Marlins vs Cardinals

So Steve was very late in getting me the scorebook and so I am even later in my update.

Pre-Game
So we haven’t had a game since May 10, and it’s now May 23rd, meaning it’s been almost two weeks. When we last left you we had notched our first victory of the year in a lightening shortened game. We had a practice on the 16th but we haven’t seen some kids since the 10th, or before, so Steve and I are very nervous about people showing up.

We anticipate no Fuller, due to Hebrew school, but otherwise think we’ll have a full squad. Of course I know there’s the possibility that Fuller will be there because Hebrew School might be over. So what we do is put together a full lineup for 11 players, without Fuller, and do a lineup with just pitchers, catchers, and subs for all 12 players. We also have several blank sheets so we’re ready for any eventuality.

This is a game against the Cardinals, a team considered to be in the bottom three teams in the league with us. Steve and I want to use the rainouts to get a little momentum going and so we decide to throw Trey for the first two, Avi for the third, have Avi and Percy split the fourth, with Percy pitching in the 5th and Everett closing it out. We also decide it’s time to give Brendan some time behind the plate so he will catch Avi, our slowest throwing pitcher, in the third.

We have a harried dinner and get to the field about 55 minutes before the first pitch. And who should be there awaiting us but Trey. Seems his brother had soccer practice at the same park so his mom just dropped them both off at the same time. This ruins our ability to do the “pick who gets there first” contest. Which is a shame because I am TOTALLY kicking Steve’s ass. There’s only one time I’ve had a bad pick and in that case Steve’s was even worse. Steve has only won one time we’ve done this and it’s a shame we didn’t put any kind of wager down on it. Anyhow we throw and talk with Trey for a bit. It’s time well spent.

Jim is one of the first players to show up. Later on I hear him make a disparaging comment about the team. I pull him away from the other player he was near and talk about how if you expect bad things to happen it’s more likely to happen. He tells me about his bad day. So I say, “Let’s put that behind us. What’s something good that’s going to happen on the field today?” I expect him to say something like “We’re going to win” but instead he says “I’m going to leadoff with a bunt and they’re going to make an error so I’m going to be at second base”. This catches me off guard but I say, “OK then I want to see you go up there and do it.”

By the time their coach arrives we have 6 players and we have 9 players before they have 4. He asks if he can use one of our players as an outfielder, and I of course agree. Turns out he also called up the younger sibling of one of his players. And this kid is SHORT. I mean even Jim is taller then this kid.

The complete lack of arrival of his team lets us sneak onto the field so I grab Bobby and we do some pitching from the mound. And he looks just HORRENDOUS. Can’t get ANYTHING over. The umpire is there and we BOTH try giving him some tips. And progress is made. Instead of throwing the ball extremely high or extremely low and off the plate he just throws it extremely high over the plate. Frankly, I’m at my wits end as to what I can do to help him. I’m hoping Steve’s brother, Scott, will be able to make it either tomorrow or Saturday to work with Bobby and perhaps catch something I’m missing.

So as I am working with Bobby I see that the whole team has shown up. It’s amazing. Terrific. And all that. And so I grab the right lineup master and go to work. I am SO glad we had this possibility covered as the lineups pretty much fill themselves in. Also helpful? Having Brendan catching. Hopefully it’ll work out, I think.

The Game
We’re the home team. Trey goes up, strikes out the first player, walks the second player, who gets to third on steals eventually, but then strikes out players 3 and 4 and we’re out of the first inning.

Jim attempts to do the bunt he told me about. He does so and lays down the most perfect bunt. Right down the line. The pitcher is absolutely caught off guard and there isn’t even a play at the base. So far, so good. Trey falls into his typical trap and gets too excited against a bad pitcher and hits ends up hitting a ball back to the pitcher, advancing the runner. Everett then pops up to the shortstop who makes the play look routine. Brendan, not surprisingly, strikes out to retire the side. 0-0

Trey strikes out the first batter. The second batter gets hit by a pitch. Trey walks the next batter. This is followed up by Jesse bare handing a wild pitch and nailing a guy attempting to steal third by about 40 miles, with Fuller once again making the play perfectly. It was a well executed fielding play, especially by Jesse. And it’s a good thing as that batter rips a double scoring a run. Trey then strikes out a player to end the inning. 1-0 Cards.

And in the bottom of the inning, we jump all over the bad pitcher. Percy hits a singe and steals second. Jesse walks. Percy steals third and is driven home by Bobby on a single. Fuller walks. Avi hits a single scoring Jesse. I tell Bobby that he is to try and steal home, if at all possible. He does an excellent job of trying to draw a throw from the catcher, as the third basemen is completely not holding him, but despite a valiant effort, scores only when Kelvin walks, after Ethan strikes out (including having fouled off a ball extremely hard which just barely goes foul). After Kelvin walks they pull the pitcher. I tell Fuller that if he gets a chance to score he should take it. On the second pitch the new pitcher fails to cover home plate for the second time and Fuller takes advantage of it. Unfortunately we can’t get anything else going as this new pitcher is a great pitcher and easily strikes out Jodi and Jim. All together it’s a great 4 run inning. 4-1 Marlins.

Avi starts off promisingly enough by striking out a very good hitter, which I’m not quite sure how he did, as he was not throwing strikes and got the hitter to swing on a strike three that was in the dirt. Avi continues to look poor and after a 6 pitch at bat, gets doubled off of. I don’t quite remember how the inning went down, but Avi just looks horrible. He’s not getting anything across the plate and when he does they’re ripping it. Steve and I debate pulling him but decide it would be more damaging to his psyche to do that then to let him get hammered so we leave him up there. This is the inning where Ethan is playing second base and not doing it the way his father likes. At one point he fails to go out for a relay throw, which would have been terrible had Percy not been aware and gone over from Center to do it. In the end we get lucky as Percy makes a great play in short center and then runs in to step on second for a double play to limit the damage to three runs, when Avi would have had no chance of otherwise escaping the inning without at least 1 or 2 more runs scoring. 4-4

Trey leads off the inning with a single and steals second but a good pitcher strikes out Everett, Brendan and Percy and makes it look easy.

As we enter the top of the 4th it’s clear this will be our last inning. Percy is pitching. First batter hits a hard hit ball to Avi who cleanly fields it to get the out. Next batter hits it right back to Percy who records the out easily. The top of their lineup comes and the guy who hit the double now hits a single. Percy walks the next guy. And the guy after that, to load the bases. The good news is that through all of this terrible pitching Brendan is looking not just OK, but good. It’s clear this kid has been practicing his butt off since the progress he’s made is substantial. Brendan clearly is ready for some more innings, which does the great service of allowing us the opportunity to field Everett, Trey, or Jesse more in the field. The next batter, their callup, hits a ball to Everetty. With the bases loaded, and Everett near second base he can either step on the bag or flip it to Kelvin who comes over. Everett does neither of these and then instead throws it wild to first. Trey makes a great play to keep the ball from being an overthrow but instead of being out of the inning a run scores. Percy refocuses and strikes out the next batter on 4 pitches. 5-4 going into the last inning.

They have the same pitcher as before. I am worried as this guy basically struck out our side and made it look easy. Their coach tells me that he’s never thrown him two innings before. It gives me a little hope, but not much. Jesse starts off with a hit and steals second. Bobby then walks. Fuller hits a play to short that is misfielded putting Jesse at third. Avi strikes out. Ethan, in another solid at bat, walks. This brings Kelvin up. Basically I decide that I trust Bobby to steal home more then I trust KS to get him home, which I realize isn’t what the stats, considering Kelvin’s .533 OBP, would tell me what to do, but there you have it. This looks prescient when Kelvin hits a dribbler to the first basemen. He cleanly picks it up, and despite the loud protestations of his coaches, jogs over to first base for the easy force out allowing BS1 to score on the fielder’s choice. MARLINS WIN!

Post Game and Looking Forward

As we run to lineup to shake their hands, jubilant at our come from behind victory, the other team is absolutely defeated. Just totally down on themselves. Despite the fact that it is 9 o’clock at night Bobby managed to talk to me about going for ice cream if we won. Steve is actually going out with a friend after the game so he can’t make it, and in the end only about half the team shows up, but everyone who does has a good time.

You already know about Wednesday and the Ethan incident. Steve moved into a new apartment over the weekend and tomorrow the cable guy comes so he won’t be in town until shortly before the game starts. We talked a little bit today and following that I sent him the following email:

Ok some straight stats, which change a fair amount each game because we’ve had so few games. So if some guy, for instance Percy, goes 2-2 tomorrow he’ll go from .333 to .400 in BA. Anyway, here it is from top to bottom in BA:

Jesse .500
Kelvin .455
Trey .429
Bobby .412
Fuller .400
Everett .350
Percy .333
Ethan .300
Jim .286
Avi .273
Brendan .154
Jodi .100

And for OBP it is:
Jesse .583
Trey .579
Kelvin .571
Bobby .565
Avi .556
Fuller .550
Jim .524
Ethan .500
Percy .478
Brendan .421
Everett .409
Jodi .182

So using those as a starting point, and putting JM in the #3 spot and building around him, we get the following:

Bobby
Kelvin
Jesse
Trey
Avi
Fuller
Jim
Ethan
Percy
Everett
Brendan
Jodi

Which I think is a very interesting lineup, frankly and would be my recommendation for what we do for tomorrow. As I said stats are likely to change considerably in our last 3 games, but I think that’s an interesting grouping to go off of. Percy and Everett are pretty good hitters, I continue to feel, but their objective numbers have been poor so they don’t merit a high placing, but putting the two of them next to each other could produce good results. If you have a different idea, by all means I would love to hear it.

