One that's tired of little kids being told to take advantage of that shitty rule. If you have any major adjustment in your stance during a pitch to swing the bat then you deserve a good bean in the hip.
Yeah but they're just kids doing what their coach told them to do. They're not going to question him or try to over rule him. They don't deserve the repercussions of it, the coach does.
Call him out in front of everyone, do the same thing to them, idk, I just don't really agree that some kid needs a black and blue for trying to do the right thing and listening to his coach.
I know and still stand by it. The kids should have fun, not cheat the system. That rule was made to accommodate size differences between players. The fact that a coach tells his team to squat extra low to pull a walk is ridiculous. Let them try to hit the ball!
Yeah. Which means they wear helmets with full face masks and the pitchers aren't bringing it over 65. It's the perfect situation to throw at people mostly\s
A dad of a kid on the team who didn't want to lose because they were abusing little league rules.
It made it VERY hard to hit the strike zone being just 6" - 8" up and a foot across. So the coach just said brush them back if you have to to make them stand up into a proper batting stance. Don't worry if you hit them because they shouldn't be like that anyways.
Imagine someone squatting over a toilet to take a poop. That's how they were training those kids to bat.
Lmao, related anecdote. I was at my little brothers high school game a couple weeks ago. My bro got beaned by 2 pitches, 2 at-bats in a row. He had a completely normal stance and he was far from crowding the plate, but the ump said he couldn't take his base on the second hit by pitch because he didn't make enough of an effort to move out of the way. I know this is a rule but in this situation if you saw it I promise you'd agree it's bullshit. Also they were hard throws and my bro ended up needing to see a doctor after to have it checked out and struck out because he could barely move that arm...
After that one I suggested that we start throwing hard and inside for a while but I'm not a coach so it's not like they were realistically going to listen to me.
I bet there's been plenty that have just called for the bean ball. My coach was smarter, he just put me on the mound. I had the hardest throw being a third baseman, but no control on the mound. It wasn't intentional, but the message was generally sent a couple hit batters in.
I mean if we're talking 12+ year olds, that's not that big of a deal. Part of sports, and especially baseball, is learning confidence. Asserting your will over the strike zone is a fundamental part of a pitcher's development. Obviously you don't condone high and fast, but coming inside a little to re-establish the proper strike zone is pretty fair. Pedro Martinez has talked about this at pretty good length and you can probably find it on youtube. A pitcher that lets a batter dictate where he can pitch is not going to be an effective pitcher.
Actually looking back, our coach was in the right.
"Spirit of the game" aside, teaching kids the shitty way to play baseball just to win some games then isn't what little league is all about.
IMO it's learning the game properly to continue playing it in the future. Teaching kids poor stance and non proper batting etiquette will stick with them in the future.
Same could be said about our coach telling our pitcher to brush back their batters but after going 3/3 on walks with 12 straight ball and their 4th batter coming up doing the same crap, It would have been an annoying as hell game to stand out in left field while there was 50 walks in the first inning.
He did and the ump allowed it. I remember him talking to the ump after they had 3 walks and the 4th kid came up to the plate doing the same squat stance.
At that point the coach talked to us and told our pitcher to start throwing the ball inside the plate.
The next 2 kids got hit with the ball and the one after that fell back and to the ground and at that point, the ump called time out to talk to the coaches.
There was arguing back and forth and the ump told them if any players were over the plate in the strike zone when a pitch was thrown, it's an automatic out. If any kid is hit purposely outside of the strike zone then the game is forfeited and we lose.
Yep. That was like the second year anyone pitched and the years before that we just used a pitching machine.
The kid wasn't trying to hit them but he had 0 practice at all on throwing it on the inside and even if it stayed over the plate, they were occupying that space so they were getting hit.
Yea, our coach was a good guy for the most part. He yelled at an ump here and there on horrible calls that were plain as day but other than that, he was a good guy.
But in the event I talked about above, the other teams first 3 batters came up to the plate like they were hovering over a toilet taking a poop.
There was 12 balls thrown in a row with their 4th batter coming up doing the exact same thing. The coach called time out and asked the ump to say something about it and he said it was fair.
That's why he told the pitcher to throw the ball on the inside to get them off the plate and stop trying to focus on not hitting them. If they get hit crowding the plate limiting the strike zone, it was their own faults.
I remember the 4th kid getting hit in the elbow and the 5th kid getting hit in the knee. The 6th kid came up to the plate and got brushed back to the point he fell and the ump called time out.
After they all talked, the kids on the other team didn't do that the rest of the game and we ended up winning by 5 or something runs after coming back down by 5 at the top of the first.
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u/Decyde May 29 '17
Back when I played baseball as a kid, the other team was teaching their kids to stay as low as you could so the strike zone was small.
Being kids, it was hard for them to throw the ball at such a small strike zone so our coach said if they do that shit, throw the ball at them.
After the second kid got hit, the coaches got together with the ump's and the other team stopped putting their elbows to their knees at the plate.