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and for todays installment of coaches that should be bannished...
i heard about this on the Dan Patrick Show today...at first i didnt think it was a really big deal, because the part about them being 9 years old wasnt immediatly mentioned ( i came into the story in the middle)
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futher note...the pitcher that was in the game at the time was upset enough that he had to pitch to Oaks that he refused to try out for the all star team the next day |
Some guy's article I found online? Perhaps if you find his viewpoint important enough to quote you should provide a link or some citation.
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I caught the very tail end of this segment on Patrick's show today, had no idea what they were talking about.
The screaming across the diamond part? That's sound pretty damned crass. But the tactical decision? You absolutely positively 100% walk the guy. The thing that takes this from high 90% to 100% is the phrase the other team’s best hitter at the plate. (I'm assuming that's an accurate description of the situation). With the facts available that's the obvious move in any other game all season, with any other significantly weaker hitter up next. That's baseball, whether you're 5, 15, 25, or 75 in a beer & Geritol league. |
If this is in fact what happened...just more and more shows how ahead of the curve Bad News Bears (the original) was.
Why in the world are kids being intentionally walked at 9 years of age? I'm sports obsessed like many of us are and it's getting sick how young we have these kids traveling, on select, teams, etc. |
Sorry Jon...usually you and I see eye to ey but you don't do that in a non-select league at the age of 9. Select league? Okay. Kids are 12? Probably okay. Rec league 9 year olds? Those kids are 3rd and 4th graders.
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there sov, i fixed it just for you....nice to see the only thing you found of interest was the way i quoted the article....i didnt think it mattered since i was using it as a reference to the event, not a support of Bens opinions. |
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it was an under 10, non-competitive, developmental leauge...the coaches arent even supposed to set lineups because they dont want to stigmatize the players...everyone plays, everyone hits....it was supposed to be about learning the game, not about winning at all costs...they are 9 years old for christs sake! |
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Don't get all pissy at me for wanting to know something about the person whose article/blog you just quoted. |
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Sorry Skydog....this is a rec league. Rec means for fun... If this league is a competitive, select, tryout situation, I'm cool with it...it's not. You pitch to the kids...flat out. My guess is if that team wasn't undefeated the coach pitches to him.
You're not talking pro athletes here. If that kid ends up dying for some reason, that 9 year old kid is going to live with the rest of his life replaying that strikeout of that kid over and over. (I wish the kid would have thought enough to walk him) |
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If that's the case then why were they holding a championship game? |
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when the count got to 2 strikes on him, he was standing at the plate crying...i would call that a psychological scar for both of those kids |
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I don't give a shit if they're 6 y/o, the game is baseball & that's how it's played. Hell, I've seen a couple of kids I would have pitched around in T-Ball if there had been a way. Again, let me make it clear that I find the yelling across the diamond that's described crass beyond description under the circumstances & pretty well indefensible (assuming the article is accurate, like I said, I only caught the tail end of the interview with the kid's dad today). But to have not walked the opponent's best hitter in the scenario as I understand it would have been incredibly unfair to your own players and infinitely more unacceptable than the common baseball strategy employed here. |
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Same thing here, standard baseball strategy was employed (as well as it could be executed at least) in my first year of playing which would have been either 4 or 5 years old. I never played in any league that did otherwise, never coached in any league that did otherwise, and would be highly reluctant to have my kid within miles of a league that did otherwise. |
And we wonder why our nation's kids are so messed up.
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[Going straight to hell comment]
And Barry Bonds claims to have no protection in the lineup... [/Going straight to hell comment] |
Oh, and I'm not defending or attacking the coach's actions at all. If he truly yelled that across the diamond, then that's very bad. I'm merely saying that intentional walks at age 9 aren't surprising to me at all.
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Oh, and I'm not defending or attacking the coach's actions at all. If he truly yelled that across the diamond, then that's very bad. I'm merely saying that intentional walks at age 9 aren't surprising to me at all.
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if that is the way the league is structured, and you know that when you put your kid in it, that is different IMO, but this was supposed to be a learning league....the coaches arent even allowed to structure their batting orders, which i guess is why the worst player followed the best player in this instance. |
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Not anywhere I've ever lived it wasn't. "Rec league" was simply shorthand for a league administered by the local governmental recreation department, as opposed to a private Little League/Dizzy Dean/Babe Ruth/etc league. The only "non-competitive" (i.e. not keeping score) league I've ever run across was one that the YMCA director proposed in the league where I coached a couple of summers ago ... and it was ultimately a scored league because they couldn't even come up with enough players interested to field two teams otherwise. I know that they exist in some places, my minor quibble here is just with the distinction of "rec league" not always meaning the same thing in different places. |
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This has nothing to do with Marilyn Manson. |
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Apparently like the follow-up discussion that I missed on the show, color me likewise confused about how an unstructured league ends up with a championship game. Maybe it wasn't a "championship game" per se, but rather just the last game of a potentially undefeated season? Or maybe the league wasn't as unstructured as it has been described after all? Or any of a host of possibilities, but something about this story just doesn't add up to me at all at this point. |
I support the intentional walking 100%.