As for pitchers and catchers I’m thinking along the following:

Percy pitching to Brendan
Percy/Everett pitching to Jesse
Everett pitching to Jesse
Bobby or Jim pitching to Brendan
Trey pitching to Jesse
Trey pitching to Everett

We need two more pitchers for the playoffs besides Everett, Percy, Avi, and Trey. There is simply no getting around that. Do I want to beat the Yankees? Hell yeah but we need another pitcher, with two being ideal. So with that in mind perhaps we take our medicine in the first? I feel like we need to get Everett at least one inning, Percy needs continued chances which doesn’t leave a whole lot for Trey. I mean if you want we could really go broke and pitch Bobby AND Jim, but that almost seems like throwing our hands up in defeat, so I don’t know. Frankly, neither pitcher is “ready” in the sense that neither of them can locate the plate with any consistency. Perhaps have them both warm up and who ever looks better gets the nod? Dunno.

So let me know your thoughts on the batting order and pitchers.

And that’s where we’re at going into tomorrow’s game against the Yankees.

Unexpected update

An unexpected update from my work last night at the library. Every year one of the schools holds a writers workshop where they invite local bigwigs, local writers, etc into the school to discuss a piece of writing of the student's choice for each 4th and 5th grader. The school invites one of our librarians in to conduct a group and she often has me read the pieces she's assigned, between 5 and 8 depending on the year. Well anyhow, this year one of the people she was assigned was Jim, who, not incidentially, was described as "the most egocentric kid I have ever taught" by his classroom teacher in a note attached to his writing.

Anyway he wrote a pretty nice piece of survival/baseball fiction which was clearly wish fulfillment. Already in the story we meet Michael, a tall 10 year old, who has had to rescue his parents after they are hurt in a tornado. Upon taking him to the hospital he learns they must have $100,000 in surgery, but never fear, the reason they were in the car was to drive to a baseball tournament with a $100,000 prize. Below is the writeup of the baseball scenes

The day of the games begins. Michael is very nervous; he has to win for his parents. In the first inning when he came up to bat, he let the first pitch go by to see how fast the pitcher was throwing. Michael hit a double off of the second pitch. There were two outs and Michael was on third. Ben came up to bat and hit a single to right field, which drove in Michael to home. The next half inning, Michael pitched a 1,2,3 inning. In the fourth inning, Michael came up to bat and hit a homerun. The game was now 3-1 in favor of the Helena Turtles. The Turtles went on to win the game, 5-4. Michael hit a triple, a double and a homerun. In the second game of that day, they played the New York Jets. The Turtles won, 6-2. Two games, two to win. Micahel really wanted to win the tournament to save his parents. The TUrtles won 11-5 in the Saturday game. SUnday came and it was the championship game. The Turles were playing the Seattle Blue jays.

In the first inning, Micahel hit let off and hit a single. He evntually scored that run. He pitched two innings of 1,2,3. In the bottom of the 6th, Michael was up to bat with two outs. They were losing by three runs. The first pitch was a ball. The second pitch Micahel fouled off. The third and fourth pitches were balls. The fifth pitch was a strike. Then it was the sixth pitch. The pitcher went into the windup, and threw the ball. Michael swung. In that moment, all Michael was think about was saving his parents. The ball made contact with the bat and Michael closed his eyes. Smack!!!! Michael had just hit the championship winning grand slam!! The crowd was going wild as Michael ran home. The turtles had just won $100,000 and the coach and the team decided to give all of the money to Michael so he could pay for the operations his parents needed

A little after I read this piece, Ethan comes on in. He tells me that he and his dad were out practicing squaring up to the ball and long throws. We joke for a minute or two and then he goes off to use the internet. Maybe 10-15 minutes later dad comes strolling in. He calls Ethan over and I mention how I heard they were practicing.

At this point Dad just goes OFF on Ethan. "I told him after Tuesday night that if I ever saw him play like that again I would just quietly pull him from the game. He was so unfocused. Throwing dirt around and not paying attention." Later on in the rant "His fielding was just terrible. I'll tell you one thing Coaches don't do in this league. I'll tell you that Coaches don't teach the kids to square up to the ball." Talked about how Ethan was just "lazy". How "coaches don't teach the kids that baseball is a running game" and they need to run. Later on he said again that if Ethan was not going to "contribute" to the team he would just quietly pull him from the game. When he took a breath, after ranting for a good couple of minutes (and it always seems longer when you're listening) I finally was able to get a word in edgewise. Considering my two choices of who to defend, myself or Ethan, I decided to go with Ethan and said "Steve and I both feel Ethan is a contributor to the team". This seemed to take some of the wind out of his sails, but he did go on for maybe 30 seconds more. The whole time his father is doing this rant, Ethan is just standing there uncomfortable with this painful smiling grimace on his face.

After Ethan and his father leave, with Ethan saying, in a very upbeat manner "I'll see you Tuesday" the librarian I was working with just went off on his dad. She talked about how he's missing the whole point of playing. How the kid is 12 years old so of course his mind is going to wonder. How it's supposed to be about fun and the kid is never going to be a major league player so he should just lighten up.

As for me? Well it made me mad. After the incident with Jim's dad I was upset, but not really at him, but at Libby. This made me mad. The way he went off on his son, right in front of him and another adult is completely unacceptable. Threatening to pull him from the game is completely unacceptable. Implying that Steve and I are not teaching these kids who to square around to a ball? Completely unacceptable. But the worse part of it was is that Steve and I PREACH the need to run to the ball. To get there quickly so you have time to setup. And if this asshole would attend more then an inning or two of our games he'd hear that. Even typing this now my blood is rising, I am still upset about the whole thing. I haven't talked to Steve about this yet, and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to convey how completely unacceptable what his father was saying was with Ethan standing right there.

The funny thing about all of this? Ethan was throwing dirt, but he was more aware of the game then he normally was. Steve and I both commented on it. I think that perhaps we'll put together a "curriculum" of what we've done with these kids. I've written cirriculums before so I can make them fancy and impressive and so perhaps that's the way to go. I'm not sure really what I think the next step is here, beyond saying something, though what I don't know, to Ethan on Tuesday.

Practice Report

Wednesday May 24

We had practice yesterday. Steve has the scorebook and such so I don’t have the reminder of exactly how things went down to do Tuesday’s game. So look for that this weekend when he’ll be back in the ‘burbs and I can pick it up from him.

It was just a beautiful day. It really stormed for about 20 minutes around 10 AM but by the time our practice started at 5:45 it was just beautiful baseball weather. Anyhow, even before the game started yesterday Steve and I agreed we’d like to do an extended scrimmage with the Cardinals. Based on the way the game ended, we felt this to still be a very good idea.

The good news is that our team is getting much better about being punctual. Yesterday only a couple of people were “late” (arriving closer then 15 minutes to the game) and today only Percy and Jesse were late, with Jodi, Jim, and Avi not being there. This was noticeable as we had 6 players there before they had 2 players there.

Anyhow, I went and talked to the other coach and we figured out how we would do the scrimmage. Basically we agreed to do 3 outs (rather then everyone bats) cap an inning at 5 runs, or everybody batting, and do coach’s pitching. This guy is sort of your typical sports dad. He was nothing but nice to me, the players on his team, and the players on our team even but towards his own son? Bit of a jerk. Which makes it not so surprising that the son was a bit of a jerk.

Anyhow so after we debriefed quickly from yesterday’s game, we went out and scrimmaged. Overall the scrimmage went well. The players had fun, except for Jesse who was in an exceedingly bad mood. Everett and Trey both rocketed the ball which was good for them since they’ve been in a slump. Ethan had 2 great at bats that I saw. The first was a beautiful bunt and the second was a screamer down the left field line, that if he hadn’t watched it as it went would have been a triple, but instead was “only” a double. Not a whole lot that was notable otherwise. Percy seems to be quite frustrated with himself at bat and didn’t really get good contact on any of his pitches.

That was basically, it from a fun, light practice. With the playoffs just around the corner things will get more serious again, soon. After our long email to Libby about communication does she get back to us? Nope. Furthermore, the playoff schedule is out and do Steve and I have a copy? Not exactly. So we’re going to email Libby about that today and simultaneously get ready to go to her boss about the issues we’ve been having.

Looking forward

We have 3 games left and so it’s time to use our 1 reorder to adjust the batting order. We will be doing this prior to our next game. I really am torn about several things. For instance do we keep Jim at the top of the order? He can set the table OK, but would it be better to move up Bobby who has better speed and makes more contact? Of course Bobby makes better contact so maybe we save him until later in the order? Jesse should clearly be moved up to 3rd or 4th. What to do with a slumping Everett and Trey? Where to bat Kelvin who gets on base consistently but can’t hit the ball to save his life? The questions go on and on. Fortunately, while we use this reorder to get ready for the playoffs, in the playoffs the continuous batting order is dropped and we can change the order for each game, so if Ethan, for instance, finally puts it together and starts hitting the ball fair and hard, we can move him up in the order, especially with his speed.

Hitting is our one remaining Achilles heel. The Cardinal’s coach told me after the game that we fielded as well as any team he’s seen this season, and I agree we fielded the game extremely well. As well we should since that’s been such a heavy focus for us. That leaves hitting as our last hurdle. I think we’ll pretty much be concentrating on this from now until the end of the season and if we can hit it even just a BIT better could really take teams by surprise in the playoffs.

No game on Saturday due to Memorial day weekend, but look for an update with a recap of Tuesday’s game.

Practice Report and Update

Before Tuesday’s Practice
On Monday morning and Sunday night I sent Steve a couple of emails about what we should do at practice. He doesn’t respond to either. This is out of the norm and tells me he’s going into one of his depressed phases. This has never happened with baseball before, but since baseball is an outlet for both of us, hopefully it won’t effect him there too much.

