Fields of Screams: 2017 youth baseball/softball thread

MOTHER
FUCKING
RAIN

 

My son has played 3 games all season. 4 games and 2 makeups have been washed out.

To make matters worse, 1 of the games had a fairly steady drizzle and because our pitchers couldn't get the ball over the plate, only 4 innings were played and he only got up once. So basically, we stood there getting wet to watch 1 bad swing, 1 good swing, 1 pitch a mile over his head and a called 3rd strike.

 

The one good thing about starting our season so early is that we avoid a lot of the spring thunderstorms. I think we only had one game rained out the entire season. We had a couple of close calls, but it always cleared up in time for our game. We had one game canceled because the team didn't show up, and another game canceled because they had scheduled it on Good Friday, not realizing half the league's players would be going out of town for Easter. All told, we played 22 games this season, which is a good amount for a rec team. We ended up playing more games than the high school where most of our kids end up playing.

 

We play the red team tonight. First time since we beat them for the first time in 3 years.

 

We beat "the red team" 12-6 under the lights in what I'd say is our most complete effort ever.

This one feels really good. We're 7-1. I'll write more tomorrow.

 

OK, so the Starrville 12U Power-Cats got things under way last night with a doubleheader scrimmage against Kacee's Kats. For the first time the whole team was together 1-12.

Things started to go south in the morning, when two of our three assistant coaches (Paula and Zak) texted to say they'd be out of town, leaving only StarSis and me to carry the mail. Then, the promise of Starrville HS varsity players to umpire went out the window too, leaving only two Kacee Kats' dads to umpire. Oh well, whatever, nevermind.

As I expected, our pitchers, moving up from 10U and throwing real pitches with balls and strikes for the first time, had an awful time of it. The Kacee Kat dad plate umpire started squeezing the zone for us, calling everything a ball that wasn't a textbook strike. So Aliciana, our No. 1 pitcher, starts the game out by walking five of the first six batters on the way to a max-scoring six-run first.

The Kats have an unbelievable team for 12U. They have THREE (!?!?!?) left-handed hitters in the lineup, and their No. 2 pitcher is a solid lefthander. One of their parents says they were not 10-8 last year, but 14-4, and they have a three-year record of 36-16 dating back to 8U.

We get up to bat, and now Umpire Guy is swinging the other way -- everything close is a strike. We stand and stare at three strike threes in a row. I make few snippy comments, "hmm, that was a ball last half inning," and StarSis shushes me, "these guys are walk-on umpires," but it doesn't improve my mood much. It keeps up for another max inning and Aliciana is freaking out, huddling with her father along the sideline fence. I step over to calm her down for a minute, but she's still shaken.

Finally we get out of an inning less than max, giving up four to make it 16-0. Kacee's Kats hit the ball so infrequently we don't know what to do when they do, and there are a bunch of brain dead errors. At bat, we barely touch the ball and have baserunners so rarely we can't do any base stealing.

Since we're so short on coaches Sis and I have to take the coaching lines, so on the bench, it's a cluster; nobody knows where they put their gloves, catchers' gear is all over the place, yadda yadda. In a couple innings we hold things up getting our catchers geared up -- the stuff you have to figure out in scrimmages.

We hold the Kats to three runs in the fourth, making it 19-0. Aly Loud is in pitching, and she's doing better. We're debating whether to play another inning or just call the game by mercy rule, and Mother Nature decides for us with a brief blustery rain/windstorm sweeping across the field. That's it for Game 1. Both teams and all the parents, maybe 50 people altogether, scurry underneath the nearby concession stand overhang to huddle out of the rain. One of the moms has stepped up with pizza and everybody grabs a slice.

Then, as soon as it arrived, the storm blows out, and within five minutes the skies are clear and the sun is out. It never rained enough to make the field more than damp, and the gusty wind dries everything off fast, so we move right back out for game two. Our No. 2 pitcher Alyanna starts and she promptly gives up five runs, then three in the second. We're down 8-0 and we still haven't gotten a legitimate hit in either game, and then catcher Aly Vee cracks a sharp grounder to deep short and beats the throw by two steps. We follow up with a walk and then Kaera, the chunky outfielder doubling at third base, smacks one up the gap, scoring two runs and moving up to second.

