My Experience Coaching a 9-10 Year Old Baseball Team in a Rigged League - Page 3

Atocep · 05-20-2012, 12:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

I tend to agree with your analysis. I think the key is really 1) the age of the kids and 2) the context. I doubt I'd have been as lenient on older kids in any competitive setting at least immediately after because you'd expect them to at least think more seriously about how the game went. And so many variables involved. But for kids at that age, you just want them to love the game and enjoy playing and having fun and if they're loose in a 2nd game after they just got beat rather than defeated and "this sucks, I don't want to do this anymore," it'd be more concerning.

Not sure it'd be anything I'd have a different opinion for either unless it was a context like this.

That is how I saw it. Like I mentioned, this was a well coached team that we played and their kids were playing hard from beginning to end. I've played against teams where I questioned how hard their kids were playing and how into the game they were. This definitely wasn't one of those teams.

The entire experience in Vashon stuck out. The 12 year old umpires wouldn't work in Lakewood because of the level of competitiveness and some of the parents, but it works with how they do things out there. I'm a really competitive person and I'm sure the Vashon league would drive me nuts if I had to spend any extended time there, but it was a nice reminder that when it comes down to it I'm still just coaching kids.

Atocep · 05-20-2012, 12:56 PM

Chris is fine. No stitches needed and no concussion. In fact, his mom said the only thing he asked the doctor was if he can go back to his game.

Something I failed to mention was Kaden and Joey combined to pull off the best play I've seen in my 2 years of watching games at this level. With a runner on 3rd Joey threw a wild pitch to the backstop (15-20 foot backstop). Kaden slid to the ball on one knee and blindly flipped the ball back behind him toward home plate. Joey was running down to cover like he was supposed to, the throw hit him face-high, and he put down the tag in time to get the runner coming from 3rd.

Atocep · 05-25-2012, 03:48 AM

We played the Rockets yesterday and there's not a whole lot to say. We won 16-6 in 4 innings. We jumped out to a 10-0 lead after 2 innings and we decided to play kids pretty much wherever they wanted to play. I put Brendan out on the mound for an inning since both of his parents were there. He gave up 4 runs, but all 3 outs he got were strikeouts. He was excited and his parents were happy to see him pitch. Kaden gave us an inning on the mound and he wasn't at his best, but he was throwing hard. Probably harder than any of the Rockets kids had seen this year. We took a 12-6 lead into the bottom of the 4th and the game ended on a bases loaded triple by Kaden.

Highlights

*Some extended 1 on 1 work on hitting with Britt and Donovan at practice Wednesday paid off. Donovan had two hits and Britt didn't get a hit, but that was only because of a nice defensive play by the Rockets 2nd baseman. Britt made solid contact and lifted a flyball to shallow right and the 2nd baseman moved back and made the play.

*Magnus started out rough, as usual, but settled down and pitched well.

*Kaden only caught 1 inning. Joey and Quentin didn't pitch.

In other news, I had mentioned to our division director that I'd love to have another shot at the Tigers. He called me Wednesday night to tell me that he asked the Tigers if they were interested in playing us on June 9th instead of the Rockets. The Tigers coach agreed. We weren't scheduled to play that day so it was an easy decision for us. So we're set to play the Tigers at 1pm on June 9th. The Tigers will be playing a double header that day starting at 10am against the Blue Raiders. This game will even things up schedule-wise between us since the first time we played the Tigers it was part of a double header for us, but the only game the Tigers had to play that day.

Atocep · 05-25-2012, 03:59 AM

Here's the standings heading into the holiday weekend. The schedule gets tough from here. We have 2 games remaining against the Blue Raiders, 1 game against the Tigers, and 2 games against the Lions.

Code:

	Teams	        W	L	T	PCT	GB	GP	RS	RA
1	Rough Riders	11	2	1	.821	0.0	14	156	79
2	Tigers	        10	2	1	.808	0.5	13	99	44
3	Blue Raiders	9	2	2	.769	1.0	13	140	72
4	Tacoma Lions	8	5	0	.615	3.0	13	187	129
5	Rockets	        3	9	0	.250	7.5	12	100	150

What become clear this season is the 3 top teams in this league would win any other league in this area. The only loses in interlock play by any of our top 3 are against select teams, which are essentially all star teams that either play in a division of select teams or they do travel tournaments all season. We have beaten the top non-select teams in Shelton, Olympia, and Vashon while the Blue Raiders and Tigers both beat the top non-select team in Tacoma last weekend. This league is ridiculously strong.

Atocep · 05-25-2012, 02:44 PM

The league drama for last week once again centered around the Blue Raiders. During their trip to Tacoma last week for a double header they ran into some issues with an umpire. It started during the 1st game. They were leading fairly comfortably (went on to win 16-4) and according to their coach an umpire that wasn't working their game just walks into their dugout during the 4th inning and starts going off on their coaches on how they were running up the score, were disrespectful, and if he was umping the game it would be different. Their coach told me they just ignored it (what else could you really do?) and finished up the game.

However, as luck would have it, that same umpire was the ump for their 2nd game and, from what I was told, every batter for the Blue Raiders that put the ball in play for the first 2 innings received a warning for throwing the bat. In the 3rd a player was ejected for throwing the bat after receiving a warning (I thought they were supposed to be ruled out instead of ejected). At this point the Blue Raiders were winning 8-3 despite despite playing very conservatively on the bases. After the Blue Raiders player was ejected their coach told the umpire that if he's going to eject one of his players then he can eject them all. He pulled his team off the field and took the forfeit.

The Blue Raiders coach said he talked to the other team to apologize for pulling his team and he said the other coach told him he had no idea what was going on that game, but something obviously wasn't right so there were no issues between the 2 teams.

What is interesting about this whole situation is the fact that the Tigers were playing at the same time on the field next to the Blue Raiders and won their first game 21-4. Considering the history between the Blue Raiders and Tigers along with how the Tigers parents can be it makes me wonder if one of their parents had been talking to that ump and set him off.

This week should be free of drama since we were the only game that was able to be played because of weather and there are no games scheduled for the weekend.

Atocep · 05-27-2012, 03:26 PM

I have a question about bats that maybe someone here can help with. Kaden moves up an age level next year and he's going to need a bigger bat. Right now he's swinging a 30" 19oz bat. I've seen parents in this league that have their kids swinging -3 bats which seems like a bit much to me.

I do want him to get used to swinging a heavier bat over the summer to get used to the difference though and wondered if anyone knows what an above average sized kid that's on the upper end of his age's skill range should be swining?

britrock88 · 05-27-2012, 05:47 PM

Next age range is 11-12, right? Maybe a 32/21?

MacroGuru · 05-27-2012, 10:39 PM

I am and was all about bat speed. I wanted to get the bat around as fast as possible so I always went with the shorter lighter bats.

I have my 11 yr old the same way and he is bigger than most of the kids in his class.

Barkeep49 · 05-29-2012, 08:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MacroGuru

I am and was all about bat speed. I wanted to get the bat around as fast as possible so I always went with the shorter lighter bats.

I have my 11 yr old the same way and he is bigger than most of the kids in his class.

I agree strongly with Macro. Swinging "too light" a bat will not do nearly as much harm to a kid, even his power (mostly generated from the hips/legs afterall) as swinging too heavy of a bat.

GoldenEagle · 05-29-2012, 09:54 AM

It depends on the league rules, but I have seen leagues that allow players to be ejected for slinging their bats. I never ejected a player for it. To me, it would have to be obvious that the player was being very dangerous to others, not once but twice.

Sports officiating attracts all types. This guy (if it is all true) sounds like he was on some sort of amazing power trip. Waring every player for slinging the bat is ridiculous.

As far as the bat goes, I always used the bat in your primary hand trick. If you could hold it with one hand, you would have no problem getting around with it.

Atocep · 05-29-2012, 03:55 PM

Thanks for the feedback on the bats. I wanted to make sure there wasn't something I'm missing when I see kids swinging these massive bats in 10U. I believe Little League limits the barrel size to 2 1/4" and I really wish PONY did as well. Some of the bats I see look like clubs with the 2 5/8" barrels on 28-29" bats. I don't think you're really helping a player develop as a hitter using a bigger barrel at this age.

What I'm going to do is take him to a sporting goods store and let him handle some bats. I'm a big believer in using a bat you can generate bat speed with as well. He swings a wooden bat in the back yard here because it's a bit heavier than the bat he uses in practice and in games. I may get him something that feels a touch heavy now and see if he's adjusted to it by next spring. If he hasn't we can get him something lighter and he'll have a new bat for the back yard.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GoldenEagle

It depends on the league rules, but I have seen leagues that allow players to be ejected for slinging their bats. I never ejected a player for it. To me, it would have to be obvious that the player was being very dangerous to others, not once but twice.

Sports officiating attracts all types. This guy (if it is all true) sounds like he was on some sort of amazing power trip. Waring every player for slinging the bat is ridiculous.

What he described to me was incredibly weird. Every single batter that put the ball in play received a warning and when one of his kids put the ball in play a 2nd time he was immediately ejected. I've played the Blue Raiders twice and they're really well coached and I know that for them to forfeit a game something really odd would have to happen. Their coaches are very competitive on the field and it can rub people the wrong way. My guess is that's what happened here and this ump or someone that knows the ump took offense seeing it in the first game then he took advantage of his power in the 2nd game.

Blackadar · 05-30-2012, 07:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Atocep

What he described to me was incredibly weird. Every single batter that put the ball in play received a warning and when one of his kids put the ball in play a 2nd time he was immediately ejected. I've played the Blue Raiders twice and they're really well coached and I know that for them to forfeit a game something really odd would have to happen. Their coaches are very competitive on the field and it can rub people the wrong way. My guess is that's what happened here and this ump or someone that knows the ump took offense seeing it in the first game then he took advantage of his power in the 2nd game.

Assuming the facts are accurate, then the other coach should have stepped in. When the refereeing is hideously one-sided or it's obvious that the ump has it out for one team, fair play dictates the other coach say something. Frankly, if I were the other coach, I'd have also pulled my team off the field and left the game as a no decision/double forfeit.

Also, the league should never, ever have that ump in their league again. What a dick. Around here, some parent probably would have beat the shit out of him. The rednecks take this shit seriously.

Atocep · 05-31-2012, 03:04 PM

The coaches of the Mustang Division in our league met with the league president last night to discuss what we're going to do about All Stars this year. It was a great example of how much damage bad sports parents can do to the league and the impact it has on the kids.

We're not even going to attempt to field a 10U All Star team this year. The person that had initially expressed interest in coaching the team (and the person I was going to help) pulled out because as the Blue Raiders coach he knew that both he and the league would get flooded with accusations for any Tigers player left off the team. It goes a bit beyond that and I'll get into that below. I agreed with his decision. He would have been in a no win situation and it would have been a headache for the league. Because he has removed himself from coaching the team his players aren't really interested in doing All Stars and would rather do select tournaments after the season ends.

The only other coach to express interest in coaching the team said that with his son being 9 and with the 10 year old talent depleted so much already he'd be willing to do a 9U All Star team but he wasn't going to coach a 10U team. I don't blame him.

So right now it looks like we'll field a 9U team if we can get enough players interested in playing.

I had a talk with the league president on Tuesday and I learned that things between the Blue Raiders and Tigers are far worse than I thought. Mike (the league president) told me that he gets emails on a daily basis from different parents from those teams and it's almost always some accusation toward the other. It sounds like most of the problems stem from the Tigers parents and then the Blue Raiders have some parents that react to the Tigers parents. It's ugly. For example, less than 24 hours after the Blue Raiders forfeit the game in Tacoma Mike received an angry text from a Tigers parent wanting to know why the standings on the league website weren't updated to show that loss. That text came from a former board member.

Kaden will be playing with the Blue Raiders this summer and I'll help coach. The first tournament starts the weekend after July 4th and we're really confident that we can get a team together that can win anything we enter them in. So Kaden is happy that he gets to keep playing. However, there's going to be a few 10 year olds on the Tigers that won't have the opportunity to keep playing this summer and it's entirely because of how bad that group of parents are.

Atocep · 06-01-2012, 12:28 AM

This evening we played the Blue Raiders. This, as I've mentioned, is our biggest rival along with being a very well coached and talented team. We tied them the first time we played and I thought we should have won that game. This is a game I've been looking forward to since that 3rd game of the season.