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You beat whoever is wearing the other uniform, that's the object of the game. If this was indeed a championship game, presumably this was the 2nd best team in the league, i.e. the only remaining contender to the title "best in the league". In other words, it doesn't seem to be a case where the eventual winners handpicked a team of blind quadriplegics to play against, they can only play who ends up in the other dugout. And if the opponent puts the kid out there, damned if I'm treating him any different than anybody else on the team. That is insulting discrimination of the worst sort. If she was wearing the other uni, I'd throw under my granny's chin if she was crowding the plate. And if she doesn't back off, she better be ready to pick herself up. |
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May I have your autograph, Mr. Clemens?;) |
It's fun to be competitive. That's what sissy leagues don't understand anymore. No matter how young you are, part of the fun of playing little league is that you're playing the same game as your heroes, using the same skills and strategies.
Trying to avoid hurt feelings at all costs is an awful child development strategy. We all have to deal with setbacks in our lives - in a small way, youth sports helps kids prepare for that in a relatively consequence-free environment. I remember the one championship team I was on in youth sports. It was one of the geatest moments of my childhood, and it would never have happened, or had the same feeling of excitement if that particular league embraced the non-competitive nonsense that goes on in too many leagues today. |
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Please don't ever have children. Cut your balls off now while you still have the chance. Love, The Human Race |
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Too late. But if you're ever in the neighborhood, be sure to drop by, I'd love to chat in person. |
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Please don't ever have children. Cut your balls off now while you still have the chance. Also, don't adopt and keep all children away from you by at least a 10-foot radius Love, The Human Race ;) |
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i'm not saying competitive sports are a bad thing...i started playing soccer when i was 6 years old, baseball when i was 8, so i grew up in competitive sports. my problem with this is that it was supposed to be a non competitive league, and the strategy involved here doesnt seem to gel with that mode of thinking. let the competitiveness wait for a league that you have to try out for, where all the players arent equal, but they at least all meet a certain level of ability. if this were a year later, and these kids were playing full fledged little league, i wouldnt feel close to the same way i do about it now. i still wouldnt like it, but i could see some rationale to it...i have coached soccer youth teams, and no matter what my teams record was, or what the score of the game was, every player on my team got a chance to play, and if we were up, i pulled my scorers back to d-backs, not because i didnt want my team to win, but because sportsmanship is just as valuable as competitiveness.....sportsmanship has been overrun by competitiveness in youth sports, and this is the penultimate example |
Dola, sorry meant to add the wink face for sarcasm
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dola, and if one of my kids were on a team and the coach did something like this, i would take my kid out of the game that second and never let them play for that guy again.
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Point is, I'm not critical of the strategy, just the way that the adults acted. The could have handled it much better. |
Why the hell is the cancer survivor the protection for the team's best hitter?
Yelling across the diamond is bad. But you absolutely pitch around the team's best hitter. I think you are teaching a poor lesson if you don't. |
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:...s&ct=clnk&cd=4
According to Rick Reilly's column, this doesn't appear to be a non-competitive league, although it is one with modified rules. This is a league where everybody gets to bat, there's a four-runs-per-inning max, and no stealing until the ball crosses the plate. That last one has been pretty common for years now at this age level, because catcher's arms simply can't make the throw consistently, but even with max run rules, I'm not getting a sense that they aren't keeping score. |
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Not your fault, good coaching would have pointed out the option to you. |
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no one said they werent keeping score, but what about this line leaves any doubt about what kind of league this is. Quote:
thanks for posting that btw, i couldnt get to SI.com from work |
Just curious how far those who approve of the walk would go... If you all want to win the 9 year old rec title that bad, wouldn't you all have just cut him from your team to begin with? You want a title, right?
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I woulda beaned both hitters to save my pitcher's arm, and go after the last batter.
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Fair enough. I guess it wasn't entirely clear that this was a "non-competitve" league. But there's certaintly a mixed message when you have a championship game. I don't believe for a second that a typical 9 year old doesn't care about winning, as these kinds of stories always suggest. Throwing a physically challenged cancer survivor into that kind of environment, where his performance determines the outcome of the game, doesn't make a lot of sense. |
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I read that as Reilly's personal take, not neccessarily the league's structure. |
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In the majority of league's that I'm familiar with, cuts aren't an option at this age level, so it seems unlikely to have been an available choice. |
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Again, that wasn't the sole goal of any league I ever played in or coached in. Quote:
I don't see anything that suggested they pitched around the best hitter for the entire game, it was situational. And based on the known facts the situation absolutely positively calls for the guy to be walked, anybody who knows the slightest thing at all about baseball knows that. |
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