The Kats go into meltdown mode, and stop the presses, we post a max inning and pull within 8-6. They come back with four to pull out to 12-6, then we counter with three to make it 12-9. We actually record a 1-2-3 inning and the score holds at 12-9, but darkness is falling fast now because of the rain delay. It ends up 15-11 after the agreed five innings, and I'm happy to call it a night.

As things perked up in the second game, Aly Loud volunteered to do the whole team up in eyeblack (actually heavy duty eyeshadow applied lipstick style). By the end of the game we're a pack of howlin' PowerCats.

Game 1 was just the shakedown, a complete writeoff. Game 2 was something to build on. One more practice Saturday then our official opener; a 40-mile road trip to Oak Valley.

 

1st-lede write-thru ...

For the first time in a week, the sun shined all day. But everyone had warned that the storm was coming in the evening. I didn't believe them. We were going to play no matter what. It had been 13 days. 5 o'clock approaches and the sky turns that ugly shade of bruise. Goddamnit. I get to the field and start seeing flashes of lightning not far away. Several of my girls show up. It starts to get windy. Members of the red team show up. The thunder begins. By 5:10 the red team coach calls and says he canceled. He's pissed. I'm pissed. But on the bright side it's nice and windy. I love the wind.

I go home and eat dinner and settle in to watch some baseball on the teevee because I'm not a poor black in Chicago and can appreciate the sport, right @Dick Whitman? If I told you what I ate for dinner you'd probably call me a racist but it is pretty funny now that I think about it. Anyway, I'm watching the Dutch Oven on Intentional Talk funnily answer trivia questions about pro wrestling when the phone rings. It's the coach of the red team. He's at the town park field that has lights and tells me it's in playable enough condition and that he'll work it even more if we want to play a game under the lights. As much as I wanted to do my duty as a privileged white person to boost Major League Baseball ratings, I really wanted 1) to play 2) to play the red team and 3) to play the red team on the best field in town, under the lights. But it's 6:40 and I'm pretty sure few of the parents of my players are going to be willing to schlep back to a game. I tell the other coach I'll do my best but to not expect anything. I spent the next 20 minutes firing off emails and Facebook messages and somehow -- some way -- got players and parents to agree to show up at 7 o'clock or as fast as they can. My catcher is 10 miles away in a dress at awards night. My second baseman told me no way no how. My lefty shortstop said dinner's in the oven so probably no. My 3-year pitcher said yes but it depends when Mom gets home. My first baseman didn't have a ride. The sisters who live at the far end of the other side of the tracks were all for it. My assistant coach -- the catcher's aunt -- was even further than 10 miles away. Within 20 minutes I had at least 9 commitments and called the other coach and told him game on. I really had only 7 commits and hoped others would feel the call of duty and show up. I went to the park to help rehabilitate the field. He did an admirable job except for the mini-lake behind second base. We slushed as much of the water into shallow right field though it was still going to be soggy at best and muddy at worst. But we were fine with that. The rest of the field was great condition if not moist, but hey, let's play. We want them. They want us. But we'll always want the red team more. They know this and I think they like that.

To my astonishment, 11 of my 12 players showed up. 8 of the red team showed up so they started with no one in right and if the ball was hit there it was a double. Their 9th player arrived after we scored 3 runs in top-1 -- all of them on a 2-out rally. Getting off to a good start was huge. For those who might not remember, there is quite a bit of history between our teams for good and worse. They're 4-time defending champions who had won 48 in a row before this season. Last year we lost 7 games and 6 of them were to the red team, including 18-5 in the championship. We had issues throughout the season which came to a head during the final coaches meeting. Anyway, they're much younger this year but return several veterans and they're coached up well by Mr. Intense.