The plan today was to start Joey, have him go 2 innings, bring in Magnus for 1 inning, then Kaden for an inning, and close things out with Quentin for 2. Instead of being stubborn and sticking with that plan, this time I adjusted to what was going on. A couple things of note: we played this game without Canaan (vacation) and I was also told before the game that a Blue Raiders player would have to leave about 45 minutes after we start. That means his spot in the lineup is an out every time it comes up after he leaves.

The game started out with Joey not having his best stuff. He's usually 65-75% strikes and this game it was about 50/50. He put a couple of runners on, but got us through the inning without giving up a run. In the bottom of the 1st we led things off with a wonderful Quentin bunt that was going to be an easy single until he stopped dead in his tracks halfway to first because he heard someone say "foul". The Blue Raiders continued on with the play and threw him out. Then with 1 out Kaden walked but was stranded at 3rd ending the inning tied 0-0.

In the 2nd Joey looked a little more like himself and worked his way through their hitters without much of a problem. In our half of the 2nd we decided to revert back to watching pitches go by us and making it easy for the Blue Raiders pitcher.

Joey was pitching well at this point and his pitch count was low so I decided to try to get a 3rd inning out of him. It would make things much easier for us if we could. We he got out onto the mound it was obvious he was tiring a bit because he struggled to keep the ball down. The Blue Raiders scored a couple of runs off of him, but he pitched well overall. I'll take 2 runs in 3 innings pitched every time. In our half of the 3rd we started to get things going a bit. We put a couple of runners on and with 2 outs Kaden doubled them in tying the score at 2.

For the 4th inning I sent Magnus out to the mound. I wanted to get 1 inning from him and my thinking was that if he could get us through that inning without giving up more than a couple of runs we'd be in really good shape with a well rested Quentin available for the 5th and 6th and Kaden there as an emergency pitcher if needed. Magnus put away the first hitter quickly and had 2 strikes on the 2nd hitter before he ran into control issues. He hits the 2nd batter on a 0-2 count, walks the 3rd batter, strikes out the 4th batter, walks the 5th batter to load the bases, and hits the 6th batter to bring home a run. I was really worried that he would be thinking about the batter he hit because the 2nd batter that he hit he hit hard and in the ribs. I saw something like that throw him off in a game earlier this season so I called time and went out to talk to him to make sure his mind was on the next batter. Of course he walks that batter to bring home a 2nd run, but struck out the next batter to end the inning. 2 runs scored to make the score 4-2 Blue Raiders, but we're still in good shape. We followed that up by getting a runner on to start the bottom of the 4th and then saw their 1st baseman misplay a grounder, but had the presence of mind to look up and fire the ball to 2nd instead of trying to get to 1st. Our runner didn't think there was going to be a play at 2nd, had let up a bit, and was out by a step at 2nd. That was the end of our threat that inning. Still down 4-2 heading into the 5th.

To start the 5th their player had to leave. He would be due up 8th that inning. I really wanted to get through this inning before his turn to bat came up because entering the 6th needing only 2 outs could mean the difference in this game. Quentin started off a shaky and didn't have his control. He walked a batter, gave up an infield hit, walked another batter to load the bases, but followed that up with a strikeout. The next hitter smacked the ball into left field and Donovan misplayed the ball pretty badly. 2 runs scored before he got the relay into Magnus at short who then fired the ball home to get their 3rd runner out at home for a HUGE out. Quentin stuck out the next batter to end the bleeding. At this point the score is 6-2, but we have Donovan due up and then we get to the top of our lineup so if we were going to do anything this was our chance. Donovan led off by walking. Quentin fought back from 0-2 for a walk. Nolan walked to load the bases for Kaden. On the first pitch Kaden hit the ball hard between 1st and 2nd and past their right fielder to score 2 runs and leave us with runners on 2nd and 3rd. Joey stepped up and grounded sharply to 2nd, but it was bobbled by their 2nd baseman scoring both Nolan and Kaden to tie the game. Joey stole 2nd and third while Christopher was at the plate. Christopher ends up drawing a walk. Magnus struck out. Brendan worked a walk to load the bases. Then Sean walked to bring home the go-ahead run and we reached the 5 run cap for the inning. We're now leading 7-6 and we only need 2 outs to finish things off.

The top of the 6th started off with a high popup that Magnus called for and caught for out 1. Out 2 is their absent player. Their third batter softly grounds to short on the 1st pitch and falls down in the batters box. Christopher drops the ball, picks up, and that's the game. A 7-6 win over what is IMO the best team we'll play this year.

Their coaches and parents were fantastic after the game. No bitterness at all. They congratulated us on a great game and we talked for quite awhile about how crazy our 2 games have been this year.

Our parents were ecstatic. I had parents I rarely speak to coming up and congratulating us on the win. If there was one team on the schedule our parents and kids would want a win over it was the Blue Raiders and these kids made it happen.

Highlights

*Our pitching. Joey, Magnus, Quentin all did their jobs. I got exactly what I was looking for out of all 3 of them.

*Our defense. 1 error in the outfield. 1 popup we misplayed. Everything else in the field was done exactly as it should have been.

*Kaden both at the plate and behind it. The Blue Raiders are a team that wants to run you death. They look to steal with every single runner. They stole 2nd twice and 3rd once. That's it. At the plate Kaden was 2-2 with 2 doubles and a walk. He sparked our scoring in both innings that we scored in.

*Donovan had that error in left and led things off with a walk the next half inning. It may sound easy, but it was a walk he worked to get and he very easily could have went to the plate with that error on his mind.

*Our team played a hell of a game and continues to show why this year we expect to win when we play.

Atocep · 06-02-2012, 06:40 PM

We had 2 games at home against Vashon teams today. The first was against the team we beat 17-1 at Vashon. We really didn't put forth anything close to our full effort out there against them. I pitched Magnus 2 innings and then followed that up with 1 by Kaden, 1 by Brendan, and 1 from Nolan. Our infield after 2 innings was kids that don't play anything other than the outfield except for special occasions. We jumped out 12-2, we quit stealing, and then held on for a 12-9 win. Despite the close score we were never in danger of losing.

The 2nd game was against a team that had played a couple of our teams earlier in the year and took some of the baserunning and defensive stuff they saw our teams doing back out to the island with great success from what I heard. My kids heads weren't really in this game the first few innings. To the other team's credit, they did have a very good pitcher out there for the 1st 3 innings. After 4 it was tied at 3. We had left a ton of runs out on the bases and their runs came off of soft grounders that died on a bad grass infield. We pulled things together and scored 4 in the 5th to take a 7-3 lead then shut them down in the 6th to get the win.

The 1st game just wasn't a game where I wanted to embarrass the other team. The 2nd game we didn't play well. Likely due to a combination of being tired, having trouble refocusing after taking it easy the first game, and they were probably still patting themselves on the back for their game Thursday.

These wins run our record to 14-2-1 while wrapping up our games against teams outside of our league. We close out the regular season with 2 games against the Lions and 1 game each against the Blue Raiders and Tigers.

Highlights

I really wish I had something, but it was fairly straightforward, boring baseball today.

Kaden's bat did break so I guess I'm getting a new one a bit sooner than expected.

Atocep · 06-06-2012, 05:13 PM

We had a solid practice on Monday after not playing so well Saturday. We have another practice today then we play the Lions Thursday. It is supposed to rain quite a bit on the Thursday and if this game in canceled I don't think we'll be able to make it up as schedules are just too tight right now. The Lions are a good team. They're very well coached and while they don't have pitching depth or hit the ball particularly well they do run the bases and play some defense. If we hit the ball and do things I know we can do it should be an easy win. If we don't play well or we overlook this team they can beat us. They've already lost 1 run games to both the Tigers and Blue Raiders this year.

Something that developed this weekend out of nowhere that I failed to mention is Joey throwing the bat on contact. He received a warning in his first at bat Saturday, was called out in his 2nd, and then was called out again his his 2nd at bat of game 2. His dad and older brother are great at working with him so I made sure they knew it's something that needs work before Thursday. At practice today I'll have the kids hit a bit and I'll see if how much progress there's been.

The plan for Thursday is to start Quentin, bring in Magnus, then pitch Kaden. All 3 will go 2 innings and I'll have Joey available for emergencies, but I'd like to rest him.

This season is wearing me down. It probably shows in this dynasty as I'm typically exhausted as I try to get everything down. Going from coaching basketball right into baseball, which is a full time job in itself for Lakewood Baseball Club, has been tough but it's more rewarding than I could possibly explain here.

My kids are likely going to be splitting up after this season. The league is strongly discouraging kids from playing up unless it keeps them with their class in school (for example Quentin and Kaden are both 4th graders but Kaden plays as a young 10 year old and Quentin is a 9 year old by less than 2 weeks) and we just don't have enough 10 year olds to compete. Kaden, Quentin (would be ok to play up), Nolan, Canaan, and Christopher is likely all we'd have as I know Sean won't be playing next year and I have doubts that Tyler will.

PONY also moves the bases back to 70ft and the pitcher's mound to 48 feet. It's a tough jump for some kids to make. You can also add in the politics and parenting and I just don't see them playing together next year. The Blue Raiders and Tigers are the teams that move up to 12U after this season. Christopher's parents will not put him back on the Blue Raiders. Quentin's parents won't have him play for the Blue Raiders and the Tigers are unlikely after seeing how bad they are as a group this year (his parents are leaning toward putting him in the Olympia league). I have no idea what others are thinking. I'm trying to get an idea of what everyone wants to do so I can make sure the kids that are staying in Lakewood, whether staying behind in 10u or moving up to 12u, have an idea of what team they'd be on for next season.

As for Kaden I'm leaning toward the Blue Raiders. I don't think the Tigers receive the coaching they should be getting (not to mention the parental issues with that group) and while some have had bad experiences with the Blue Raiders I haven't yet and I do know they're coached well. Nothing has been decided yet though. I've briefly spoken to their coach about taking our kids moving up (except for Christopher unfortunately) and merging the two teams since they have at least 5 kids that will be staying behind for another year.

What I'm working on now is getting the kids from this team together on one team for basketball. The kids that play basketball and have expressed interest are Quentin, Nolan, Magnus, Brendan, and Joey. They've never all played on the same team in basketball and it would give them one last team to play on as a group.

BYU 14 · 06-06-2012, 05:21 PM

Really hate to see this winding down, it has been a great story and the work you have done with these kids is amazing. They will all remember this experience for a very long time!!

Well done Coach!!!

Atocep · 06-06-2012, 10:47 PM

Things just got even more interesting in the league. The Lions beat the Tigers 10-5 last night

That means the Tigers are at 1 loss and 1 tie in league play, the Blue Raiders are at 1 loss and 2 ties, and we're at 2 losses and 1 tie. The Lions are at 4 losses but still very much alive and not a team to sleep on obviously.

We're scheduled to play the Lions twice, the Tigers once, and the Blue Raiders once. The Tigers have 2 games against the Blue Raiders and a game against us. The Blue Raiders have 2 games against the Tigers and a game against us.

Atocep · 06-07-2012, 05:24 PM

Our game this evening has been rained out. All regular season games have to be completed by Wednesday and we play Saturday, Monday, and Wednesday while the Lions play 2 on Saturday, then Monday, and Wednesday so I don't know how much urgency there will be to make this one up. I really don't want to head into the playoffs playing 4 games in 5 days and I can't imagine the Lions would want to go into the playoffs playing 5 games in 5 days, but you never know. We do have a game with the Lions already on the schedule for Monday so hopefully that is enough to keep everyone happy and we won't have to cram this game into an already tight schedule.

Our next game is the Tigers on Saturday. The Tigers play the Blue Raiders before they play us and with the history and tension between those teams I seriously doubt we'll see the Tigers best pitchers.

Atocep · 06-07-2012, 11:53 PM

Well the Lions want to make the game up so unless I have at least 4 conflicts with my players we'll play Tuesday. I don't really have a strong argument against playing the game since it comes down to "I would rather not play 4 games in 5 days then have 2 days of rest before the playoffs start."

My main issue really comes down to when you cram games into a schedule like this for 9-10 year olds it really isn't about the best team anymore. It's about who gets the best innings from their non-pitchers that you have to put on the mound. There are 3 teams (us, the Lions, and the Blue Raiders) playing a similar schedule over those 5 days. The key difference is we're the only one of the 3 that doesn't have a game against the Rockets somewhere in there where we can put anyone out on the mound and walk away with a win.

Anyway, enough of my whining. We'll show up to win regardless. I just have to do a lot of planning on how to use my pitchers during that stretch as innings will be almost as important as performance.