Anyway, I pick him up Tuesday at the train station. The email I sent him had some pretty big holes in it that we needed to fill time wise. We also had no “focus” for the practice. In each of our last two practices we had a focus and I think that’s what helped make them such terrific practices. In the car I try to see if he has any thoughts about a focus, and he does not. I know that this practice, therefore, is going to be heavy on the improvising, which I’m pretty sure means it’ll be a serviceable, though not great, practice.

In our little “Guess who get’s there first” competition I’m up by four points. I go further up when I take Ethan, who arrives in the first carload of people, but we count as 3rd as he was the last of the three to get out of the car, and Steve takes Percy, who gets there fifth. The coach of the team we’re practicing with, and will then play, asks us if we want to scrimmage. We decline considering they’re only the best team in the league and it would be nice not to get our butts kicked two days in a row by them.

Before practice begins I work with Bobby on his pitching some. Unlike before, there isn’t anything hugely wrong with his mechanics right now, he’s just not throwing strikes. One problem that I do see is that he is often trying to overthrow the pitches, but even after I remind him to take something off, he doesn’t always through strikes.

Practice
This is the first time we’ve had a chance to talk since our victory. Steve and I cover all the positives. He also says how a couple of mistakes could be forgiven since we won “and that’s the most important thing” undercutting our line we’ve been giving them through all the loses that it’s about progress.

We then divide our 8 players, with Trey surprisingly missing, Fuller, Avi, and Jodi missing as expected, into two groups to practice run downs. They look much sharper today with it, which is a good thing.

Following this we pull them away from everybody and teach them the sign system that we’ve come up with. The system relies on using letters to remind them so “hat – hit” “belt – bunt” and so forth. This takes about 15 minutes and we’re then able to get the field.

We do our modified batting practice. Avi shows up part of the way through it. We have Brendan catch during this and he looks pretty good. He’s at least getting the ball back to the mound consistently. There are still quite a few balls which get by him, but he’s blocking more of the balls, so I think it’s time we give him another inning of catching to see how it goes.

We end the practice with our 2-1 scenario, with Jim pitching. He does not do well with it, though his pitching does look better then it did last time he pitched in a game so that’s a positive.

We end the practice and send them on their way. As I expected the practice was fine, though hardly great.

After Practice
Before practice Steve tells me that Jim might not be at the game on Wednesday as he is going to the Cubs game. Seeing his father after practice I go up and ask when we’ll know for sure about his going to game and his father informs me that it’s almost definite that he won’t be at the game. He then starts off by saying “I know Libby (remembering that Libby is the name of the Park District supervisor) talked to you, about this, but it seems like some of the other teams are going all out for the win and you guys are going for skill development.” I immediately correct him that Libby has NOT talked to us about this. We then get into about a five minute conversation about this. Seems like he feels we should be playing our 3-4 best players more. He talks about how they’re 10 and 11 and know what they’re record is. Understands what the league philosophy is, but if other teams are trying so hard to win, then perhaps we should be as well. Talks about how really we’re not an untalented team. That pretty much sums up the points he makes.

The untalented team part is interesting. I would agree we’re not untalented, and we are stronger with our weakest players, but our best players aren’t as good, which makes things more difficult. My favorite part of the conversation is the part about how we should be doing more with our 3-4 best players. To which I think “Oh so you don’t want your son to pitch any more? Or play SS as much?” Perhaps he wasn’t including his son in that group, I don’t know. But it was interesting. During the conversation I stood firm. I said our philosophy when we get to the playoffs is different, but that we’re going to follow the way the league is meant to be until then. And that frankly in order to have a winning playoff team you have to develop the players and that’s done by playing them in a game giving them chances to improve.

The whole thing was very cordial, which was good. But Steve and I were upset by two things. First that he talked to Libby without talking to us first. Second that Libby never talked to us and appears not to have backed us up during their conversation. To address Jim’s dad we’re going to print out the email Libby sent to the coaches about cheating, as further reason why we do what we do. I mean I guess technically she did talk to us about winning, but it sort of had the opposite message that Jim’s dad wanted it to have. I mean when you’re team is 1-7 you can’t be too surprised that there would be grumbles, so I’m not upset at all about having had the conversation.

After much debate we decided that Libby’s lack of communication was part of a larger problem. Here’s the text of what we sent her:

Libby,

We had a conversation today with one of our parent's, Mr. , about the team and our methods of building player skills versus going all out for the win. It's a conversation we're not surprised to have had when our team is 1-7.

Anyway, what did surprise us was that he had mentioned he had talked to you about these concerns. We were surprised not to have gotten an email or phone call after the conversation, especially as he hadn't talked to us first, as an FYI, without even necessarily naming the parent. We were hoping you could meet with us for a couple minutes, either before or after tomorrow or next Tuesday's game, just so we can make sure we're all on the same page. You know how seriously we take our commitment to this league and we appreciate all that you do to make it run well.

We look forward to hearing from you,
Steve and Lane

Wednesday/Thursday
The day starts off with my calling Jesse’s house. Besides Jim being at the Cubs game, Brendan has a doctor’s appointment, and Avi has to go to his siblings “sing”. Steve and I figure that it’s likely we’ll get another unexpected no show and so it would be good to have Jonah, Jesse’s brother, there again if he was available and willing.

The day starts off beautiful but then at about 1:30 it starts to rain. It lightly rains, at least where I am about 8 miles to the south, for about 35 minutes. Then the sun comes out again. I expect to have the baseball game, though I’m unsure. So I go home from school and get there around 4:15. The website is supposed to be updated at 4 o’clock if there is going to be a rainout. I check the website and it’s not been updated so I think we’re good to go. I have a message from Brendan’s dad explaining that Brendan pleaded for them to change his appointment so they did and he would be at the game, if there was a game. I call and let them know it appears that there will be a game. About 20 minutes later I get a call from Brendan’s dad saying that they got one of the automated messages telling them that the game had been canceled. I recheck the website and sure enough it has been canceled. He’s upset about having had to change the appointment, which I understand. Shortly there after it starts thundering and lightening. It rains for about 40 minutes and then the sun comes out again. So it was a good decision, just later then it should have been.

As of this morning, we still have not heard from Libby despite the fact that she’s supposed to respond with-in 24 hours (according to her auto-email). I am actually quite pleased that our games on Saturday and Wednesday were canceled as I think they were against two teams we’d have struggled to beat. Now our next game is on Tuesday, no game Saturday due to parking problems with the Park District’s ice show, and it’s against the team whose coach bitched the other week about how bad his team was. So I feel good about our chances of getting 2 wins in a row, which would be terrific for us and give us that momentum as we start to head into the playoff stretch.

Midseason Overview

Team Overview
We clearly are at a turning point. For the first 5 games, despite losing everyone, and some of them pretty decisively, we maintained a great team spirit. However, games 6 and 7 were not played well or with much enthusiasm. Now we have our first win under our belt. The team last night looked like the team from the first few games. We had chants going on, a first for us, and particularly fun was the “two out rally” (clap clap clap-clap) chant in the 5th. It was spirited. It was positive. And at the same time it was demoralizing for the other team.

The problem is that our next two games are against teams identified as cream of the crop. It looks highly likely that our game Saturday will be rained out. The following game has us play a team with 3 players on sixth grade travel. Now granted some travel players are overrated, but that is still one stacked team. The good news is that our pitching and fielding are at pretty good places. Now this was helped by the fact that 2 of our worse fielders weren’t present at the game meaning we could do things like play Everett at 2nd, a luxury we’ve never had before. But still we’ve grown a lot and hopefully the win drives that home for the team. A second win in one of our next two games would give Steve and I a lot of freedom then in giving opportunities for players to develop, as our team would have more of a feeling that they’re not losers.

This is partly because our pitching is at a pretty good place. Avi has either been very lucky, or else is very good, at getting outs. Everett and Trey are 2 legitimately good pitchers. I have a feeling Percy should be quality as well. If we used these four pitchers exclusively we would never be in danger of getting blown-out. However, we still need to develop two more pitchers for the play-offs. Jim and Bobby are our most likely candidates. What this means is that we need to get them innings, innings which have the potential to be disastrous.

Where are the players at?
With our season just over half way done, now seems like a good time to take a look at each player. (Quick notes about stats: Steve and I do not record errors for the most part as they are par for the course in the league. This does mean that a player’s OBP and BA are inflated over what they would be if kept by a major league score keeper)

Jodi – The problem with JF is that she’s simply not been around. She hasn’t been at practices, has been sick or otherwise had commitments which have prevented her from coming to games. Despite 4 at-bats yesterday she still only has 10 plate appearances for the season, far below the average (especially the average taken without her). She has the skills, no doubt, but the lack of experience has meant that she has reached a plateau, or even slightly regressed, since the start of the season. I think she’s a better fielder then Steve does, though the empirical numbers (in terms of errors) back Steve up. She has been my biggest disappointment, and it’s frustrating because I’m not sure we will have the ability to turn this around into a positive before the season ends.
GOAL: Get her timing down so she’s making contact with the ball which will be further helped by reducing the number of balls she’s swinging at.

Trey – Clearly our standout pitcher. He averages 1.9 strikeouts per inning while only 0.3 walks, by far the best ratio on our team. In fact, statistically, he is better then our star pitcher last season, while not having nearly the same heat, speaking to his ability to change speeds and consistently find the strike zone. His catching has been exactly what we needed, good though not all star. Speaking of all star he hasn’t tried to make any “all star” plays lately either, which is good. He has a .417 batting average and a .588 OBP, but has been in a bit of a slump lately. It doesn’t look like he’s doing anything different and I’m working hard to try and make sure he doesn’t pressure himself too much when at the plate. His catching has brought out some leadership qualities, though this is still an area where he could see improvement. He’s somewhat unusual in this regard as normally talented athletes, which he is, are the natural leaders since they’ve had the most practice at this age. Basically we can plug him into any position and know that we’re going to see good things defensively, which is a great thing to be able to say.
GOAL: More leadership. Make sure any continuation of his hitting slump doesn’t effect other parts of his game.

