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.