Atocep · 06-08-2012, 12:17 AM

And a quick follow up to the post above. I talked to our division director and he said he doesn't see much point to playing the game either since 1.) We play the Lions on Monday and that gives us our 2 games played against each other this season 2.) Pitching becomes a major problem since there's an 8 inning limit on a pitcher in a week and 3 games this week along with at least 1 playoff game (possibly 2) before the week flips over makes it impossible to handle pitching in any fair way.

I'm going to talk to the Lions coach tomorrow and see what he wants to do. The league said they're fine with the game just not being played so hopefully he's ok with it too.

Atocep · 06-08-2012, 10:55 PM

The Lions coach and I decided to not make up our game. The combination of issues I mentioned above plus the fact that he didn't realize we had a game on Wednesday made it an easy call for both us.

This was very much needed as the playoff schedule has changed a little and we're pretty much guaranteed 1 game on Friday and 2 games on Saturday.

Atocep · 06-09-2012, 06:15 PM

Today we had our 3rd official game with the Tigers. We haven't played this team well at all up to this point. We tend to give up a couple of huge innings and then settle down after that, but the hole we dig is always too big to climb out of.

This was another well played baseball game. It was very similar to our most recent game with the Blue Raiders except there were very few walks. The runs scored were off of the few errors in the game and by hitting the baseball.

We scored 1 in the first off of Nolan sending a nice shot to the outfield to score Quentin. Nolan then followed that up by getting thrown out trying to steal 2nd. He got a horrible jump, slowed down as he looked back at the plate, and actually got in safely, but the ball beat him there and the ump called him out. Joey started on the mound for us and shut them down in the 1st.

In the 2nd we went 3 up 3 down really quickly. It was the start of a frustrating tendency to pop the ball up on the infield today. We gifted the Tigers their first run in the bottom of the 2nd when Christopher dropped the 3rd out at 1st base. Then Kaden made a great play on a play at the plate to end the inning. 1-1 after 2.

In the 3rd we didn't do anything. It was the bottom of the order and they were trying to wait out walks that weren't going to happen. We made a couple more errors in the field that gave the Tigers a couple of runs and we were in a 3-1 hole after 3. Kaden did make another play at the plate and blocked the plate nicely to keep the runner from getting his feet under him.

In the 4th and 5th there wasn't much going on. We manufactured a run in the 5th to bring it to 3-2, but that's it. Outside of that neither team threatened.

So we entered the 6th down 3-2 and the last 4 batters in our lineup due up. Tyler struck out on 3 pitches, 2 over his head, for out 1. Sean went up to the plate aggressive for the first time this season and struck out. He was swinging at good pitches though and the aggressiveness was good to see. Out 2. The Tigers now decide to change pitchers. I was honestly shocked. They had a kid out there that had given up a soft run in the 5th, but had otherwise shut us down and they decide to bring in a new pitcher. The new pitcher promptly hits Britt on his first pitch giving us a sliver of light. The then walks Donovan on 4 pitches. Quentin gets a pitch to hit on the 1st pitch and grounds it between first and 2nd where both of their fielders misplay the ball and I send Britt in to score while leaving us with Donovan on 2nd and Quentin on first. On a 3-2 pitch Nolan lofted one out into shallow left that drops to score Donovan and we take a 4-3 lead. We now have runners on a 2nd and 3rd and Kaden up at the plate. The Tigers decide they've seen enough and change pitchers again. On the 2nd pitch from the new pitcher Kaden pops one about 3 miles in the air to 3rd and their 3rd baseman made the catch on what was a really tough pop up for the 3rd out. Kaden probably missed launching one over everyone's head by a couple of milometers.

The bottom of the 6th was absolutely crazy. Quentin walked the leadoff batter and they quickly get runners on 2nd and 3rd with 1 out after Joey bobbled a ball hit to him in left field. Their next batter puts one out to left again, a runs scores, Joey hits the relay to Magnus, Magus throws home and then things got messy. Kaden has the ball at the plate in proper position and starts to drop a bit anticipating a sliding runner. The problem is the runner doesn't slide. He goes right into the plate standing up, and plants a cleat right into Kaden's inner thigh (Kaden was standing, crouched down, and the runner came in so high he was able to plant a cleat into the upper part of his leg). Kaden holds on, but is hurt. I'm absolutely pissed because it's a dirty play. I seriously doubt the runner did it intentionally, but it should have been an immediate out for not even attempting to slide. The ump is checking on Kaden and calls time. The Tigers THEN send the runner from first while the ump isn't looking. The first thing I did when the ump called time is I looked to see where their runner was at. He was at first. Once I get Kaden back up and he tells me he can keep playing I look up to find the runner at 2nd and I'm pretty damn pissed about it. The ump says he didn't see it so all he can do is give him 2nd. I haven't seriously argued a call this season. I argued this one and probably should have at least received a warning. I think the ump knew he blew this one though.

Then, in keeping with Tigers baseball, they try to steal 3rd on the very next pitch since our catcher is now playing hurt. Kaden puts the ball on the money, but Nolan doesn't catch the ball cleanly and the runner is safe. However, Tigers players apparently aren't coached to slide and since he tried to come in standing up he came about a centimeter off the bag trying to keep his balance and Nolan had kept his glove on him the entire time like he was supposed to and he was ruled out. 2 outs. Quentin walks the batter at the plate. Their next batter rolls one slowly to 3rd (seriously, how many of these has my team seen this year?) that we have no shot at making a play on. Their runners advance to 2nd and 3rd on a wild pitch. Then they ground one to short and Magnus tries to take the closest play, throws to 3rd, he's tagged out, but the run counts since the tag was applied just after the batter crossed 1st base. We lose 5-4 in a heartbreaker.

The toughest part about this loss is my kids and half the parents had no idea why we lost. They thought it was the 3rd out and I had to explain to my kids that they lost after they came off the field thinking we were headed to extra innings.

I'm still really pissed about the play at the plate and the steal of 2nd while I have a player down on the field crying because their player didn't slide when he should have. I'm not happy that they followed that up by immediately trying to get a base on what they thought was an injured player behind the plate (I'm thankful that they did it, but this was a straight steal attempt that they otherwise wouldn't have even tried on Kaden).

I love coaching kids at this age. I love being involved in games at this age. I've never had a problem with kids or coaches on another team at any point in any year I've coached. I do not like the Tigers. I think they're a dirty team. I think their parents are horrible sports parents. I want nothing more than to beat them in the playoffs.

Atocep · 06-09-2012, 10:59 PM

We now have the Lions on Monday and I'm worried that my kids heads won't be the right place. They were very down at the end of this game. I did my best to keep their heads up after this one, but confidence is a difficult thing to keep balanced with 9 and 10 year olds.

The Tigers beat the Blue Raiders 4-0 before our game. Their win over us basically clinches 1st for them unless some crazy stuff happens. If we can get by the Lions we'll play the Blue Raiders on Wednesday for 2nd heading into the playoffs.

Atocep · 06-09-2012, 11:14 PM

A question for anyone reading. Am I in the wrong in thinking all of the stuff that happened with the play at the plate in the bottom of the 6th was dirty at the 9 and 10 year old level?

Overall I thought the ump called a solid game. The Tigers won legitimately. That play ended up having no bearing on the outcome. What they did, especially sending the runner when the ump wasn't looking, is something I could never imagine myself doing. Maybe I'm crazy but I think my first reaction, even as a coach for the other team, would have been to run down and check on the player. Not send my runner to 2nd.

JonInMiddleGA · 06-09-2012, 11:54 PM

Sending the runner to 2nd after time was called = pushing the envelope pretty hard ... although it's on the umpire to manage that aspect of the situation. It can always be argued that they weren't sure time was out and they were simply playing hard "to the whistle" so to speak, but I don't get the sense that's what happened here.

Stealing third on the first pitch after the injury however is fair game IMO.

The play at the plate (that led to the injury), that's tough ground for me. I don't like the new rules about forced slides at all: I never played that way, was never taught that way, never coached in a league with that rule, it's entirely counter-intuitive to everything I've ever known. But if it's a black letter rule then it should have been enforced -- and I'd likely have gotten tossed pointing that out, quite possibly with very colorful language -- and that finds me coming back to the umpire for the second time in this discussion.

Atocep · 06-10-2012, 12:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Sending the runner to 2nd after time was called = pushing the envelope pretty hard ... although it's on the umpire to manage that aspect of the situation. It can always be argued that they weren't sure time was out and they were simply playing hard "to the whistle" so to speak, but I don't get the sense that's what happened here.

Stealing third on the first pitch after the injury however is fair game IMO.

The play at the plate (that led to the injury), that's tough ground for me. I don't like the new rules about forced slides at all: I never played that way, was never taught that way, never coached in a league with that rule, it's entirely counter-intuitive to everything I've ever known. But if it's a black letter rule then it should have been enforced -- and I'd likely have gotten tossed pointing that out, quite possibly with very colorful language -- and that finds me coming back to the umpire for the second time in this discussion.

I think that's pretty fair.

I can assure you the sending the runner to 2nd wasn't just playing hard to the whistle. Their defense was the runner was halfway when time was called so he should be granted the bag anyway. I can 100% assure you he was standing still at the bag when time was called and there shouldn't have been any confusion about it because I was stepping onto the field of play right as time was granted.

Sending the runner to 3rd on the next pitch wasn't so much of an issue for me as an isolated incident as part of a series of incidents that just rubbed me the wrong way.

Atocep · 06-11-2012, 05:38 PM

Kaden had his first practice with the select/all star team yesterday. About 15 minutes into drills he complained about a stomach ache and took a break for a bit before going back out. He then proceeded to throw up a bit on the field, came off the field, and emptied his stomach in the grass to the side of the field. 10 minutes later he was back out there like nothing happened. My guess is the pizza his mom gave him for lunch upset his stomach for whatever reason.

Aside from that, it was a good day for him. Despite being sick he stood out in the field. It was just a practice to see the kids up close for the first time. Since it was a Sunday afternoon we only had 6 of our 11 show up. Kaden's versatility likely has him in a utility role with this group. You could plug him into any position out there and he'll do fine. I could see him getting time behind the plate, at 2nd, and in the outfield.

There are 5 tournaments that they're considering and the first runs from July 6th-8th. They would like to get them entered into a minimum of 4 if not all 5 if there are no major schedule conflicts.

EDIT: [Proud parent alert] There's a Tigers coach helping out with this. He's a great guy. Their head coach is too actually. Most of their problems seem to stem from a couple of assistants (they have 5 total coaches) and a few parents. Anyway, he was telling me that he had to get onto their 3rd base coach for having a runner try to steal 3rd at one point during our last game. He was gunned down pretty easily and when asked why he sent the runner the 3rd base coach said he thought we had changed catchers and moved Kaden from behind the plate. He went on to tell me that they don't run on Kaden unless the ball hits the backstop and kicks away.

Atocep · 06-11-2012, 11:48 PM

Wow. Holy shit. Wow.

We did exactly what I was expecting, unfortunately. Despite doing everything I could my kids overlooked the Lions.

This game was crazy, I was short two coaches, and my attention was pulled in every direction imaginable so I don't remember a lot of details for this one. We started Kaden and he was off today. It was his worst pitching this season. He gave up 2 in the first and we got those two back in the bottom of the first. Then he gave up another in the 2nd and it could have been much worse because the bases were loaded when he struck out the Lions hitter for the final out.

At that point I went with Joey. I intended to rest him this game even though we really haven't worked him too hard. However, our body language in the field and in the dugout was terrible. It was like we were just there to be there. I had to treat this game like a playoff game and Joey is our most consistent pitcher. Joey shut them down in the 3rd and gave up 1 in the 4th. We took a 5-3 lead into the 5th. Then the wheels fell off. Joey was just a touch off with several pitches that led to a couple of walks and then they started putting the ball in play and we just weren't playing good defense. They end up getting 2 runs in the 5th inning to tie the game at 5 heading into the bottom of the 5th. We go 3 up 3 down to take things to the 6th tied at 5.

In the 6th I bring in Quentin and he was ok. A little off, but the defense continued to play terribly and we gave them 2 more runs to make the game 7-5 going to the bottom of the 6th. We were done at this point. Heads down, no one talking, no one really looking like they wanted to be there. I pulled the team aside while a new pitcher warmed up and told them it was time for us to roll over and take a loss to a team we should be beating easily or we can down fighting. We had Joey leading off. I honestly don't recall a lot of what happened other than their pitcher got wild and put some runners on and we took advantage. Our first run came home on a ground out by Christopher and their pitcher walked Sean with the bases loaded to tie the game at 7. Britt worked the count to 3-2 before grounding out sharply to 2nd to end our threat.

Extra innings.