Ethan – I don’t think we’ve seen his best yet. He has a lot going for him, including his speed and good mannered nature. I would peg him as the most likely to have a second half breakout. Especially good is his ability to bunt. Just as it is with Jim, his showing of bunt (not to mention ability to actually lay them down well) will lead to base hits when he’s swinging. In the field he continues to have huge concentration problems. This could easily be effecting him at the plate as well. His fielding mechanics are fairly sound, though he does struggle with ground balls sometimes, but he has a pretty weak arm. This combines to his seeing 65% of his innings either at 2B or RF. I really think he could turn from being a 2B because we have to play him in the infield to a good 2B, if we can get him to field grounders with more consistency. I worked with him a little on his pitching at practice the other day and he still looks horrible, so I don’t think he’ll be seeing any more mound time this year.
GOAL: Help him find his groove at the plate.

Avi– Statistically he’s our second best pitcher in ERA after Trey with an ERA of 4.8 (which is indeed a good ERA in this league). In fact this ranks him in the top 3 players comparing players from last season and this. As I alluded to above, I’m not sure how much of this is skill, and how much has been luck. He clearly can get the ball over the plate, averaging only 1.4 walks per inning, but his 0.6 strikeouts per inning, the lowest among pitchers with at least 2 innings, shows he hardly has overwhelming stuff. In terms of hitting he’s hitting .222 (team average is .322) but his OBP is above average at .563 (team average is .488). I haven’t seen him really hit the ball yet so it’s just as well that he’s got a fairly good eye. His attitude has improved fairly significantly, through the season which is good and I no longer think there is as much concern of him being a drain on our chemistry, though he’s still not quite as filled with team spirit as most. He listens to Steve and I without complaint now and hopefully continued pitching success will earn him more leeway with the team. He has expressed interest in catching, though we still haven’t really seen him do this yet, so his skills are unknown, though I am skeptical about his ability to do it. However, his play at 3B on steals has been solid, in terms of catching the throw and tagging the runner. He can make a long throw with pretty good accuracy as well so he’s a very nice option there for us.
GOAL: Develop him into a reliable 2 inning pitcher. See if he has any skill as a catcher.

Jesse – Our team leader. He has been more positive in his leadership lately which is good. A rock behind the plate. He has caught 21 of the 37 innings we’ve played. And he’s deserved every inning he’s played there, though I am hopeful that Brendan will, someday, be able to assume more of the load, as I would love to have Jesse play at 1B more often. He has hit the ball consistently and hard, with the most extra base hits on the team. He has very few strikeouts, with only 9% of his at bats being a strike out (2nd lowest on the team and versus an average of 22%) but a lot of that is because he’s a good junkball hitter. Then again it’s hard to knock a kid at the plate who has a team best batting average of .474. His position in the batting order is, I feel, a reason why we’ve had several two out rallies as he gives us another spark after we leave the top of the order.
GOAL: Work on developing his sense of the strike as a batter

Fuller – He has come through with some big hits, but then at other times has looked lost at the plate. This combines to make him a nearly perfectly average hitter, in terms of BA, OBP, and strikeout percentage. He is our “starting” 3B as has the most innings of anyone on the team at that base. I wish I could say that it was this skill or that which has made him the 3B of choice but it’s really not any one thing and just a lot of the things he’s done. I think we’ve not given him nearly the attention we should to develop his catching. Which is a shame because we need more catchers (more on this subject when we get to Brendan).
GOAL: See if he can be our catcher. Work on his consistency at the plate.

Jim – Something which hasn’t been mentioned is that Jim has missed our last two practices without notifying one of us. He made some excuses about thinking that Tuesday’s practice was canceled despite there being no official confirmation, from the park district or one of us, about it. Anyhow, I really had high hopes about him at the start of the season in terms of what he could do for us as a pitcher. These hopes haven’t panned out. But pan out they must. The kid is tiny and so perhaps we’ve simply reached a point where the mound is just too far away from home plate for him to get it in consistently. We need to find him innings, despite the fact that I have a hard time finding an upside with him at the moment. Batting wise, he’s getting some good in-game practice at games with bunting, though I would still love to see him get some practice at practice with it. Twice now his showing of bunt has drawn the infield in enough to get him a base hit. Base hits are good because he only has a .250 average, though his OBP jumps by 300 points speaking to how hard it is to pitch to him. In the field he’s a jack of all trades, master of none. He’s seen playing time at every position except catcher and first, and we’d have given him time at first were it not for the height. While I never feel like we’re in trouble with him at a position, neither am I ever excited about having him in the field. The temper that we’ve seen come out a few times is clearly lurking beneath the surface, but when things are going well he’s a positive addition to team morale.
GOAL: Make him into a somewhat reliable pitcher.

Everett – His numbers as a pitcher, are great. Second fewest walks per inning and 3rd best strikeouts per inning. Of course his ERA is not great. I didn’t have a chance to talk to him about luck and variance, and how the long-run can be a long time, but hopefully last game is indicative of the other team’s luck running out. He seems to get hit hardest when the count is 0-2 or 1-2 which I frankly don’t know if it’s luck or if he’s doing something different that I haven’t identified. His catching has come a long way in a short time and he’s been great as our second catcher, but long term I would love for him to be our third catcher, as his efficiency as a pitcher goes way down after he’s caught. This has meant he’s seen a lot of first inning appearances. His hitting isn’t up to what I would expect, as he’s got a below average .450 OBP. I’m willing to take some blame for that, as his early unsuccessful bunts put him behind the eight ball pitch count wise. I still think he has the best eye on the team which makes his strikeouts all the more frustrating, but also I think more of a blip then anything else. His fielding, with the exception of the last game, has been nearly flawless, which again is a reason I’d love to not have him behind the plate as much.
GOAL: Have his in game hitting match his hitting potential.

Bobby – He has the best first step of any player on the team. Whether it’s in the field, out of the batter’s box or on the bases, he’s “quicker” then his speed because his reaction time is incredible. He also can track and catch fly balls as well as anybody on the team. This has netted him quite a bit of time at SS, and next to Trey, who plays it on travel, he is definitely our best player there. Our high regard for his fielding abilities is reflected in the fact that he has the most infield innings not counting pitcher or catcher, and the second most not counting catcher. He has now consented to playing first base where, after the big 3 of Trey, Everett, and Jesse, he should be competitive with Percy as a great 4th choice. His inability to pitch consistently is something I am hoping will be cured with time. His gross deficiencies in his mechanics are fixed, though some finer requirement is still required. I had hoped he’d turned a corner but obviously he’s not there yet. He’s got nice, though not great, velocity, which we can hopefully use to our advantage once he gets regular strikes. I will be excited when we can count on him to be our fifth pitcher. Though his BA and OBP are just slightly above average, he is a close third in fewest strikeouts, and his ability to put the ball into play can make good things happen in this league. Bobby, as a character, is far more complex. He has this interesting combination of leadership qualities, he’s often the ONLY one talking to the pitcher and will be the one who starts a cheer on the bench, while also being the class clown type. I suppose these two aren’t mutually exclusive from a kid perspective, but from a coaching perspective they are rather annoying. Steve and I have both had our fill of interrupting us to make a remark. After our talk Saturday, he has been better about not coaching the other players though, which is good.
GOAL: Two words: consistent pitching.

Brendan – He needs to get his skills to where his desire is. If he could start to take 2 innings of catching a game it frees us up in innumerable ways. It means that Trey and Everett do not have to pitch early in a game for fear they will tire their arms catching. This flexibility alone is vital as I think it’s beneficial to have the worse pitcher pitch the first as there’s still time to recover. Further, it means that not only do we have flexibility with pitching but it also means that we get to see more of them, and to a lesser extent Jesse, in the field. While I don’t mind Jim at shortstop I LIKE having Trey or Everett there. But before he can catch he needs to: A) catch balls in the dirt. He’s gotten pretty good about the high ones, but he’s afraid to block the balls with his body. B) get the ball back to the pitcher every time. His throws to the pitcher can be wildly inaccurate. That I just have no tolerance for. It was a good thing he wasn’t at the last game as despite all the practice Steve and I had made the tough decision not to play him as a catcher. Honestly, I don’t really think we can ever get Brendan up to two innings a game, but the potential payoff is so great, and he’s closer to being there then Fuller, that we’ve got to see it. He also has plenty of things to improve at the plate. After Jodi, he’s got the highest strikeout percentage on the team. Despite what Steve and I tell him to do, and what he claims to be doing, he seems like he’s got a homerun swing when he’s batting. Screw the homerun and give us a single. Especially as he often takes the first pitch or two putting him behind in the count and then does a swinging strikeout, sort of the inverse of Jodi. Having him catch also solves the fact that he doesn’t present a particularly cutting figure at 2B or 3B in the infield. With several players doing well at third, he’s seen more time at second, but just as in his catching he can’t really get the low grounders.
GOAL: Block low balls. Throw the ball back to the pitcher. Swing earlier in the count.

Kelvin – Let’s review what I said about KS back in the beginning of the season

Seems like a really good kid, but he couldn’t hit a moving ball to save his life

Poor kid has no hand eye coordination I think as his mechanics have improved a lot already and he still can’t hit anything thrown to him. It’s a shame we didn’t get to bunting.

