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.