That woke us up. We were talking to each other in the field in the top of the 7th and looked like the real Rough Riders for the first time this game. Their first hitter grounded out on Quentin's first pitch of the inning, he struck out the 2nd hitter, than the 3rd hitter grounds to short and Christopher drops the ball giving them life. Quentin walks the next batter and then they ground a ball to Sean at 2nd who does the smart thing and runs it all the way to the bag at 2nd for the 3rd out.

Bottom 7. This is it. We're past time to start a new inning. If we win this game we play the Blue Raiders for 2nd place on Wednesday. A loss eliminates us from 2nd and would mean we have to beat the Blue Raiders on Wednesday to keep 3rd place. A tie eliminates us from 2nd but means we still keep 3rd.

Donovan (our 12th batter) is at the plate. He walks on 5 pitches. This gives us a runner, but it's a runner that still struggles with the rules and is far and away our slowest baserunner. It does bring us to the top of the order. Quentin follows that up with a solid single to center which brings Donovan to 2nd. It's Nolans turn at the plate and he grounds out, but moves both runners up giving us runners on 2nd and 3rd with 1 out and Kaden at the plate.

I'm now telling Donovan over and over "on contact you're listening to me. You are listening to my instructions." The Lions have their outfield kind of deep and the infield WAY in. On a 1-1 pitch Kaden launches one that normally would have been over outfielder's heads but they had him played so deep it went right at the centerfielder. On contact Donovan took off to home and apparently wanted no part of me calling him back. Their centerfielder raises his glove, the ball drops into the glove, and pops out hitting the ground and ending the game. We win 8-7 in 7 innings.

We played awful. My kids got the wakeup call they needed heading into the Blue Raiders on Wednesday and the playoffs on Friday. This was honestly the first game this year I thought was over before it ended just because of our body language and attitude. This also means we can finish no worse than 3rd place.

My kids deserve credit for never quitting. This is 3 league games in a row that we've come back in during the 5th inning or later to take the lead or tie. As I also told my kids, this also shows that the top 4 in this league are capable of beating anyone else. The playoffs are going to be crazy.

This also brings our record to 15-3-1 on the season with all of our loses to the Tigers. The Lions are yet another team that has told us we're better than the Tigers. Their coach said our pitching and catching are the best in the league and he told me to tell the Blue Raiders coach to put the bottle down when I mentioned that he said his catcher was better than ours.

Atocep · 06-12-2012, 12:28 AM

Something I forgot to mention. An awful no call in the bottom of the 6th nearly cost us this game. On the grounder that scored Joey to bring us to within 1 run in the bottom of the 6th Christopher was on his way to 1st, had to to slow up because their first baseman backed up onto the back part of the bag to play a bad throw, he makes the catch as Christopher ran right into him. No obstruction call. I went nuts.

As I'm coming down the 3rd base line asking why obstruction wasn't called I get the scorekeeper for the Lions yelling that the 1st baseman has the right to play the ball. I politely told him he's wrong and discussed it with the ump while the same guy just kept yelling at me that he has a right to catch the ball. Finally, the Lions coach told their scorekeeper that I was correct but he said he didn't think it affected the outcome of the play.

Regardless, obstruction should have been called there and when I got some time between innings to discuss it with the ump some more he just said he didn't see where the 1st baseman's foot was and all I could do is point out that our runner ran squarely into the 1st baseman so where in the hell would his foot need to be for that to happen? That call (or lack-thereof) sent us to the 7th and nearly had a major impact on our season.

Atocep · 06-12-2012, 01:08 AM

Here are the standings for league play only through this evening's games. The Tigers beat the Blue Raiders 7-4 tonight which means the Blue Raiders have lost their last 3 league games.

Code:

         Teams	        W	L	T	PCT	GB	GP	RS	RA
1	Tigers	        8	1	1	.850	0.0	10	82	31
2	Rough Riders	5	3	1	.611	2.5	9	80	62
3	Blue Raiders	3	3	2	.500	3.5	8	73	59
4	Tacoma Lions	3	5	0	.375	4.5	8	77	83
5	Rockets	        0	7	0	.000	7.0	7	38	115

Atocep · 06-13-2012, 05:24 PM

Tonight's game against the Blue Raiders is for 2nd place and it really is a huge deal for the playoffs. The 3 seed will play the Lions on Friday and then win or lose you have a double header on Saturday. Then if you're still alive you play again on Monday. The condensed playoff schedule really makes things tough and the difference between opening against the Lions or the Rockets is monumental. It will be hard for the 3 and 4 seeds to not run out of pitchers at some point.

It's really difficult not to look back at the first game we played against the Blue Raiders and get a little frustrated over the fact that a 10-6 lead turned into a 10-10 tie due to some things beyond our control.

I'm hoping our kids show up ready to play tonight because the roles have reversed in our rivalry and we're now the team that they're dying to beat. We have to be ready for the challenge.

Atocep · 06-13-2012, 11:01 PM

Well, long story short, we got our butts handed to us tonight. It was 9-0 after 2 and a half innings. The Blue Raiders came prepared to beat a team that had their number up until tonight and we wanted to goof off. We put 5 on them in the bottom of the 3rd, but the only run we scored from there was in the bottom of the 6th to make it 14-6.

Magnus and Canaan's dads are great about keeping order in the dugout while Mark and I are coaching the bases and with Mark and Canaan's dad gone that leaves us with 2 base coaches and no one in the dugout. The kids seem to think that's the green light to turn the dugout into a playground. Luckily Mark and Canaan's dad are both back tomorrow.

What I decided to do after today's game was I made the kids have a team meeting without coaches to decide whether they wanted to just skip the playoffs and have a pizza party for the end of the season or actually play in the playoffs. Now, we know there really was no option there, but I sent off on their own for 5 minutes to "discuss" what their decision would be.

Since they "chose" to play in the playoffs we'll practice tomorrow and it's going to be like day 1 practice. We're coasting right now thinking we're a good team and we need kick in the pants or we'll be out of the playoffs quickly.

Atocep · 06-15-2012, 10:59 PM

We had a tough practice last night. It was very similar in pace and difficulty to one of our early practices. The idea was to remind the kids of how hard we have to work to have success.

Today when I showed up for our game I made sure to stay upbeat and get the kids excited to play. After a hard practice and a long talk yesterday evening it would be very easy for the kids to get down and put too much pressure on themselves. My goal was to get them out there focused on playing their game and having fun. We did that.

This first game of our playoffs was over pretty quickly. We dominated in every aspect against the same Lions team we struggled with on Monday. The final score was 11-1 and we looked great. We started off a little slow at the plate and then took over. 1-0 after 1 and by the end of 4 it was 11-1 and that was ballgame.

The Lions coaches are my favorite in the league. Hands down. All great people, fun to play against, and you don't get that sense of hostility you get with other coaches staffs. They were planning on entering a 9U tournament from the 6th-8th of July and had 3 players drop out. After seeing our team play they offered Joey, Quentin, and Magnus a chance to play with them in that tournament. I know Joey and Magnus plan on playing and Quentin is undecided. I think it would be a great experience for all 3.

Things get difficult from here. The playoffs are double elimination and we have the Tigers tomorrow at 10am. Win or lose we play again at 1pm. Then if we're still alive we will have to play another game at 6pm. IMO it's ridiculous to have 9-10 year olds playing 3 games in 1 day in a playoff setting, but I don't make the rules.

hoopsguy · 06-16-2012, 12:41 PM

Good luck against the Tigers (and whoever else you face) in the playoffs today.

BYU 14 · 06-16-2012, 12:47 PM

Damn, three games in a single day is nuts, major league teams don't even have enough pitching for that!!

Good luck coach!!

Atocep · 06-16-2012, 07:21 PM

Today was not a good day for us and for me it went beyond just baseball.

We had a rough start against the Tigers. They scored 4 in the 1st mostly off of soft grounders that were finding their way through our infield. Their hits were 2-3 feet out of the reach of our infielders. Our hits, at least in the early innings, were hit hard but right at their defenders.

We found ourselves down 5-0 entering the 5th inning and we finally started getting things going. Our hits started falling and their pitcher got a bit wild. We found ourselves with the bases loaded, 4 runs in, and only 1 out and the Tigers went to their ace. He struck out the first batter he saw and then walked home our 5th run of the inning to make things 5-5 going into the bottom of the 5th.

Kaden shut down the heart of their order in the bottom of the 5th and in the top of the 6th we put a couple of baserunners on but failed to do anything with them. The bottom of the 6th started out with a strikeout. Then we misplayed a popup to give them a runner. Kaden walked the next batter then got a strikeout to give us 2 outs, but 2 runners on. Their next batter, however, on a 2-2 pitch softly put one into left to end the game 6-5. Another heartbreaking loss for our kids to the Tigers.

I'll take this opportunity to say Kaden is as competitive of a kid as you'll see. He wants to win. I've absolutely never had a problem with him disrespecting another team in any way at all. It's never been questioned by an umpire, a referee, or a coach. Never.

As Kaden came off the field after giving up the game winning hit he was crying and as he came off the mound and threw both his hat and his glove into the dirt. The umpire came out to put his arm around him and tell him what a great job he did and looked at me and said "that kid is a competitor".

After we shook hands with the Tigers and I'm putting our equipment away to take it over to the next field for our 2nd game I get one of our parents come up to me. This is a parent that maybe watched 2 of our games last year at most. He's been at a few more this year, but has been at less than 50%. The parent tells me that the stuff with the hat and glove throwing from Kaden was out of line and if it was his kid he'd "have him out of here." I was honestly stunned. I really didn't know what to say. There were many things I wanted to say, but with some of our kids and parents still hanging around in the general area all I ended up saying was "I'll take take care of it" in my best fuck off tone possible.

Our next game was against the Lions who had just beat the Rockets in a close game. I found out the reason it was a close game was because the Lions saved their only good pitcher for our game and we came out flat after another loss to the Tigers in the bottom of the 6th with 2 outs.

After having my parenting questioned it was honestly difficult for me to get into the game. We were ahead 5-2 at one point, but then Quentin started complaining about feeling sick and Joey said his arm was bothering him. So both of them were more or less shut down. We really didn't get much going at the plate after getting those 5 runs and their one good pitcher actually pitched all 6 innings. Something I've never seen at this level. We lost 9-6 ending our season.

Never in my life has my parenting ever been questioned in any way. I don't care if people question my coaching. I can deal with that. Suggesting that I'm not parenting my kid or something like that crosses the line and was a kick to the stomach during what was already a tough day.

I mentioned the incident to Quentin's dad along with our our coaches and all of them were just as stunned as I was. Quentin's dad apparently thought it was so ridiculous he was telling others because I had someone come up to me and ask if it was true.

I honestly think I'm done coaching. I have thick skin on a lot of things, but how I treat my kid is a sensitive subject and this put things in a different perspective for me. Maybe I'm in the minority, but as a coach give me 9 kids that come off the field the way Kaden did after a tough loss and I'll gladly take them. He did not yell, did not point fingers, did not try to blame anyone but himself, and he got right into line to shake hands with the Tigers players. I want kids that care whether they won or lost. If I'm in the wrong on that then coaching kids isn't the job for me.

It was a great season for us. We were team that was nearly folded and widely considered a joke coming into this season and we went out and showed we could play with the very best 9-10 year old teams in this area. A team with zero wins in 2 years found it in themselves to win 16 games this year, challenge for the league title, and show that they would win any other league around here. My pride in these kids is immeasurable. The one thing I'm proud of myself for doing is stepping up and taking this job rather than become part of the problem here. The attention belongs to my players though and I'm working on some things to make sure that they get more than the typical end of season pizza party.

BYU 14 · 06-17-2012, 10:54 AM

Don't quite know what to say about that, other than you will always have that one guy and it is usually as you described. Very poor attendance, second guesses everything you do when he is there, no matter how well things are going. Then quick to criticize when things don't go well.

It is annoying as hell, especially when you know how much or your heart and soul you have put into those kids, which is why you can't let it counter the way the team and ALL the other parents feel about you. Don't think for a minute they don't all appreciate what you have done. This season is a memory that will stay with them and you are the main reason.

Don't let one parent who is likely jealous/bitter at life/or just a dick take that away from you.

JonInMiddleGA · 06-17-2012, 12:00 PM

As BYU said, there's always somebody, more often than not it'll be somebody that's clueless. What you described in Kaden is an admirable trait afaic, not one to be criticized. He sounds like the kind of kid that you want to hire, or have working on your side someday. I'll spare you more flowery praise of it than that, because that's really the bottom line as far as I'm concerned.