So remember all that? I do. And frankly before I put the stats together I would have still said that was an accurate reflection of where he’s at. So what do the stats say? .455 BA, second best on the team, .538 OBP, third best on the team, and 7.7% strike out, the best on the team. The thing is I cannot remember him putting a single ball into the outfield, and neither can he (I asked him after one of his infield singles yesterday). In both of our last two games he’s had a “swinging bunt”, where he swings all the way through, but the ball goes about 4 feet. And both times he’s been safe. He is, to me, the poster child for the virtue of putting the ball into play as his speed has really helped him reach bases on times he’s had no business reaching. As for his fielding, he’s seen quite a bit of time at first base. Quite an accomplishment for a kid who can’t consistently catch a throw. Steve and I thought that perhaps he had a bad mitt. Nope. Just can’t catch the ball. However, he’s the second tallest player on the team, after Trey, and he’s excellent at keeping the ball in front of him when he doesn’t catch it. Similarly, when he’s fielding he’s normally right there with the play, except if he were one more foot to the right, so his whole body were in front of the ball rather then just his glove, he’d do a lot better. He can really only play first or second base as his throwing mechanics are just horrendous. I’ve done some work with him, but he throws in a way that can best be described as (and I use this only because you can’t see him and it will get the message across) “like a girl”. This no doubt comes from having started playing baseball later on in life. Anyway I keep hoping it’ll finally click for him on how to field a ground ball, in which case I think he could be our “starting” second baseman. This is especially true as with Bobby’s willingness to play first, something he used to be afraid of doing, Kelvin will likely not get as many opportunities there unless, miracles of miracles, he learns how to catch a ball (and you better believe this is something I’ve been working with him on).
Goal: Catch a thrown ball.

Percy – His pitching is almost there. It’s there enough that I will elevate him into the same consideration as Trey, Everett, and Abi, and even above Abi because of his superior velocity. He has a pretty nice change up too. I have no doubt that when they put our team together he was thought of being a kid who could regularly pitch for us. Furthermore, he’s a great kid. I don’t think a negative word has escaped his mouth once all year. He has seen a lot of different positions in the infield as he’s a step above Jim but his “true” position is clearly centerfield, which does us no good. I was surprised to see that his batting is below average, despite having a below average amount of strikeouts. As has been mentioned he started the season with absolutely a rotten amount of luck with his hitting. He seemed to have turned the corner, however he’s hitless in our last two games again, so maybe the pitchers are starting to outclass him.
Goal: Keep the pitching momentum

So there you have it. Over 3,000 words on our players. If we’re going to turn the corner and become a playoff contender we should hopefully know it by a week from today, otherwise it’s going to be a disappointing season. I can only hope it’s the former and not the latter.

Game: Marlins vs. Cubs

Pregame

We expect 12 players. Neither of us have gotten a call. The weather forecast is once again ominous but the storm time keeps moving back so Steve and I are optimistic about getting our game in. We go to his house and make the lineup. It’s a really nice lineup considering we have to sit every kid by the 4th inning. Normally Steve and I go above and beyond the rules and have every kid scheduled to play at least one outfield inning. No such doing today. We’re going for the win, just as we would in the playoffs. We do the following for pitchers/catchers:

Trey/Jesse
Trey/Jesse
Everett/Trey
Evertt(.5)&Percy(.5)/?
Percy/Everett
Avi/Everett

The idea is that the moment Everett starts not to look sharp we yank him, with the possibility of doing the same if Percy starts not to look sharp in the 5th, as the 6th inning is a pipe dream.

We go to dinner. We head to Sportmart, to pickup some tennis balls, for flyball practice, and a handheld counter (you know a little circular medal thing that clicks). Only they have no pitch counters. Not only that but they’re very unhelpful about it. Anyhow we decide to check out Target next, but during the drive over there I come up with the idea of using my stopwatch with it’s 99 “laps” as pitch counter if need be. And need be it will, as Target does not carry the item.

We get to the filed. Percy’s sister has a soccer game at the adjacent field to our baseball game so he’s there really early. After throwing some toss and fielding some grounders, I have him pitch to me. After he throws two bad pitches, I tell him to shake it off, he does, and throws in several nice ones. I then have him try and throw me a change. And it’s a nice enough off speed pitch. He looks like he could have another good outing.

As discussed in the post yesterday, we decide to play “footbaseball” before the game. Several of the parents were clearly skeptical about this, but the kids came out with energy. I was busy talking to the ump and opposing coach when Steve did the pregame talk. We go out to the field with energy.

The Game
The game begins and we have no Ethan, Kelvin, or Brendan. And honestly? That’s not the worse thing in the world as none of them are great fielders. But it means I have to scramble to redo our lineup, going from 3 subs to no subs. Luckily we’re batting first. Right as we finish batting I finally finish the first inning and Kelvin nearly simultaneously shows up. Batting wise Jodi, Trey, and Everett all strike out while Jim draws a walk. This is clearly their ace. He has good control and great velocity. I hope we won’t see him in the bottom of the inning.

As I continue to scramble to do the lineup, as subbing 3 players and 1 player require completely different schemes rendering our pregame plan pretty much useless, TG lets up a well hit double. He then strikes out the next batter, but the leadoff batter advances to third on a steal during the at bat. The next batter, Andy, a kid I know well from my days of student teaching and because he lives in the neighborhood, lofts a HIGH flyball into deep in the infield on the second base side. Percy and Everett converge on it and Everett calls for it and catches it like a routine flyball. He then proceeds to talk to Percy while the runner goes home. Steve and I scream at him, but by the time Everett realizes what’s going on the run has scored. It is utterly ridiculous. I mean if it had been Kelvin, or Ethan, catching the ball I understand how a sac fly which scores a runner goes down, but I am amazed at Everett’s lack of awareness of the runner and the situation.

Trey then gets the next batter to ground back to him. Now I happen to know from my talking around the league that Andy is their best player. I make a mental note of the fact that he’s hitting 3rd and that the 4th batter is their ace pitcher. So it’s now 1-0 Cubbies but it’s still anyone’s game. They bring in a new pitcher and I breath a sigh of relief. Percy starts us off with a walk, and he then steals second. Jesse rips a ball into center and it goes to the fence easily scoring Percy and landing him at second. Bobby grounds out to first and Jesse has to hold at second. Fuller then grounds out to second and Jesse is able to advance. Avi walks. Their coach calls time and brings the shortstop and catcher in to talk at the mound. Steve and I think he’s going to use our play of throwing to short. On the first pitch Steve sends Avi and instead they throw to 2nd and nail Avi dead to left. It wasn’t even close. That’s out 3. But we’re tied 1-1

The first two batters are interesting. The first batter hits a ground back up the middle, just under Trey’s mit. Jodi, at short, is getting in a good position to make the play, until it hits the rubber, and flies into center. Base hit. Next batter hits a ball to the first base side. Everett has the best play, and fields the ball, but there’s nobody at first. I have repeatedly told Trey that if the first basemen is going field the ball he needs to be over there. After this happens I remind of this and he says he thought the second basemen was going to cover. Technically, he’s correct that the second basemen should have covered in this instance, but I don’t expect Avi to know to do this, especially as he’s played far more 3rd base then 2nd this year, where as I do expect Trey to know to move to the bag as a pitcher. Anyhow due to freakish sort of plays we now have runners at first and second. It is, by this point, drizzling and so the ball is hard to handle. The next pitch, Jesse loses his grasp on the ball and the runner, who is pretty fast, takes off to third. Jesse has him dead to right. He throws, Fuller catches and makes the tag, out 1. What’s great is that even if Fuller hadn’t made the tag the guy didn’t slide so we’d have gotten the out anyway, which I confirmed afterwards with the ump, as we hadn’t discussed mandatory sliding in the pregame meeting. Trey strikes out the batter with ease. He then looks like he’s struggling against the next batter, ending up walking him after 8 pitches. Which is sort of remarkable as up until that point he’d only thrown 24 pitches in the two innings. Anyhow on 1-0 pitch the next batter grounds right to Avi on a ball, who fields it like a pro, recording out 3. We escape what could have been a disastrous inning, unscathed. 1-1 after 2

Jodi is at bat and she strikes out again. Jim, per my instructions, shows bunt on the first pitch. He pulls back, as it was a ball, but this draws the infield in. I tell him after he’s done this that he can either bunt or hit, his choice. He chooses to hit and once again gets a single thanks to having the infield in. Score one for the coach. Trey then grounds into a FC. I give him the greenlight. He steals second and advances to third on Everett’s single. Once again there is time as the coach pulls in the relevant fielders. I tell Everett that they’re going to try and throw him out so he needs to go as soon as there is a slightly mishandled ball and go hard as he can beat out the throw. He does go, the catcher’s throw is way off and Trey scores easily. Their coach was yelling at his catcher not to throw, despite the fact that a good throw could have made it a close play (though Everett should’ve still been safe) so I’m not quite sure what the talk was about there. Anyway Percy walks. On the second pitch, it gets by the catcher. Percy immediately starts running hard for second. Everett delays and only starts running when he realizes Percy is barreling down towards second. Steve later tells me that he was telling Everett to run. It ends up a close play at third but Everett is clearly safe. Jesse is unable to take advantage of the opportunity, however, and we strand the runners after he strikes out. Marlins are up 2-1. I had told Steve I wanted a 4 run lead with Everett coming into pitch, but overall we’re playing sharp, and with energy, so hopefully things will be ok.

