bylaws. (More on that later.)

The other team was the home team, and they had their two big bats coming up. (Both extremely nice kids - I coached Big Bat 1B in fall ball, while Big Bat 1A's dad opened up a wall in our house before we moved in, while he played with my sons.) Sure enough, 1B gets a hit, and 1A hits the ball to the playground on the other side of the field for the second time that day, and 1B scores. A fun game, a stirring comeback, but a shitty way to lose.

The dumbest rule, by the way? Other team's coach talked to me after the game and said he was glad that one team had won. If a game ends in a tie (which is allowed), that game's stats don't count for All-Star consideration. What the fuck?

 

If anybody cares who makes the all-star team, and I presume somebody does, two coaches involved in any close game should get together before the final inning and agree to fix the game.

If tie games don't help anybody get in an all-star game, unless the game is for the championship itself, you're better off throwing it than playing a tie.

Or pull your team off the field and forfeit.

 

Man, that league is all kinds of fucked up. So both teams are forced into batting orders based on how many players show up for the worse team?

 

It's gettin' real in Starrville: one of the league coaches got ahold of the portable pitching machine, so we are gonna have actual organized BP next week. Our BP so far has been very erratic; we've done some slow pitch, but that doesn't help much, and we've had our pitchers pitch BP too but that isn't very productive either (for the hitters or the pitchers). We've done soft-toss and tee-hitting which has been OK, but we need to get out and get some actual swings against some 40-mph fastballs (as opposed to 20-mph tossers).

We'll break into rotation on the pitching machine and break our pitchers off on the side to throw 40-50 pitches per night.

The format of the league is this: 7-inning doubleheaders every night (so possible of 14 innings to be pitched) with a maximum of 6 innings per night per pitcher. So even if your #1 and #2 pitchers go 6 each, that still leaves you with 2 innings to fill -- so mathematically, you HAVE to have three pitchers.

But my problem is exactly the opposite: I have a very obvious #1 and #2 -- but then I have about 6 more who could chew up an inning or two at a time. Really there are only about 4 players on the 12-player roster who flat-out do not pitch at all. So I'm going to have to figure out how to get a few innings for five or six pitchers altogether.

Complicating things somewhat (although not imminently) is the fact my #1 pitcher (by far) will be off on family vacation the week of the league tournament. The tourney throws a wrinkle that the pitching limit shifts from six innings per day, to three innings per game (it's double elimination and you could play up to six games in two days). So when the tourney finally rolls around in mid July, our #1 pitcher will disappear, and everyone else will bump up a slot on the rotation. So by the time that happens, our #3-4 pitchers will have to be up to speed and able to go a full 3 innings, and even the current #5-6's may well have to go an inning or two without a 10-walk explosion.

The schedule is weird as hell. It starts June 5, and then we have seven scheduled DH's in 22 days. Then a TWELVE DAY BREAK (!?!) for July 4 Week, then One DH, then three more days off, then the tournament.

So as it stands now, we are gonna have 14 games in 22 days -- and then 2 games in 16 days -- and then (possibly) 6 games in two days. WTF?!?

My wild solution to all of this is: I have already beseeched all my parents to inform me of all upcoming out-of-town vacations during the calendar span of our season. At the moment I know of 1 and possibly 2 players who will be gone parts of the week of July 4. Other coaches inform me their percentages are probably similar. My evil scheme will be to stage a wildcat tournament on July 7-8, including teams from in and out of our division.

We can get access to a couple of public park fields which are adequate (if not ideal) to play games on, so even if the league as a whole takes a 12-day break, individual teams can get a few games in that period of time rather than essentially sitting on our butts for two weeks. We'll have each team supply one designated umpire per game and go by the schoolyard-honor system; if somebody wants to be a real ass and make a bunch of bullshit calls, whoopee for you; the championship trophy of this bootleg tourney is gonna be a 12-pack of Coke Zero.

 

Update on the Stagger Lee Sluggers. We lost our regular season finale 7-3, but still ended up as the No. 1 seed because of a better overall record by 0.5 games. I hated losing Friday because we were up 3-0 and we were absolutely cruising, playing our best baseball of the season, but then our pitcher had to come out in the sixth inning because of pitch count. He finished with 9 Ks and only 1 hit in 5-plus innings of work. Hindsight is 20/20 but I feel like I made the wrong decision on who I replaced him with. I went with our hardest throwing guy, thinking that they might be pressing and their timing would be off. My other option was a kid that carved them up the last time we played them, he's a much softer thrower with a lot of offspeed pitches. Slow, looping curveball, etc. But I was thinking let power shut down their lineup. Instead, he walked a few, gave up a couple of fly balls that we absolutely should have caught and it went from 3-0 to 3-2 real fast. We led going into the seventh and got the first out on a strikeout, but then he walked two in a row, then gave up a fly ball that should have been an out, but left fielder dropped it. Then gave up a slow grounder back to the pitcher, but he panicked and instead of getting that out, he ran the runner back to third and just paused. Walked the next batter to load the bases, then next guy lifts a high fly ball to right field and our right fielder is absolutely sleeping. He doesn't even realize the ball was hit until players started yelling at him. Needless to say, they clear the bases on a stupid pop fly single. And that's all she wrote.

Anyway, we're back at it this week, hopefully. We do play the team that we had the little dust up with a couple of weeks ago. That's if the weather permits. It's supposed to rain every day this week and this is our last week to try to get in a tournament. Once Memorial Day weekend hits, the kids scatter. I'm hoping we can at least get to finals and match up against the team we lost to on Friday. We know we can beat those guys, we just have had a hard time finishing it.