As for any coaching future, I'll leave that to your own judgment because I've been there, done that, and would probably rather face a double root canal without anesthetic than ever do it again. The cons ultimately outweighed the pros for me -- personally, internally, however best to describe it -- and I won't criticize anyone for walking away. That said however, I'd caution you against making any decision either way while under the influence of the various emotions that go with the end of the season.

By what I can tell from many miles away, you moved several mountains with these kids. My experience is that you did with them and for them what few others can/will do. Whatever the future may hold I hope that you're able, with some time, to let that be the most lasting memory of the season.

JonInMiddleGA · 06-17-2012, 12:05 PM

Now, more important personal matters aside, from a baseball perspective I kind of get a sense that the team overall simply ran out of gas, emotionally more than physically.

Playing meaningful games late in a season was largely a new experience for them, to actually have expectations was new as was reacting to the ups & downs that goes with those. At some point I think that takes a toll, one larger perhaps than just a single result. They're young, they have things to learn, in the bigger picture this is one of those learning opportunities. Unfortunately those lessons sometimes get in the way of short term outcomes.

Truthfully, I'm not so sure that navigating those situations is something that can be taught nearly so much as it's something that has to be learned through experience.

Atocep · 06-17-2012, 06:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Now, more important personal matters aside, from a baseball perspective I kind of get a sense that the team overall simply ran out of gas, emotionally more than physically.

Playing meaningful games late in a season was largely a new experience for them, to actually have expectations was new as was reacting to the ups & downs that goes with those. At some point I think that takes a toll, one larger perhaps than just a single result. They're young, they have things to learn, in the bigger picture this is one of those learning opportunities. Unfortunately those lessons sometimes get in the way of short term outcomes.

Truthfully, I'm not so sure that navigating those situations is something that can be taught nearly so much as it's something that has to be learned through experience.

This is how I feel as well. The back end of our schedule was loaded more than any other team's in our league. We were the only team in the league that didn't get a game against the Rockets in the last 10 days of the season. The Lions and Blue Raiders both got them twice. We had to show up ready to play our A-game in every one of our last 7 games and that's a lot to ask of a group that had never played a meaningful baseball game prior to this season.

We gave the Tigers everything we had Saturday, came back from 5 down late, and lost with 2 outs in the bottom of the 6th for the 2nd time in one week to that team. Then in our last game my kids were out there trying. They were competing. They were just emotionally spent and you could see it. We were playing a team that saw us as the best team in the league (they've told me that several times), they went 6 innings with their best pitcher, and their kids saw us as the giants they that had an opportunity to knock out. We couldn't have possibly matched what they brought at us yesterday. Because of that I understood that outside of encouragement the best thing to do in that last game was just let things play out. My players had been through enough already.

A 3rd game probably would have been the worst thing possible for us as well, to be perfectly honest. With Joey done, Quentin sick, and Kaden/Magnus not eligible to pitch much we wouldn't have put up much of a fight in the last game and it would have been yet another game against the Tigers. Rolling over and getting shelled by the Tigers to end the season is probably the last thing my kids needed.

Atocep · 06-17-2012, 06:24 PM

I want to give thanks to everyone that's read this. Special thanks to BYU, Macro, JiMGA, Hoopsguy, and everyone else that's given advice and encouragement throughout this season. Things like that mean a lot when you're wondering if you're in over your head and asking yourself what in the hell you've gotten yourself into.

hoopsguy · 06-17-2012, 07:31 PM

I had similar thoughts to a couple of the others who have already posted relative to the comments from the other parent. It would be a shame to lose someone who has devoted themselves so completely to their kids because of some thoughtless/irresponsible comments by one fringe parent. But I didn't want to dole out advice when the emotions were as raw as they must have been last night ... I figured it would likely be better received early next week.

Thanks for posting this dynasty. I'll look forward to hearing about Kaden's continued progress, regardless of whatever decisions you may reach around coaching future teams.

Atocep · 06-23-2012, 06:39 PM

The Blue Raiders ended up winning the league. They beat the Tigers once in 7 innings to get to the championship game and then beat the Tigers in 8 innings to win the league title. You know from reading this that I thought if it wasn't us then it was going to be the Blue Raiders. Their kids struggled to hit the ball against good pitching for most of the season, but got hot at the right time. One of our parents commented on them beating the Tigers to send the Tigers to the losers bracket after our game with the Tigers and I told them that if they're hitting the ball like they have been then they're incredibly tough to beat.

We beat the Blue Raiders twice. Officially the 1st game was a tie, but in reality we beat them. That should put the strides this group of kids made into perspective for anyone that followed us.

Next year the Mustang division will have some huge holes. The Tigers are moving up, most of the Blue Raiders move up, and about half of our kids will be moving up. That leaves the Lions (who are considering moving back to the Tacoma league), the Rockets, and whoever is moving up from the machine pitch league. It may be a very long time before Mustang sees a collection of teams like it had this year. Outplaying the league champion in 2 of the 3 games we played them is one hell of an accomplishment.

Atocep · 06-23-2012, 06:45 PM

For our end of season banquet the coaches have decided to send the kids to Charlie Safari (a giant indoor place with Laser Tag, mini-golf, arcade games, ect). I thought it would be great for the kids to get to be kids together without really having to think about baseball.

What I do and what the rest of the kids do for next year probably won't be decided until this winter. I do have 2 players from the Tacoma select league interested in joining us if we stick together. I have a friend of Kaden's here that played in the Fort Lewis league interested in playing for us next year and Kaden says he's pretty good.

The deciding factors will probably be whether I'm up to it and whether or not I can find someone knowledgeable in baseball to help out. The move to the Bronco division means 70 foot bases, leadoffs, steals, balks, ect. I would need at least 1 more coach that knows baseball and can teach it to even consider attempting a move up as a team.

rjolley · 06-23-2012, 07:05 PM

I've enjoyed reading along. Congrats on the great season. If you decide to coach next year, I hope you bring us along as well.

As for Kaden's reaction, I'm with you. I want players who care enough to be bothered by losing. I talk about that with the coaches I work with from time to time. These days, it seems like kids aren't as invested in their teams. I'll take a squad of less talented players who give a damn and play together over a more talented team with players who don't care.

Atocep · 07-11-2012, 01:04 PM

We had a player drop from the tournament team the Blue Raiders put together and since it was the player that they expected to be their ace pitcher they decided not to enter the tournament we were supposed to play in this past weekend. Right now they're looking at entering tournaments on the 20th, the 27th, and the 3rd. I worry that sitting back and not doing much over the past 2 weeks means some kids will have lost interest and are going to back out of these games. There's an end of season meeting for the league tomorrow and I should see their coaches there so I'm hoping to know a bit more then.

As for next season, it doesn't look like we'll be moving up to the next division as a group. Right now it just doesn't look feasible. We probably could get enough together to make the move, but I would be the only coach and 3 of our 4 main pitchers would be left behind since they were 9 year olds.

I'm keeping our options open, but there's already been teams coming to us with interest in Kaden playing for them next year. The Blue Raiders coach has started directly asking about our plans and the most interesting team that's talked to me is the Mud Dogs. They're the team I've mentioned in the past here that were unbeatable last season in our division and moved up this year. Well they won our division 2 years in a row, moved up, and won that division in their first year there. I was talking to one of their assistants (he's a parent of one of my players this year so he watched Kaden play quite a bit this year) and he told me that they would be very interested in Kaden if he's looking around for a team. He told me he could have started for them this year and he'd have to run it by their head coach if Kaden wants to play for them next year, but he said there shouldn't be any problems at all. He's a big fan of Kaden. He was telling me that he's helping coach the 11 year old All Star team and Kaden is better than at least 5 of the kids they have in that group and would have started there as well.

My main concern for Kaden going into next season is finding a good situation for him. I'm not convinced he'd get a legit shot at playing where he wants (catcher) with the Blue Raiders. They seem dead set on their assistant coach's son playing there. I get the impression they'd use Kaden's versatility to just plug holes they have rather than putting Kaden at a position that he's best at because they don't want to move any of their current players around. They're talking about playing him at 2nd base for tournaments, which honestly doesn't bother me for tournaments, but it seems like a huge waste of his arm to me. The Mud Dogs coach told me that they would put him at catcher and see how he is compared to their catchers and if he's good enough to get time there he'll get time. Otherwise they'll find the position that helps the team and he's interested in playing (probably short, 3rd, or center from what he was saying). Which is honestly all I'm looking for. I want him to have a chance to compete for the position he wants to play. We swapped phone numbers and he told me that when their kids get together for some winter workouts Kaden is welcome to join them to see how well he meshes with their group.

The way baseball is done here is just strange to me. Without much of a focus on the draft and competitive balance baseball is a year round thing in a sense. Recruiting for the next season starts as soon as the season ends. I'm not a fan of it at all, but if you're not taking advantage of it and using leverage when you can then your kid is likely to end up a bad situation (as Kaden and I found out last season).

Atocep · 07-21-2012, 12:07 AM

/sigh

I don't know what it takes to actually play some summer baseball here. We finally got our tournament team together and had been practicing for the past week and a half and today we found out the tournament we were supposed to play in tomorrow is canceled. They double booked the fields we were going to be playing on and our tournament is the one that had to look elsewhere. They decided on Lakewood (hey! convenient for us) but then the teams from Lacy said they weren't willing to travel to Lakewood. Oh, btw, the distance between Lakewood and Lacy is 10 miles.

The team we have is pretty stacked. There are two 11 year olds that make the cutoff to play as 10 year olds playing along with Kaden, a few Blue Raiders, and a couple of Tigers players. Right now they have Kaden as the number 3 pitcher behind the two 11 year olds while also splitting time between 3rd base and catcher.

We're trying to find a tournament for next weekend now. Hopefully we can find something and get some games in before the kids and parents lose interest.

Atocep · 07-30-2012, 12:06 AM

So this is going to be a small update with yet another rant.

Kaden finally got to play in a tournament this weekend and his team finished 3rd (out of 6) against teams that had already played 4-5 tournaments (or more) this year.

Kaden played pretty well. He struck out in his first at bat of the tournament and then either put the ball in play or walked in every other trip to the plate over 4 games. He had several solid hits including a ball that was about 2 feet short of being the 2nd homerun hit in the tournament (the only homerun hit was hit by a massive 11 year old). He got under it just a touch and it landed in front of the 205 sign in left. He also played pretty well behind the plate. Out of the 3 we had catch he was probably the best we had at keeping the ball in front of him. That's the good. Unfortunately there was a lot of bad too.

I was coaching this with the head coach and assistant coach of the Blue Raiders and it was an eye opening experience. I coached 1st base, was officially the head coach as far as interacting with the other coaches and umpires goes, but I had very little say on anything lineup related. The Blue Raiders assistant saw Kaden as our 3rd best pitcher mainly based on us having two 11 year olds that qualified as 10 years olds on the team that could pitch. The idea going into the tournament seemed to be that Kaden would be the player used to give us innings between those two pitchers (2 innings each). Kaden didn't pitch a single inning.

To top it off the head coach's son is the boy that blocked Christopher (from the team I coached) at 1st base and is the reason he came to my team. I saw firsthand the frustrations he and his parents had this weekend. The boy is very big, not athletic at all, and has a terrible (awful) attitude. When he makes contact he can hit the ball pretty damn far, but he doesn't make contact often (he made contact once in 4 games). He also can't play 1st base at all and it's the only position he's ever played so there's no place else to put him. I really wish I had good things to say but the attitude I saw from him and how it seemed to be accepted drove me nuts. He'd sit on the bench while everyone else warmed up, if you told him to do something he'd ask you why he has to do it, goofed off constantly in the dugout, and he made no effort at balls that weren't thrown right to him. What makes things worse is his dad thinks he's the best player in our league and told the coach of the 11u all star team that they could have used him.

One of the 11 year olds on our team's dad coaches in the 11-12 year old division of our league and just so happened to be the coach of the 11u all star team.. I got so frustrated with some of things that I was seeing that when we were in the field I'd leave the dugout and go stand behind where our parents were sitting. This player's dad comes up to me during the last game we played and says to me "you know you guys are wasting Kaden in right field". I told him "I know, but I don't want to come off as that type of parent so I'm just keeping my mouth shut" and he said "I understand, I just want you to know other people see it too" and he waved his hand over the entire parents section. Kaden played right field the entire last game we played. The head coach finally pulled his boy off of first base after he missed 5 balls in the first 2 innings of our last game but by then the game was out of hand. This after any other player would be pulled for an inning for missing a ball.