On the first batter it’s a hard hit groundball to the first base side. At first it appears to be a redux of the last inning, with their first base coach even telling the hitter “No one is covering” . But he’s so wrong. Jim, at second, had been pulled towards first by the ground ball, and just as the coach finishes his sentence he appears at first and easily catches the lob from Jesse and it’s out 1 in what looks like a routine play though is anything but routine. Everett walks their next batter, and it is clear that “coincidentally” they have their best player first and their worse player last. Anyhow, runner is at first. Their next batter hits a long flyball to left center. With outstretched glove the left fielder makes the catch. The runner is practically at second base when this happens. We yell for him to make the throw. It’s a pretty dead on throw, but comes in a little low. Jesse misjudges it and it gets by him, but the runner is forced to stay at first. Steve and I both yell out a good job to Bobby, who has made several great catches for us, only to realize that it was Fuller, who was standing right next to Bobby, who made the catch. Whoops. If you remember I talked about how Fuller was terrible at catching flyballs. But man did he get that one. Two outs. At this point Everett has thrown 8 balls and only 1 strike (with one foul ball on a pitch that would have been a ball). But he manages to strike out the next batter, looking very sharp. As we get ready to hit, I talk to Andy’s mother and she expresses some surprise to see Andy batting third this game. Which confirms my suspicion, along with the fact that the opposing coach does not keep a scorebook, that this guy is fiddling with things. Which, considering his team is one of the worse two in the league, I can understand on a certain level. Anyhow, I’m glad to have caught this jerk cheating.

Fourth inning, sees a truly horrendous pitcher come in. I pull Bobby aside and say I don’t want him to swing until after the pitcher throws a strike. When he lets an easy strike go past him, the coach asks me “did you tell him to take?” I confirm that I did. He’s not to pleased with this. I tell him it’s the only time all game I’ve told a player to take. He tells me that he thought I had earlier. I say that I haven’t, and he again says that he thought I had. I tell him point blank I’m not going to lie to him. The only reason that this is a point is that this league promotes kids swinging. And we do tell kids to swing. Now I’m sure if I didn’t already know this guy’s a cheater this goes down a little differently. Anyway, that is the only strike this pitcher throws and after 17 pitches, including having walked in a run, the pitcher is pulled. Jodi has struck out the first two times looking, so I had told her, even before our discussion with the Cub’s coach, that she needs to swing. She does swing, and strikes out, swinging this time. Jim then has a play recorded in the book as a sac, which I just can’t recall to be honest but which scores Fuller. Trey then grounds out to the pitcher to end the inning. 4-1 good guys.

Before the game we’ve told Everett and Percy about how this is going to work. Everett walks the first batter, on a full count, with a very close ball four. On the next player the player hits it back to Everett who listens to what I’m yelling this team and gets the lead runner out at second. Their next player, on a 1-2 pitch of course, gets a single. Everett is throwing better though. And he proves it striking out the next batter on three pitches, even making the guy fall down on strike 3, though the runners do manage to advance on a ball that gets by Trey. I tell Evertt that he should throw it hard as this will be his last batter. On the second pitch, Everett throws a bad pitch, which gets by Trey. Despite Steve having reminded him that he needs to cover, Everett mopes and by the time he recovers the runner is close to scoring. It’s a close play at the plate, but the runner scores, more because Everett has had his 3rd mental lapse of the game then anything else. After falling down 2-0 Everett battles back and ends up striking out the guy. So much for Percy needing to pitch. 4-2 Marlins heading into the 5th.

Everett grounds out to the second basemen, who manages to make the play despite mishandling what is now a very slippery ball, as there has been a near constant drizzle for the past 50 minutes or so. Everett ran out the ball really well though, so that was good. Percy then strikes out. Jesse comes and rips a single past the shortstop. I have him steal second. Bobby then walks. Fuller gets up and rips a double into right center, scoring Jesse. On the first pitch it gets by the catcher and Bobby, noticing the pitcher isn’t covering, takes off running and slides into home scoring. I call him over after the play and congratulate him on what I think is heads up base running. He says thanks though he somewhat mysteriously apologizes at the same time. I later hear from Steve the whole story. Turns out Steve had said to listen to him and Bobby made some smart alec comment and then moments later scores. This is one of those times where if he gets called out it is a major issue, but since he scored it becomes harder to make an issue out of it. Anyway, Avi walks, and Kelvin again gets a check swing “single” which scores Fuller. Jodi then comes up and strikes out for the fourth time, looking at strike 3 for the third time, though she did get several good swings in. When she makes contact she can really rip it, so I feel it’s less a case of mechanics then timing, though with her not being able to come to practice due to Hebrew/Travel Softball it’s hard to know as we can’t ever get time to work with her really.

So we start the bottom of 5 up 7-2. On 8 pitches Percy walks the first batter. He often doesn’t look good on the first batter so I’m not too concerned, though he only has a little leeway before we get to the hart of the order, and due to time constraints this is the last inning. However, as the second batter comes up, one of the Park District people comes running in, having spotted lightening and the game ends.

And, we won.

With that note I’m going to end this entry. Look for a special extra post tomorrow as I do a midseason status report and talk about Saturday’s game a little.

Practice Report

We’re about half way through the season. I have compiled some very interesting things statistically. Since we’re about half way through the season I want to do a player by player rundown combing these stats with my own evaluations. However, it is late, I am tired, and since I won’t have time to post really before tomorrow I wanted to recap today while it’s fresh.

The weather forecast was terrible. Steve called me 3 times during the day to find out if I had heard if they were going to cancel practice. It was clear he wanted them to cancel. I worry with all this losing that he’s tuning out. Anyhow, it doesn’t start raining until he gets off the train where I pick him up (which is typical for us). I drive him to his house as we are taking separate cars (which again is not something we normally do) as I have a job interview of sorts after the practice (I mention this as it’ll be important for something later on). So I arrive at the field about 30 minutes before the practice and it’s unpleasant and raining. Due to my not wanting hat hair at the interview I have no hat on so we hang in the car for a few minutes and then get out. Brendan is the first to show, with Ethan there right after. It is raining somewhat hard when Bobby arrives and Jesse calls me to find out about practice. Steve and I confer and decide he shouldn’t bother as we’ll likely practice for about 15 minutes, especially as the other team isn’t present. Of course at that point it clears up, almost at the exact time practice is to begin. I do some work with Ethan on his pitching and Steve works with Brendan on his catching. When it becomes clear that we’re not going home imminently we get the team out there for batting practice.

The other team we are to share the field with, arrives nearly all at once on time, it’s kind of scary. The other asks what time we’re practicing until. I tell him the time and we agree on a time to switch the field. We get our team up there for the “modified” batting practice where they can earn bonus swings based on how well they bunt. Ethan comes out as the only person to bunt through both times, but overall our bunting has improved. Especially Everett. He later tells me he’s been practicing with his brothers. This warmed my heart. It to me is an example of having standards, as he had indicated that he wasn’t so good at bunting and didn’t want to do it, and I told him “well tough luck we’re going to be bunting” so he decides that maybe he should work on it. Especially as a travel team player having one more tool in his arsenal is not something that will hurt him, and will be something which will definitely benefit the team.

We then do our “2-1” drill where each batter starts the count at 2-1. Bobby is our pitcher for this and Brendan the catcher. Bobby does not look very good. Brendan also does not look particularly great. In particular, he is still not getting almost any ball in the dirt and his throws back to the pitcher are wild half the time. The former I can excuse, the latter I find maddeningly frustrating. As the plan is to use Trey and Everett for 2 innings each tomorrow we really sort of need Brendan to be available to catch, but I’m not sure he’s there yet. We’ll see what Steve says when we do lineups tomorrow. So as Trey, our last batter is at the plate, the other team starts to come in literally swarming over our team. I look at my watch and see that it’s 3 minutes before our agreed switching time. I sort of pleadingly ask for one more batter before I think “why ask?” and say “We still have time. We’re going to finish this batter before we switch.” This guy was clearly a bit of an asshole, as will become clearer later, and so I was glad I had been firm here.

Anyhow so we go into the deep outfield, out of the other team’s way which is more then they did for us. We then work on sliding. The kids just ate this up and had a blast. Brendan has been a terrible slider, but improved a lot in this practice. Kelvin is clearly afraid of sliding as he slows way down before sliding. I did get him to run faster though before the slowdown so even that was good.

Next we worked on a rundown drill. They looked terrible. But they still had a fun time, though they looked pretty bad. We’ll definitely have to return to this as it’s an important skill and a good way to get an “easy” out.

We the ended practice with running bases. Steve and I were the throwers. The kids all had a blast. Lots of fun. Kelvin won. What’s interesting is that he has the worse base running skills of any of our kids. Getting doubled up in our last game and also doing fairly poor as a runner in the rundown drill. So it seems like he needs some instruction here rather then lacking natural instinct. What I found amusing is that Steve really wasn’t so good at executing rundowns. He became far too determined at outrunning the kids, which he can do as he’s 24 and they’re 12, and so this was amusing in light of the poor way they did rundowns.

Overall it was another really good practice. And we had a few more kids this time, which was good. Jim was once again an unannounced no show which concerns me as next to Bobby he’s the person I want to work with the most on pitching. The kids left the practice feeling upbeat. I feel that their work on sliding went very well. They all got some good chances to hit the ball in batting practice and the 2-1 game and they had fun with running bases and the rundown drill, even if they weren’t very good at it.

So once again it become incumbent upon us to get the energy going before the game. If they didn’t tire themselves out so much with running bases I would even play that for 5 minutes before a game. Perhaps a game, instead of a talk, is our pregame key. I mean our talks are short, 3 minutes or less, but perhaps we do a 60 second one. Dunno. We’d have to think of a good game as well, perhaps “footbaseball” as there’s SOME running there. This idea just came to me as I am writing this out so it’s very unfinished.

Anyhow practice ends. I go inside the building there to change into a suit for the interview. When I come back out, 15 minutes, after our practice ended the other team is JUST on their last person. In other words their coach not only wanted to kick us off the field early, but was not really splitting the time equally as they were staying later then we were in any case. I do not think well of this, though am somewhat muted in light of what comes later.