Beating "the red team" was high on our list of goals this season and we broke through a few weeks ago with the 15-12 come-from-behind win. Mr. Intense hated losing to us so much that he wanted to move our next schedule game way up to Mother's Day. I said No because I needed him to stew in his loss to us and wanted my team to enjoy a win over the red team for more than 48 hours.

Anyway, jumping ahead 3-0 last night was big. My pitcher walked their leadoff batter in bottom-1 and but got their Ruthian slugger to pop up between short and third. 7th-grade lefty shortstop and 3-year third baseman called for it, kept calling for it, but didn't look at the other calling for it, and they bumped and the ball popped out of shortstop's glove. Sigh. Runners at second and third, no outs. That was our only blemish on defense, we played some beautiful goddamn defense last night. The next batter grounded out to shortstop for an RBI. The batter after that hit a screamer straight at pitcher who deflected the ball off her glove -- pure luck more than anything -- but caught it in midair. That woke her up. Next batter whiffed and my catcher threw her out on dropped strike 3. Holding them to 1 run was really important, so it's 3-1.

We didn't score in top-2. They scored one in bottom-2 and had the tying run on third with 2 outs when their leadoff hitter slugged a ball -- SLUGGED. HARD. -- only to watch 7th-grade lefty shortstop leap to snag it, a moment of moments for Sparky and the best play she's ever made, and we maintain a 3-2 lead.

We scored 2 in top-3 and they scored another in the bottom half, 5-3. We didn't score in top-4 and they scored another in the bottom half, 5-4. Of the 37 games I've coached, this was probably the best and tightest one and especially on defense. The red team is younger than usual but they can play.

We had one more realistic chance for a multi-run inning with the heart of the order coming up in top-5 and we went on further by scoring 5 with infield hits, bunts, walks, reaches on dropped strike 3, groundouts, hustle on the basepaths ... whatever it took we did it and led 10-4 and now I'm thinking "hold them in the bottom half and we mercy rule them."

That didn't happen. The red team scored twice in the bottom half, 10-6. But that's fine. All we needed was 2 runs in top-6, which we scored, and Mr. Intensity called the game -- not because it was 10 o'clock but because we invoked the mercy rule. This was the most gratifying moment in 3 years as coach of my team. If you knew where we were 2 years ago you'd understand where we are today.

So yeah, we beat the red team, again, that's twice, and now we've mercied the red team.

There's a time and place in life for everything. Last night under the lights was the time and place for my team's best game ever.

 

I think that poor blacks in Chicago are fully capable of appreciating baseball. However, data indicate that poor blacks do not watch baseball. Similarly, I do not anticipate Montana tuning in in huge numbers tonight for the NBA Finsls.

 

I'm not movin to Montana soon.

 

The red team had to postpone our game tonight because their pitcher popped an ankle sliding into home during their game last night and is out for the season. Plus, they'd have only 6 players because of other conflicts. We're probably going to play at 9 Sunday morning.

 

We'll be missing one of our 12 players (to put it bluntly, probably our worst player) for our official opener Monday, which makes filling out our lineup a hell of a lot easier; I just have to rotate around the two people sitting out each inning on defense, plus the batting order will cycle around one slot faster.

Sunday morning email surprise: Mom Paula, our former D-1 assistant coach, says she and Polly, a big slugging 1B, can make Game 1, but then have to leave to enter a calf in a 4-H judging competition. Did Casey Stengel have to deal with this stuff?

So I'll be down to 10 players for Game 2.

 

We beat the red team 12-8 this morning at our place. Another fantastic effort even if we started groggily and fell behind 3-0 in top-1.

We did everything well and both back-up pitchers were fantastic.

The 4-foot-5 second baseman struck out the side (while giving up a Ruthian homer to the big girl on a good pitch).

The 3-year third baseman threw really well too in her only inning, which is when we closed it out.

We're 8-1 going into the final 2 games of the regular season and next weekend's championship tournament. I'm very happy with my team.

It was nice to mercy the red team on our turf. We clinched the mercy after 5 but completed the game so they could get another ups.