The Blue Raiders assistant coach and I had become fairly decent friends through this and after our last game as we're walking back to our cars I finally ask him what the deal is with the head coach's boy's attitude. I can't possibly describe the look of relief that came over his face. It was like he finally found someone that understood and was willing to talk about something that had been driving him nuts. He ranted for quite some time. He told me that he felt we should have pitched Kaden and that we needed Kaden in the infield and preferably behind the plate. This was honestly a relief because the entire time I'm watching this tournament I'm wondering if I'm just becoming an asshole parent that thinks his kid is better than he really is. The Blue Raiders assistant confirms to me that he felt Kaden was our 3rd best option as a pitcher, was probably our best hitter in this tournament, and is arguably our best option as a catcher. He told me that he felt we wasted Kaden as well.

He told me quite a few stories about how things are as an assistant and parent with the Blue Raiders. He said that last season as 9 year olds both his son and the head coach's boy were really struggling at the plate for the first 1/3 of the season. He finally goes up to the head coach and tells him that the two boys really should be dropped in the lineup to move up some of the kids that are hitting better and he said he surprisingly got the ok to do it. So he fills out a lineup with the coach's son batting 8th and his son batting 9th. His son was upset about it, but he explained that he's moving both he and the 1st baseman down in the order to let them see more pitches before their at bats and as soon as they start hitting again they'll move back up (he was trying to sugar coat it). The head coach submits the lineup and when the assistant checks the lineup at the start of the game the head coach's boy was moved back to 4th in the lineup and his boy is still 9th.

That's just a small sample of the stuff I was told. He was telling me stories for at least an hour while we were standing in the parking lot with Kaden and his boy waiting to leave.

The assistant coach's son and Kaden are the same age (separated by about 3 months) but his son is technically playing as a 9 year old and Kaden is barely a 10 year old. He had been telling me all week that he was probably going to leave his son behind in 9-10 year old ball for another year and kept making excuses as to why he'd do so. While talking he finally told me that the reason he's been strongly considering that is because he wants to get away from the Blue Raiders. He said he's tired of working to keep the team together and smoothing things over with the parents, he's tired of losing players whose parents get fed up, and he's tired of seeing the stuff that's allowed with the coach's son.

Before we left he told me asked me to keep in touch with him and if Kaden and I decide to join the Blue Raiders he'll stay. Otherwise he's going to keep his boy behind even though he has no business playing in the 9-10 year old league for a 3rd year.

Atocep · 07-30-2012, 12:24 AM

Overall this experience was very good for Kaden though. He saw the best pitching he'd ever seen and he really hit the ball. It was a huge confidence boost for him heading into baseball camp which happens to start tomorrow morning.

He knows the areas he has that need work heading into next season and now and is excited to keep playing baseball this summer if we can find another tournament.

On the other hand this weekend made the decision on what to do next season even tougher. In a perfect work the Blue Raiders assistant and I would just take my team and move up to 11-12 but the politics on getting him off the Blue Raiders would be a mess. I don't have the slightest idea what we're going to do next season.

05-20-2012, 12:56 PM	#102
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	Chris is fine. No stitches needed and no concussion. In fact, his mom said the only thing he asked the doctor was if he can go back to his game. Something I failed to mention was Kaden and Joey combined to pull off the best play I've seen in my 2 years of watching games at this level. With a runner on 3rd Joey threw a wild pitch to the backstop (15-20 foot backstop). Kaden slid to the ball on one knee and blindly flipped the ball back behind him toward home plate. Joey was running down to cover like he was supposed to, the throw hit him face-high, and he put down the tag in time to get the runner coming from 3rd. Last edited by Atocep : 05-20-2012 at 03:03 PM.

05-25-2012, 03:59 AM	#104
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	Here's the standings heading into the holiday weekend. The schedule gets tough from here. We have 2 games remaining against the Blue Raiders, 1 game against the Tigers, and 2 games against the Lions. Code: Teams W L T PCT GB GP RS RA 1 Rough Riders 11 2 1 .821 0.0 14 156 79 2 Tigers 10 2 1 .808 0.5 13 99 44 3 Blue Raiders 9 2 2 .769 1.0 13 140 72 4 Tacoma Lions 8 5 0 .615 3.0 13 187 129 5 Rockets 3 9 0 .250 7.5 12 100 150 What become clear this season is the 3 top teams in this league would win any other league in this area. The only loses in interlock play by any of our top 3 are against select teams, which are essentially all star teams that either play in a division of select teams or they do travel tournaments all season. We have beaten the top non-select teams in Shelton, Olympia, and Vashon while the Blue Raiders and Tigers both beat the top non-select team in Tacoma last weekend. This league is ridiculously strong.

05-25-2012, 02:44 PM	#105
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	The league drama for last week once again centered around the Blue Raiders. During their trip to Tacoma last week for a double header they ran into some issues with an umpire. It started during the 1st game. They were leading fairly comfortably (went on to win 16-4) and according to their coach an umpire that wasn't working their game just walks into their dugout during the 4th inning and starts going off on their coaches on how they were running up the score, were disrespectful, and if he was umping the game it would be different. Their coach told me they just ignored it (what else could you really do?) and finished up the game. However, as luck would have it, that same umpire was the ump for their 2nd game and, from what I was told, every batter for the Blue Raiders that put the ball in play for the first 2 innings received a warning for throwing the bat. In the 3rd a player was ejected for throwing the bat after receiving a warning (I thought they were supposed to be ruled out instead of ejected). At this point the Blue Raiders were winning 8-3 despite despite playing very conservatively on the bases. After the Blue Raiders player was ejected their coach told the umpire that if he's going to eject one of his players then he can eject them all. He pulled his team off the field and took the forfeit. The Blue Raiders coach said he talked to the other team to apologize for pulling his team and he said the other coach told him he had no idea what was going on that game, but something obviously wasn't right so there were no issues between the 2 teams. What is interesting about this whole situation is the fact that the Tigers were playing at the same time on the field next to the Blue Raiders and won their first game 21-4. Considering the history between the Blue Raiders and Tigers along with how the Tigers parents can be it makes me wonder if one of their parents had been talking to that ump and set him off. This week should be free of drama since we were the only game that was able to be played because of weather and there are no games scheduled for the weekend. Last edited by Atocep : 05-25-2012 at 02:45 PM.

05-27-2012, 10:39 PM	#108
MacroGuru Coordinator Join Date: May 2003 Location: Utah	I am and was all about bat speed. I wanted to get the bat around as fast as possible so I always went with the shorter lighter bats. I have my 11 yr old the same way and he is bigger than most of the kids in his class. __________________ "forgetting what is in the past, I strive for the future"

05-29-2012, 09:54 AM	#110
GoldenEagle Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Little Rock, AR	It depends on the league rules, but I have seen leagues that allow players to be ejected for slinging their bats. I never ejected a player for it. To me, it would have to be obvious that the player was being very dangerous to others, not once but twice. Sports officiating attracts all types. This guy (if it is all true) sounds like he was on some sort of amazing power trip. Waring every player for slinging the bat is ridiculous. As far as the bat goes, I always used the bat in your primary hand trick. If you could hold it with one hand, you would have no problem getting around with it. __________________ Xbox 360 Gamer Tag: GoldenEagle014

05-25-2012, 03:48 AM	#103
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	We played the Rockets yesterday and there's not a whole lot to say. We won 16-6 in 4 innings. We jumped out to a 10-0 lead after 2 innings and we decided to play kids pretty much wherever they wanted to play. I put Brendan out on the mound for an inning since both of his parents were there. He gave up 4 runs, but all 3 outs he got were strikeouts. He was excited and his parents were happy to see him pitch. Kaden gave us an inning on the mound and he wasn't at his best, but he was throwing hard. Probably harder than any of the Rockets kids had seen this year. We took a 12-6 lead into the bottom of the 4th and the game ended on a bases loaded triple by Kaden. Highlights Some extended 1 on 1 work on hitting with Britt and Donovan at practice Wednesday paid off. Donovan had two hits and Britt didn't get a hit, but that was only because of a nice defensive play by the Rockets 2nd baseman. Britt made solid contact and lifted a flyball to shallow right and the 2nd baseman moved back and made the play. Magnus started out rough, as usual, but settled down and pitched well. *Kaden only caught 1 inning. Joey and Quentin didn't pitch. In other news, I had mentioned to our division director that I'd love to have another shot at the Tigers. He called me Wednesday night to tell me that he asked the Tigers if they were interested in playing us on June 9th instead of the Rockets. The Tigers coach agreed. We weren't scheduled to play that day so it was an easy decision for us. So we're set to play the Tigers at 1pm on June 9th. The Tigers will be playing a double header that day starting at 10am against the Blue Raiders. This game will even things up schedule-wise between us since the first time we played the Tigers it was part of a double header for us, but the only game the Tigers had to play that day.

05-27-2012, 03:26 PM	#106
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	I have a question about bats that maybe someone here can help with. Kaden moves up an age level next year and he's going to need a bigger bat. Right now he's swinging a 30" 19oz bat. I've seen parents in this league that have their kids swinging -3 bats which seems like a bit much to me. I do want him to get used to swinging a heavier bat over the summer to get used to the difference though and wondered if anyone knows what an above average sized kid that's on the upper end of his age's skill range should be swining?

05-27-2012, 05:47 PM	#107
britrock88 Pro Starter Join Date: Jan 2011 Location: Madison, WI	Next age range is 11-12, right? Maybe a 32/21?

05-31-2012, 03:04 PM	#113
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	The coaches of the Mustang Division in our league met with the league president last night to discuss what we're going to do about All Stars this year. It was a great example of how much damage bad sports parents can do to the league and the impact it has on the kids. We're not even going to attempt to field a 10U All Star team this year. The person that had initially expressed interest in coaching the team (and the person I was going to help) pulled out because as the Blue Raiders coach he knew that both he and the league would get flooded with accusations for any Tigers player left off the team. It goes a bit beyond that and I'll get into that below. I agreed with his decision. He would have been in a no win situation and it would have been a headache for the league. Because he has removed himself from coaching the team his players aren't really interested in doing All Stars and would rather do select tournaments after the season ends. The only other coach to express interest in coaching the team said that with his son being 9 and with the 10 year old talent depleted so much already he'd be willing to do a 9U All Star team but he wasn't going to coach a 10U team. I don't blame him. So right now it looks like we'll field a 9U team if we can get enough players interested in playing. I had a talk with the league president on Tuesday and I learned that things between the Blue Raiders and Tigers are far worse than I thought. Mike (the league president) told me that he gets emails on a daily basis from different parents from those teams and it's almost always some accusation toward the other. It sounds like most of the problems stem from the Tigers parents and then the Blue Raiders have some parents that react to the Tigers parents. It's ugly. For example, less than 24 hours after the Blue Raiders forfeit the game in Tacoma Mike received an angry text from a Tigers parent wanting to know why the standings on the league website weren't updated to show that loss. That text came from a former board member. Kaden will be playing with the Blue Raiders this summer and I'll help coach. The first tournament starts the weekend after July 4th and we're really confident that we can get a team together that can win anything we enter them in. So Kaden is happy that he gets to keep playing. However, there's going to be a few 10 year olds on the Tigers that won't have the opportunity to keep playing this summer and it's entirely because of how bad that group of parents are.