So off I go to job interview and I realize that I’ve left my suit jacket back at the building. After the interview (which I totally kicked ass at, but will not accept the job if offered to me unless the salary blows my mind) I return. There is a game going on the field we had used. I see that a kid I have a pretty good relationship with from the library/youth center is about to pitch so I go over to watch. I then can’t help but overhear the kid’s manager really complaining about how stacked the teams were and how he got the short end of the stick. This guy’s team has not done too well from what I’ve heard, so I can understand his frustration. While he’s bitching, I insert myself into the conversation, to ask questions of process. And from what I heard, overall I can’t complain too much about it. If desired I can explain all that I learned, but basically it sounds like the assigning into teams was done in a good matter. The best part was when the Park District guy said “And then we had 5 parents come and review the teams. In fact weren’t you one of those people?” That was classic.

Anyhow that guy goes and coaches so I’m left with the park district guy, Kevin. We talk some more. Turns out that he had suggested the idea, done in a nearby community, that a team would stay together for 2 years. So the 5th graders we had this year would all be together again as 6th graders next year if they returned to the league. I thought this was a great idea, considering that I think the work we’ve done this year would really pay dividends. Turns out this idea was rejected by the Park District Board, for whatever reason. When the season ends I will be using my political contacts to try and champion this idea, which I will pretend was my own for his sake, as it would be really good for the kids. The positives are overwhelming. What I also find interesting is that he says he’s seen every team play twice now and that there are 2 teams head and shoulders above the rest of the league and 2 heads and shoulders below it. We’re 1 of the two that has a talent deficit and that this guy has no real right to complain as he’s got several players who can really play. And from the two innings I saw? He’s right.

Overall today I am in a much better place then I was Saturday. The team we play tomorrow is supposedly the other team that is one of the bottom two. That gives me hope. In general I have taken the time to zen and that has helped. I also came up with what I think will be a great plan on how to use our pitchers to the best. It seems right now that Percy, Trey, Everett, and Avi are a notch above everyone else. We’ll need two more come playoffs but for now 4 is great. Anyhow, I remembered that towards the end of last season we started taking pitch counts very seriously. We gave a kid a number of pitches he could throw and then we’d pull him. While I’m not as worried about pitch counts now, I think as we try and find our 2 inning pitchers we can use a similar strategy. So, unless disaster strikes, Trey will pitch the first 2 and Everett the third. In the fourth Everett will be told that he will pitch to 4-6 batters, depending on how many pitches he throws. Then Percy will come into the game and pitch the remainder of the inning. Depending on how many he throws a similar strategy can then be used in the 5th with Avi. In this way we can put a hook on a kid who is tired, without bruised egos. It’s not that they’re pitching poorly, it’s just a matter of the pitch count.

So that’s the plan. I’m excited. I want to win. I think we can win. So now we just have to do it.

Game Report

Well it was another disappointing game. Once again we got shelled in the first inning with Everett up for us on the mound. Once again he was pitching well. The other coaches even commented on how well he could vary his control and speed. Despite this, kids who have never hit a double before hit a double. We had one homer against him, as we were playing at 1 of the two fields with fences. Everett gets hit the hardest when he gets ahead in the count.

Their pitching was horrendous which made things more difficult for us as we had very few pitches to hit the whole day. This made getting a rally going very difficult. We had a ton of walks, but also far more strikeouts looking since the umpire had a tendency, and this was true for both teams, to expand the strike zone after 4 or 5 pitches.

Bobby got a chance to pitch in the 2nd, as I wanted to make sure we saw him pitch, and had a lot of control problems. We ended up having to yank him. Percy, who was perhaps our only good news, came in and looked terrific. He had originally been scheduled to pitch in the 4th, so we had him pitch in the 3rd as well and again he pitched very well overall. Avi wondered why Percy jumped ahead of him, and I reminded him he had a chance to pitch two innings on Tuesday, which seemed to mollify him. Even when we again changed things around later and had Trey pitch the 4th on he didn’t complain, which I was surprised about. Bobby seems very concerned that he’ll never get a chance to pitch again, which just isn’t an option for us.

Trying to think of interesting things that happened:
I worked with Kelvin on bunting before the game and he looked really good. Unfortunately, we never got into a game situation where he could bunt so he hasn’t had a chance to try it in a game. But, this was encouraging to see.

Jesse saw a man cheating at 3rd, and even after Jesse walking him back, he didn’t move so he threw to third and the ball got by our 3B. He later expressed frustration at how tired he got behind the plate, which makes sense as he was getting a lot of pitches.

We once again induced a throw to second on a 1st and 3rd situation. What made this amusing was the first basemen even said “He’s going to steal on the first or second pitch” as he had over heard me. So off Jim went on the first pitch. The catcher threw it down and Jim was going to be safe, but the 2nd baseman also dropped the ball. Avi, not listening to Steve, didn’t take off a long time, which then caused a throw home after the SS recovered the ball, and he too was safe, advancing Jim to third. The opposing coaches, who were substitutes, laughed and in general were very good natured about the game, which made things a bit nicer.

In the 4th inning, which technically we weren’t supposed to play due to their lead, and the closeness of the game to the time limit, Brendan barreled over the catcher on a play at home. Both Steve and I have, in response to questions, have previously told him he had to slide always at home which made it frustrating. Even after that Bobby then did not slide on his own close play at home. On a Brendan note, his father also spent an inning in the outfield talking to him from behind the fence which we are not very happy about.

Despite our good practice on Wednesday, it’s clear the team is starting to get down on themselves. And all the losses too are bothering me, as well. Today we didn’t play poorly, but neither did we play well and we got killed. I think I had been maintaining a really even keel about things, and my ability to remain on an even keel is even considered one of my strengths as a teacher, but I got very frustrated Saturday, and Steve even more so.

We had a pretty long talk after the game. We talked about how there have been side conversations going on when Steve and I have been talking. We talked about how there has been coaching going on in the field, rather then encouragement. We talked about how there have been questioning of our decisions in places where that hesitation could make a difference. We talked about how the regular season doesn’t matter but their outlook about the game does matter.

Following this, we had a private talk with Bobby who has been our worse offender on a lot of these things and also who seems to demand every two seconds the score, which Steve and I aren’t big on focusing, whether we’re ahead or behind. While we briefly retouched on the topics from the whole team discussion I also mentioned how the only time the score matters in this league is at the end of the game if it’s close. Otherwise it’s just going out there and playing. Steve also talked about moping in the field, which he certainly did after he got pulled from pitcher.

After the game we had a nice talk with one of our favorite sets of parents from last year, whose son misses us a lot because his coach isn’t so great this year. Despite how depressed I was when I got home, I think this talk was good at relieving some of my self-doubt though there’s still quite a bit of that there.

I know that we can win. We’re going to put up Trey in innings 1 and 2 on Wednesday to try and give us an early lead, which worked well enough against the A’s. Then we’ll try Percy for 2 with Avi and Everett filling out the rotation. We really need to come out gung-ho as that’s been a problem for us. Hopefully Steve has something in his bag of tricks to get us fired up so we come out strong. I know as much as we’re snowballing now we can snowball in the opposite direction and hopefully that will be Wednesday.

An unexpected E-Mail

Evidently not everyone is as scrupulous as Steve and I. An email from the Pard District coordinator entitled "Some Concerns"

Dear Majors Coaches,

I am little concern about some of the rules that are being blatantly ignored by some of the coaches. The Park District creates these rules in order to create an equal playing field for all players. Please remember that the emphasis is not on winning or losing but that they are learning and having fun.

First of all, there is NO PROFANITY allowed whatsoever. In addition, there should be NO NEGATIVE comments made towards the players. The Highland Park community as well as the Park District participates in the Character Counts program. Some coaches are not leading by example. If I should receive information that a coach is yelling at his players for losing, swearing at players during games and/or practices, or being negative and placing the emphasis on winning, I will be calling you in for a meeting. All coaches signed a Code of Conduct regarding this type of behavior. Is not warranted.

Secondly, I have noticed that coaches are not substituting their players correctly. All players must sit out once before another player sits out for a second time in a row. I ask that prior to the game both teams must show their line up sheets to one another. If the opposing coach catches the other team doing this, I ask that you notify the field supervisor immediately. I will not tolerate children being sat twice before another player sits out once. The field supervisors will be directed to contact me, if I am not at the field.

Thirdly, prior to the start of the game as well, you must show the opposing team your batting order from the previous game. This shouldn’t be a problem since it is in your score book. Your lead off batter for the game should be the next batter after the last out of the previous game. Again, if a team has a line up that is changed from the previous game, I ask that the opposing coach, call over the field supervisor so that I may be contacted.

Finally, as you all may have noticed, there are no standings being kept. I will not be posting any standings since they do not count. The playoffs are a blind draw. It is not based upon your seeding. Please consider this to be my final reminder to you about the rules of the league. If you are found to be ignoring the rules, we will deal with that coach accordingly. As a coach, your goal is not to emphasis winning but emphasis good sportsmanship, fair play and having fun.

I'm kind of sad about the standings thing as it means I have to keep pumping kids for information in order to find out the strength of our opposition so we can know things like what pitchers to use. I find it interesting that the no side practice thing didn't make the email. I've never seen Libby write an email like this, so she must be really pissed.

Practice Report

We were expecting a small group, but it was even smaller then expected. Steve and I, competitive people that we are, have been predicting who we think will arrive to practice/games first. Today we upped the ante and formally made it a pool. You predict a person and whatever place they come is how many points you get. Lowest score better. SO if you predict the first person you get 1 point. If the person your predict comes 5th you get 5 points. Anyhow, Steve took Percy and I took Everett. Everett came in a close second, behind Ethan, and Percy came 6th. Anyhow just a side note on the ways Steve and I amuse ourselves.