06-01-2012, 12:28 AM	#114
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	This evening we played the Blue Raiders. This, as I've mentioned, is our biggest rival along with being a very well coached and talented team. We tied them the first time we played and I thought we should have won that game. This is a game I've been looking forward to since that 3rd game of the season. The plan today was to start Joey, have him go 2 innings, bring in Magnus for 1 inning, then Kaden for an inning, and close things out with Quentin for 2. Instead of being stubborn and sticking with that plan, this time I adjusted to what was going on. A couple things of note: we played this game without Canaan (vacation) and I was also told before the game that a Blue Raiders player would have to leave about 45 minutes after we start. That means his spot in the lineup is an out every time it comes up after he leaves. The game started out with Joey not having his best stuff. He's usually 65-75% strikes and this game it was about 50/50. He put a couple of runners on, but got us through the inning without giving up a run. In the bottom of the 1st we led things off with a wonderful Quentin bunt that was going to be an easy single until he stopped dead in his tracks halfway to first because he heard someone say "foul". The Blue Raiders continued on with the play and threw him out. Then with 1 out Kaden walked but was stranded at 3rd ending the inning tied 0-0. In the 2nd Joey looked a little more like himself and worked his way through their hitters without much of a problem. In our half of the 2nd we decided to revert back to watching pitches go by us and making it easy for the Blue Raiders pitcher. Joey was pitching well at this point and his pitch count was low so I decided to try to get a 3rd inning out of him. It would make things much easier for us if we could. We he got out onto the mound it was obvious he was tiring a bit because he struggled to keep the ball down. The Blue Raiders scored a couple of runs off of him, but he pitched well overall. I'll take 2 runs in 3 innings pitched every time. In our half of the 3rd we started to get things going a bit. We put a couple of runners on and with 2 outs Kaden doubled them in tying the score at 2. For the 4th inning I sent Magnus out to the mound. I wanted to get 1 inning from him and my thinking was that if he could get us through that inning without giving up more than a couple of runs we'd be in really good shape with a well rested Quentin available for the 5th and 6th and Kaden there as an emergency pitcher if needed. Magnus put away the first hitter quickly and had 2 strikes on the 2nd hitter before he ran into control issues. He hits the 2nd batter on a 0-2 count, walks the 3rd batter, strikes out the 4th batter, walks the 5th batter to load the bases, and hits the 6th batter to bring home a run. I was really worried that he would be thinking about the batter he hit because the 2nd batter that he hit he hit hard and in the ribs. I saw something like that throw him off in a game earlier this season so I called time and went out to talk to him to make sure his mind was on the next batter. Of course he walks that batter to bring home a 2nd run, but struck out the next batter to end the inning. 2 runs scored to make the score 4-2 Blue Raiders, but we're still in good shape. We followed that up by getting a runner on to start the bottom of the 4th and then saw their 1st baseman misplay a grounder, but had the presence of mind to look up and fire the ball to 2nd instead of trying to get to 1st. Our runner didn't think there was going to be a play at 2nd, had let up a bit, and was out by a step at 2nd. That was the end of our threat that inning. Still down 4-2 heading into the 5th. To start the 5th their player had to leave. He would be due up 8th that inning. I really wanted to get through this inning before his turn to bat came up because entering the 6th needing only 2 outs could mean the difference in this game. Quentin started off a shaky and didn't have his control. He walked a batter, gave up an infield hit, walked another batter to load the bases, but followed that up with a strikeout. The next hitter smacked the ball into left field and Donovan misplayed the ball pretty badly. 2 runs scored before he got the relay into Magnus at short who then fired the ball home to get their 3rd runner out at home for a HUGE out. Quentin stuck out the next batter to end the bleeding. At this point the score is 6-2, but we have Donovan due up and then we get to the top of our lineup so if we were going to do anything this was our chance. Donovan led off by walking. Quentin fought back from 0-2 for a walk. Nolan walked to load the bases for Kaden. On the first pitch Kaden hit the ball hard between 1st and 2nd and past their right fielder to score 2 runs and leave us with runners on 2nd and 3rd. Joey stepped up and grounded sharply to 2nd, but it was bobbled by their 2nd baseman scoring both Nolan and Kaden to tie the game. Joey stole 2nd and third while Christopher was at the plate. Christopher ends up drawing a walk. Magnus struck out. Brendan worked a walk to load the bases. Then Sean walked to bring home the go-ahead run and we reached the 5 run cap for the inning. We're now leading 7-6 and we only need 2 outs to finish things off. The top of the 6th started off with a high popup that Magnus called for and caught for out 1. Out 2 is their absent player. Their third batter softly grounds to short on the 1st pitch and falls down in the batters box. Christopher drops the ball, picks up, and that's the game. A 7-6 win over what is IMO the best team we'll play this year. Their coaches and parents were fantastic after the game. No bitterness at all. They congratulated us on a great game and we talked for quite awhile about how crazy our 2 games have been this year. Our parents were ecstatic. I had parents I rarely speak to coming up and congratulating us on the win. If there was one team on the schedule our parents and kids would want a win over it was the Blue Raiders and these kids made it happen. Highlights Our pitching. Joey, Magnus, Quentin all did their jobs. I got exactly what I was looking for out of all 3 of them. Our defense. 1 error in the outfield. 1 popup we misplayed. Everything else in the field was done exactly as it should have been. Kaden both at the plate and behind it. The Blue Raiders are a team that wants to run you death. They look to steal with every single runner. They stole 2nd twice and 3rd once. That's it. At the plate Kaden was 2-2 with 2 doubles and a walk. He sparked our scoring in both innings that we scored in. Donovan had that error in left and led things off with a walk the next half inning. It may sound easy, but it was a walk he worked to get and he very easily could have went to the plate with that error on his mind. Our team played a hell of a game and continues to show why this year we expect to win when we play. Last edited by Atocep : 06-01-2012 at 12:52 AM.*

06-02-2012, 06:40 PM	#115
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	We had 2 games at home against Vashon teams today. The first was against the team we beat 17-1 at Vashon. We really didn't put forth anything close to our full effort out there against them. I pitched Magnus 2 innings and then followed that up with 1 by Kaden, 1 by Brendan, and 1 from Nolan. Our infield after 2 innings was kids that don't play anything other than the outfield except for special occasions. We jumped out 12-2, we quit stealing, and then held on for a 12-9 win. Despite the close score we were never in danger of losing. The 2nd game was against a team that had played a couple of our teams earlier in the year and took some of the baserunning and defensive stuff they saw our teams doing back out to the island with great success from what I heard. My kids heads weren't really in this game the first few innings. To the other team's credit, they did have a very good pitcher out there for the 1st 3 innings. After 4 it was tied at 3. We had left a ton of runs out on the bases and their runs came off of soft grounders that died on a bad grass infield. We pulled things together and scored 4 in the 5th to take a 7-3 lead then shut them down in the 6th to get the win. The 1st game just wasn't a game where I wanted to embarrass the other team. The 2nd game we didn't play well. Likely due to a combination of being tired, having trouble refocusing after taking it easy the first game, and they were probably still patting themselves on the back for their game Thursday. These wins run our record to 14-2-1 while wrapping up our games against teams outside of our league. We close out the regular season with 2 games against the Lions and 1 game each against the Blue Raiders and Tigers. Highlights I really wish I had something, but it was fairly straightforward, boring baseball today. Kaden's bat did break so I guess I'm getting a new one a bit sooner than expected. Last edited by Atocep : 06-02-2012 at 06:42 PM.

06-06-2012, 05:13 PM	#116
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	We had a solid practice on Monday after not playing so well Saturday. We have another practice today then we play the Lions Thursday. It is supposed to rain quite a bit on the Thursday and if this game in canceled I don't think we'll be able to make it up as schedules are just too tight right now. The Lions are a good team. They're very well coached and while they don't have pitching depth or hit the ball particularly well they do run the bases and play some defense. If we hit the ball and do things I know we can do it should be an easy win. If we don't play well or we overlook this team they can beat us. They've already lost 1 run games to both the Tigers and Blue Raiders this year. Something that developed this weekend out of nowhere that I failed to mention is Joey throwing the bat on contact. He received a warning in his first at bat Saturday, was called out in his 2nd, and then was called out again his his 2nd at bat of game 2. His dad and older brother are great at working with him so I made sure they knew it's something that needs work before Thursday. At practice today I'll have the kids hit a bit and I'll see if how much progress there's been. The plan for Thursday is to start Quentin, bring in Magnus, then pitch Kaden. All 3 will go 2 innings and I'll have Joey available for emergencies, but I'd like to rest him. This season is wearing me down. It probably shows in this dynasty as I'm typically exhausted as I try to get everything down. Going from coaching basketball right into baseball, which is a full time job in itself for Lakewood Baseball Club, has been tough but it's more rewarding than I could possibly explain here. My kids are likely going to be splitting up after this season. The league is strongly discouraging kids from playing up unless it keeps them with their class in school (for example Quentin and Kaden are both 4th graders but Kaden plays as a young 10 year old and Quentin is a 9 year old by less than 2 weeks) and we just don't have enough 10 year olds to compete. Kaden, Quentin (would be ok to play up), Nolan, Canaan, and Christopher is likely all we'd have as I know Sean won't be playing next year and I have doubts that Tyler will. PONY also moves the bases back to 70ft and the pitcher's mound to 48 feet. It's a tough jump for some kids to make. You can also add in the politics and parenting and I just don't see them playing together next year. The Blue Raiders and Tigers are the teams that move up to 12U after this season. Christopher's parents will not put him back on the Blue Raiders. Quentin's parents won't have him play for the Blue Raiders and the Tigers are unlikely after seeing how bad they are as a group this year (his parents are leaning toward putting him in the Olympia league). I have no idea what others are thinking. I'm trying to get an idea of what everyone wants to do so I can make sure the kids that are staying in Lakewood, whether staying behind in 10u or moving up to 12u, have an idea of what team they'd be on for next season. As for Kaden I'm leaning toward the Blue Raiders. I don't think the Tigers receive the coaching they should be getting (not to mention the parental issues with that group) and while some have had bad experiences with the Blue Raiders I haven't yet and I do know they're coached well. Nothing has been decided yet though. I've briefly spoken to their coach about taking our kids moving up (except for Christopher unfortunately) and merging the two teams since they have at least 5 kids that will be staying behind for another year. What I'm working on now is getting the kids from this team together on one team for basketball. The kids that play basketball and have expressed interest are Quentin, Nolan, Magnus, Brendan, and Joey. They've never all played on the same team in basketball and it would give them one last team to play on as a group.

06-06-2012, 05:21 PM	#117
BYU 14 Coordinator Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: The scorched Desert	Really hate to see this winding down, it has been a great story and the work you have done with these kids is amazing. They will all remember this experience for a very long time!! Well done Coach!!!

06-06-2012, 10:47 PM	#118
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	Things just got even more interesting in the league. The Lions beat the Tigers 10-5 last night That means the Tigers are at 1 loss and 1 tie in league play, the Blue Raiders are at 1 loss and 2 ties, and we're at 2 losses and 1 tie. The Lions are at 4 losses but still very much alive and not a team to sleep on obviously. We're scheduled to play the Lions twice, the Tigers once, and the Blue Raiders once. The Tigers have 2 games against the Blue Raiders and a game against us. The Blue Raiders have 2 games against the Tigers and a game against us.

06-07-2012, 05:24 PM	#119
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	Our game this evening has been rained out. All regular season games have to be completed by Wednesday and we play Saturday, Monday, and Wednesday while the Lions play 2 on Saturday, then Monday, and Wednesday so I don't know how much urgency there will be to make this one up. I really don't want to head into the playoffs playing 4 games in 5 days and I can't imagine the Lions would want to go into the playoffs playing 5 games in 5 days, but you never know. We do have a game with the Lions already on the schedule for Monday so hopefully that is enough to keep everyone happy and we won't have to cram this game into an already tight schedule. Our next game is the Tigers on Saturday. The Tigers play the Blue Raiders before they play us and with the history and tension between those teams I seriously doubt we'll see the Tigers best pitchers.

06-07-2012, 11:53 PM	#120
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	Well the Lions want to make the game up so unless I have at least 4 conflicts with my players we'll play Tuesday. I don't really have a strong argument against playing the game since it comes down to "I would rather not play 4 games in 5 days then have 2 days of rest before the playoffs start." My main issue really comes down to when you cram games into a schedule like this for 9-10 year olds it really isn't about the best team anymore. It's about who gets the best innings from their non-pitchers that you have to put on the mound. There are 3 teams (us, the Lions, and the Blue Raiders) playing a similar schedule over those 5 days. The key difference is we're the only one of the 3 that doesn't have a game against the Rockets somewhere in there where we can put anyone out on the mound and walk away with a win. Anyway, enough of my whining. We'll show up to win regardless. I just have to do a lot of planning on how to use my pitchers during that stretch as innings will be almost as important as performance.

06-08-2012, 12:17 AM	#121
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	And a quick follow up to the post above. I talked to our division director and he said he doesn't see much point to playing the game either since 1.) We play the Lions on Monday and that gives us our 2 games played against each other this season 2.) Pitching becomes a major problem since there's an 8 inning limit on a pitcher in a week and 3 games this week along with at least 1 playoff game (possibly 2) before the week flips over makes it impossible to handle pitching in any fair way. I'm going to talk to the Lions coach tomorrow and see what he wants to do. The league said they're fine with the game just not being played so hopefully he's ok with it too.

06-08-2012, 10:55 PM	#122
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	The Lions coach and I decided to not make up our game. The combination of issues I mentioned above plus the fact that he didn't realize we had a game on Wednesday made it an easy call for both us. This was very much needed as the playoff schedule has changed a little and we're pretty much guaranteed 1 game on Friday and 2 games on Saturday.