We started off by making Ethan run 3 laps. He had been late to the last 2 games so that would have earned him 4 laps, but we knocked off 1 for being first to practice. Everett, who owed us no laps, did it for fun. The person who this hit home the most was Percy who had to run 4 laps, once being late to a game and then for being late to practice and was not happy about it. Steve and I say good.

We started off practice by reviewing Jim's, who we were expecting to be there and was not, at-bats. We talked about how he laid down a great bunt at his first at bat and then because he had done that the infield came way in on his 3rd at bat allowing him to get the base hit. This is just one reason why bunting is so important. This segued into our first activity, what I call modified batting practice.

For this they get at least 5 swings. The first 2 are to be bunts. Setup about 5 feet from home plate are three cones. One cone is on the baseline, another cone is about 2 feet in from that and the third another 2 feet in. If on their bunt they hit it through the two cones closest to the foul line they earn 2 more regular swings. If they hit it through the outer cone they get 1 more. This activity proved to be very popular. We ended up sending everybody through it twice. The big surprise here was Ethan. He not only bunted well, being the only person to earn 2 extra swings both times through, but really hit the ball well during his regular swings. Steve later told me that Trey had been on his team last year and that Ethan was one of their better hitters. I had said at the first practice that he carried himself like an athlete, despite not having come through. This combo of information means I'm going to be looking really close at him during the next game to see what he's doing with his batting mechanics to see if something's off. It also means he's likely to be encouraged to bunt sometime on Saturday as I would actually say that next to Jim he's the most likely to get on using it.

Following this we introduced a "trick" play for the situation with runners on 1st and 3rd. If the runner on first tries to steal, the catcher, will throw it to short, who will then throw it home if the runner on 3rd goes. This segued into some preliminary work on rundowns. Our time on the field was up so we moved off the field.

Next we divided the group into 2 and Steve and I each threw fly balls to the team. I've read that this is better to do with tennis balls, hit from a racket, but neither of us have any. So we threw up balls. Afterwards we compared notes. Percy was the best on Steve's side, easily catching even difficult balls, while Fuller really struggled for me.

We then introduced footbaseball. It is basically tag football, except instead of your hands you use your gloves, which when on defense have two baseballs in them. If you tag somebody and drop the ball then they can keep running. So basically this game teaches them how to track balls (on offense) and how to make good tags without dropping the ball (on defense). The team really got into this, though it'd have worked much better with a full team there.

Overall it was a great practice. Both fun and informative. As we were leaving Ethan asked when we were going to work on pitching. He had asked at the start of practice if we were going to work on this, and I had told him no. When he asked at the end of practice I told him if he got to the game at least 20 minutes early I would work with him then. Steve and I also gave Brendan some "homework" telling him he was to have his dad practice, using a tennis ball, catching balls from the catcher's position.

Not a ton to writeup but a good solid affair.

Game: Marlins vs. A's

Well. What a day. Steve and I start off the day emailing each other our confidence against the A's. At around 9:45 I get a call saying that Jodi will not be there due to 103 degree fever. This adds to the fact that the previous night I learned that Brendan had a doctor's appointment for a battery of exams that was set months in advance and thus would be missing the game. Both understandable.

Then at about 4, I get a call from Kelvin telling me he TOO has a 103 degree fever. Just as I am about to finish my conversation with Kelvin, I Avi on call waiting. I hang up with Kelvin to talk to Avi. He then tells me he won't be at the game. When I ask him why it is because he got in trouble again. I ask to speak to his mom. I then explain if Avi isn't there we'd have 8 players due to illness. She tells me she's going to call me back. 35 minutes later she calls me back and tells me that she will punish him some other way and he'll be at the game. But he's going to be a half hour late. Ok. Fine. We can play with 8 players for a half hour.

I get to the field about 5:25, as I had been working at the youth center right next door to the fields and that was the earliest I could get away. When I get there all that is there is Jesse. Everett and Trey arrive shortly thereafter. In the end 5:40 rolls around and we have all our expected players except Fuller. Only the thing it is 5 minutes before the game is to start we also don't have any equipment, the box is locked, nor do we have an ump.

We call the team over anyway for our pregame talk. Steve later tells me that he could tell from the way they came over that he knew it was going to be a bad day. We simply didn't have energy. I think the best possible explanation is that we were missing so many people that they felt defeated. Anyhow, we still have no equipment, though we now have an ump.

I then start to make phone calls. I make so many phone calls Bobby, later asks me if I work for the Park District too (I work for the Youth Center and Library) but no I don't. I literally call 4 different people, none of whom answer, and leave messages for all. During this time the other coaches came over and, after discovering that I was not the field supervisor, but instead a coach, (you'd have thought the bright Marlins uniform was a give away there) tells me that they also are also locked out at their field. One of the dads on the other team has the idea of going to the THIRD field to see if by some chance that equipment box is open. It is. As he's going off I get hold of one of the park district people and he tells me he's sending someone over as soon as he can. I thank him. The dad comes back with a bag, having dropped the other bag off at the other field. So we'll have to share, but it's better then not having anything. Now at this point it's 6:00 and we still have no Fuller or Avi. While all the hubub was going on about equipment, Jesse's little brother, Jonah, and Jesse's father had offered to have Jonah play. Jonah plays 4th grade travel. I thank him and tell him I want to sort out the equipment first, still thinking Fuller was going to show. Anyhow when it looks like Fuller isn't going to show I ask the other team if we can "call up" this player as we only have 7 and are expecting 1 late. He agrees, as is reasonable. He also agrees to let us have an outfielder if we need one. I thank him and tell him I hope we won't need to do that. Jonah goes home to change.

So we go to bat in the first inning and score 2 runs. I'm thinking that perhaps things will be OK. We send Everett up to the mound as our starter. And they hit him. The good news is that they hit one to the borrowed outfielder and he catches the ball. He lobs it back in, letting a run score, but Steve and I agree
A. We're thankful he caught the ball, as many of our kids would've dropped it
B. It's better then having no one there.

A batter later Avi arrives and he gets sent out to the outfield.

Everett and I had talked about pitching rather then throwing before the game, but I think he tried to do too much and didn't look as sharp. I am doing this writeup without the scorebook next to me, so I don't have all the details, but he ends up letting up 3 runs.

And basically the game goes downhill from there. They keep scoring and we don't. We don't get any energy until the 4th inning when Trey makes a good play at short. We are down 5 going into the 5th and approaching the time limit. We try and rally, but can't get a run and the game is over. Quick comments on each of our players:

Percy -- Did not pitch well in the 4th. I went out to talk to him after his 3rd walk. There were runners on 1st and 3rd. I basically told him to forget the runners and just focus on the batter. And he did. His pitching improved then and he got 2 outs in only 3 batters which was fine. More work will be needed here, but he COULD be our 2nd or 3rd best pitcher if he can put it all together.

Jesse - Got the game ball for going 2 for 3. Though the out was on a ball that was way too high and he hit, which is becoming a pattern. He got very frustrated with himself after that one. This is not the first time he's gotten frustrated, though Steve and I are getting better at being able to get him to calm down when he does.

Brendan - Caught the only fly ball on the team. The big news is that he tried to coach Avi when Avi was pitching. That didn't work too well. Steve and I will be talking to him today about not coaching the pitchers. Or other players for that matter as there has been some of that.

Avi -- We pitched him two innings. First inning went well. He struggled during the start of the second inning. After he walked his second batter I went out to talk to him as I thought we could still win it at that point. He explained that he was getting mixed messages from his players. I told him to ignore his players and listen to me: throw strikes. He did and got the last 2 outs with only about 5 pitches. Now the thing is I think he can pitch 2 innings. Which we need. However, if he's going to regularly get grounded during games, which it also seems like, then we can't really schedule him to pitch. When we do the lineups we always do Pitchers first and then Catchers and everything else falls into place around that. If he's going to bow out on us at the last minute it really messes us up. So I think Avi will be seeing more chances a relief pitcher until we see that we can count on him showing up.

Ethan - Unremarkable this game. Struck out each time at bat. Focused better then usual in the infield I feel.

Jim - He's very excited about bunting. We had runners on 1st and 2nd and asked if he could lay down a sacrifice. I said sure. So he laid down a perfect bunt... for a hit. The runner then got out at 3rd. It's funny that when he tried to bunt for a hit he did a sacrifice and then did the opposite yesterday. What was great though was that his bunt then setup a play in the 5th where they came way in on him and he then hit a line drive, which if they had been playing normal depth would have been an out, but turned into an easy hit. However, he then got called out stealing when he was really safe and he exploded. This is not the first time he's gone of the hook but it was the worse. He even refused to shake the other team's hands. Steve and I did a mixture of the calm down/you made a bad choice speech after the game and he seemed to get it and Dad thanked us. We will NOT have a kid displaying bad sportsmanship.

Trey - His hitting slump continues. He fielded well today. He also caught pretty well. I'm sure he'll snap out of slump soon.

Everett - He did a pretty nice job of catching. I already discussed his pitching. He really made a bonehead decision on the base paths getting caught way off the bag after a pitch killing a rally we had in the 3rd.

Jonah - We was a ball magnet. The rule is when you call a kid up from the lower league they can only play the outfield and have to bat last. Which in our case was unfortunate since he ended up in the heart of our order. Anyhow the first time a ball was hit to him he was completely unprepared and the ball got by him. The next two were fly balls which he dropped but then managed to throw in and get somebody out. I talked to him later and he told me he had a good time and would want to play for us again. Which is good because normally you have to go through the league supervisor 2 days in advance, so she can find somebody, but with him we can call him up on very short notice with no problem.