06-09-2012, 06:15 PM	#123
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	Today we had our 3rd official game with the Tigers. We haven't played this team well at all up to this point. We tend to give up a couple of huge innings and then settle down after that, but the hole we dig is always too big to climb out of. This was another well played baseball game. It was very similar to our most recent game with the Blue Raiders except there were very few walks. The runs scored were off of the few errors in the game and by hitting the baseball. We scored 1 in the first off of Nolan sending a nice shot to the outfield to score Quentin. Nolan then followed that up by getting thrown out trying to steal 2nd. He got a horrible jump, slowed down as he looked back at the plate, and actually got in safely, but the ball beat him there and the ump called him out. Joey started on the mound for us and shut them down in the 1st. In the 2nd we went 3 up 3 down really quickly. It was the start of a frustrating tendency to pop the ball up on the infield today. We gifted the Tigers their first run in the bottom of the 2nd when Christopher dropped the 3rd out at 1st base. Then Kaden made a great play on a play at the plate to end the inning. 1-1 after 2. In the 3rd we didn't do anything. It was the bottom of the order and they were trying to wait out walks that weren't going to happen. We made a couple more errors in the field that gave the Tigers a couple of runs and we were in a 3-1 hole after 3. Kaden did make another play at the plate and blocked the plate nicely to keep the runner from getting his feet under him. In the 4th and 5th there wasn't much going on. We manufactured a run in the 5th to bring it to 3-2, but that's it. Outside of that neither team threatened. So we entered the 6th down 3-2 and the last 4 batters in our lineup due up. Tyler struck out on 3 pitches, 2 over his head, for out 1. Sean went up to the plate aggressive for the first time this season and struck out. He was swinging at good pitches though and the aggressiveness was good to see. Out 2. The Tigers now decide to change pitchers. I was honestly shocked. They had a kid out there that had given up a soft run in the 5th, but had otherwise shut us down and they decide to bring in a new pitcher. The new pitcher promptly hits Britt on his first pitch giving us a sliver of light. The then walks Donovan on 4 pitches. Quentin gets a pitch to hit on the 1st pitch and grounds it between first and 2nd where both of their fielders misplay the ball and I send Britt in to score while leaving us with Donovan on 2nd and Quentin on first. On a 3-2 pitch Nolan lofted one out into shallow left that drops to score Donovan and we take a 4-3 lead. We now have runners on a 2nd and 3rd and Kaden up at the plate. The Tigers decide they've seen enough and change pitchers again. On the 2nd pitch from the new pitcher Kaden pops one about 3 miles in the air to 3rd and their 3rd baseman made the catch on what was a really tough pop up for the 3rd out. Kaden probably missed launching one over everyone's head by a couple of milometers. The bottom of the 6th was absolutely crazy. Quentin walked the leadoff batter and they quickly get runners on 2nd and 3rd with 1 out after Joey bobbled a ball hit to him in left field. Their next batter puts one out to left again, a runs scores, Joey hits the relay to Magnus, Magus throws home and then things got messy. Kaden has the ball at the plate in proper position and starts to drop a bit anticipating a sliding runner. The problem is the runner doesn't slide. He goes right into the plate standing up, and plants a cleat right into Kaden's inner thigh (Kaden was standing, crouched down, and the runner came in so high he was able to plant a cleat into the upper part of his leg). Kaden holds on, but is hurt. I'm absolutely pissed because it's a dirty play. I seriously doubt the runner did it intentionally, but it should have been an immediate out for not even attempting to slide. The ump is checking on Kaden and calls time. The Tigers THEN send the runner from first while the ump isn't looking. The first thing I did when the ump called time is I looked to see where their runner was at. He was at first. Once I get Kaden back up and he tells me he can keep playing I look up to find the runner at 2nd and I'm pretty damn pissed about it. The ump says he didn't see it so all he can do is give him 2nd. I haven't seriously argued a call this season. I argued this one and probably should have at least received a warning. I think the ump knew he blew this one though. Then, in keeping with Tigers baseball, they try to steal 3rd on the very next pitch since our catcher is now playing hurt. Kaden puts the ball on the money, but Nolan doesn't catch the ball cleanly and the runner is safe. However, Tigers players apparently aren't coached to slide and since he tried to come in standing up he came about a centimeter off the bag trying to keep his balance and Nolan had kept his glove on him the entire time like he was supposed to and he was ruled out. 2 outs. Quentin walks the batter at the plate. Their next batter rolls one slowly to 3rd (seriously, how many of these has my team seen this year?) that we have no shot at making a play on. Their runners advance to 2nd and 3rd on a wild pitch. Then they ground one to short and Magnus tries to take the closest play, throws to 3rd, he's tagged out, but the run counts since the tag was applied just after the batter crossed 1st base. We lose 5-4 in a heartbreaker. The toughest part about this loss is my kids and half the parents had no idea why we lost. They thought it was the 3rd out and I had to explain to my kids that they lost after they came off the field thinking we were headed to extra innings. I'm still really pissed about the play at the plate and the steal of 2nd while I have a player down on the field crying because their player didn't slide when he should have. I'm not happy that they followed that up by immediately trying to get a base on what they thought was an injured player behind the plate (I'm thankful that they did it, but this was a straight steal attempt that they otherwise wouldn't have even tried on Kaden). I love coaching kids at this age. I love being involved in games at this age. I've never had a problem with kids or coaches on another team at any point in any year I've coached. I do not like the Tigers. I think they're a dirty team. I think their parents are horrible sports parents. I want nothing more than to beat them in the playoffs. Last edited by Atocep : 06-09-2012 at 06:21 PM.

06-09-2012, 10:59 PM	#124
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	We now have the Lions on Monday and I'm worried that my kids heads won't be the right place. They were very down at the end of this game. I did my best to keep their heads up after this one, but confidence is a difficult thing to keep balanced with 9 and 10 year olds. The Tigers beat the Blue Raiders 4-0 before our game. Their win over us basically clinches 1st for them unless some crazy stuff happens. If we can get by the Lions we'll play the Blue Raiders on Wednesday for 2nd heading into the playoffs.

06-09-2012, 11:14 PM	#125
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	A question for anyone reading. Am I in the wrong in thinking all of the stuff that happened with the play at the plate in the bottom of the 6th was dirty at the 9 and 10 year old level? Overall I thought the ump called a solid game. The Tigers won legitimately. That play ended up having no bearing on the outcome. What they did, especially sending the runner when the ump wasn't looking, is something I could never imagine myself doing. Maybe I'm crazy but I think my first reaction, even as a coach for the other team, would have been to run down and check on the player. Not send my runner to 2nd.

06-09-2012, 11:54 PM	#126
JonInMiddleGA Hall Of Famer Join Date: Nov 2000 Location: Behind Enemy Lines in Athens, GA	Sending the runner to 2nd after time was called = pushing the envelope pretty hard ... although it's on the umpire to manage that aspect of the situation. It can always be argued that they weren't sure time was out and they were simply playing hard "to the whistle" so to speak, but I don't get the sense that's what happened here. Stealing third on the first pitch after the injury however is fair game IMO. The play at the plate (that led to the injury), that's tough ground for me. I don't like the new rules about forced slides at all: I never played that way, was never taught that way, never coached in a league with that rule, it's entirely counter-intuitive to everything I've ever known. But if it's a black letter rule then it should have been enforced -- and I'd likely have gotten tossed pointing that out, quite possibly with very colorful language -- and that finds me coming back to the umpire for the second time in this discussion. __________________ "I lit another cigarette. Unless I specifically inform you to the contrary, I am always lighting another cigarette." - from a novel by Martin Amis

06-11-2012, 05:38 PM	#128
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	Kaden had his first practice with the select/all star team yesterday. About 15 minutes into drills he complained about a stomach ache and took a break for a bit before going back out. He then proceeded to throw up a bit on the field, came off the field, and emptied his stomach in the grass to the side of the field. 10 minutes later he was back out there like nothing happened. My guess is the pizza his mom gave him for lunch upset his stomach for whatever reason. Aside from that, it was a good day for him. Despite being sick he stood out in the field. It was just a practice to see the kids up close for the first time. Since it was a Sunday afternoon we only had 6 of our 11 show up. Kaden's versatility likely has him in a utility role with this group. You could plug him into any position out there and he'll do fine. I could see him getting time behind the plate, at 2nd, and in the outfield. There are 5 tournaments that they're considering and the first runs from July 6th-8th. They would like to get them entered into a minimum of 4 if not all 5 if there are no major schedule conflicts. EDIT: [Proud parent alert] There's a Tigers coach helping out with this. He's a great guy. Their head coach is too actually. Most of their problems seem to stem from a couple of assistants (they have 5 total coaches) and a few parents. Anyway, he was telling me that he had to get onto their 3rd base coach for having a runner try to steal 3rd at one point during our last game. He was gunned down pretty easily and when asked why he sent the runner the 3rd base coach said he thought we had changed catchers and moved Kaden from behind the plate. He went on to tell me that they don't run on Kaden unless the ball hits the backstop and kicks away. Last edited by Atocep : 06-11-2012 at 05:45 PM.

06-11-2012, 11:48 PM	#129
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	Wow. Holy shit. Wow. We did exactly what I was expecting, unfortunately. Despite doing everything I could my kids overlooked the Lions. This game was crazy, I was short two coaches, and my attention was pulled in every direction imaginable so I don't remember a lot of details for this one. We started Kaden and he was off today. It was his worst pitching this season. He gave up 2 in the first and we got those two back in the bottom of the first. Then he gave up another in the 2nd and it could have been much worse because the bases were loaded when he struck out the Lions hitter for the final out. At that point I went with Joey. I intended to rest him this game even though we really haven't worked him too hard. However, our body language in the field and in the dugout was terrible. It was like we were just there to be there. I had to treat this game like a playoff game and Joey is our most consistent pitcher. Joey shut them down in the 3rd and gave up 1 in the 4th. We took a 5-3 lead into the 5th. Then the wheels fell off. Joey was just a touch off with several pitches that led to a couple of walks and then they started putting the ball in play and we just weren't playing good defense. They end up getting 2 runs in the 5th inning to tie the game at 5 heading into the bottom of the 5th. We go 3 up 3 down to take things to the 6th tied at 5. In the 6th I bring in Quentin and he was ok. A little off, but the defense continued to play terribly and we gave them 2 more runs to make the game 7-5 going to the bottom of the 6th. We were done at this point. Heads down, no one talking, no one really looking like they wanted to be there. I pulled the team aside while a new pitcher warmed up and told them it was time for us to roll over and take a loss to a team we should be beating easily or we can down fighting. We had Joey leading off. I honestly don't recall a lot of what happened other than their pitcher got wild and put some runners on and we took advantage. Our first run came home on a ground out by Christopher and their pitcher walked Sean with the bases loaded to tie the game at 7. Britt worked the count to 3-2 before grounding out sharply to 2nd to end our threat. Extra innings. That woke us up. We were talking to each other in the field in the top of the 7th and looked like the real Rough Riders for the first time this game. Their first hitter grounded out on Quentin's first pitch of the inning, he struck out the 2nd hitter, than the 3rd hitter grounds to short and Christopher drops the ball giving them life. Quentin walks the next batter and then they ground a ball to Sean at 2nd who does the smart thing and runs it all the way to the bag at 2nd for the 3rd out. Bottom 7. This is it. We're past time to start a new inning. If we win this game we play the Blue Raiders for 2nd place on Wednesday. A loss eliminates us from 2nd and would mean we have to beat the Blue Raiders on Wednesday to keep 3rd place. A tie eliminates us from 2nd but means we still keep 3rd. Donovan (our 12th batter) is at the plate. He walks on 5 pitches. This gives us a runner, but it's a runner that still struggles with the rules and is far and away our slowest baserunner. It does bring us to the top of the order. Quentin follows that up with a solid single to center which brings Donovan to 2nd. It's Nolans turn at the plate and he grounds out, but moves both runners up giving us runners on 2nd and 3rd with 1 out and Kaden at the plate. I'm now telling Donovan over and over "on contact you're listening to me. You are listening to my instructions." The Lions have their outfield kind of deep and the infield WAY in. On a 1-1 pitch Kaden launches one that normally would have been over outfielder's heads but they had him played so deep it went right at the centerfielder. On contact Donovan took off to home and apparently wanted no part of me calling him back. Their centerfielder raises his glove, the ball drops into the glove, and pops out hitting the ground and ending the game. We win 8-7 in 7 innings. We played awful. My kids got the wakeup call they needed heading into the Blue Raiders on Wednesday and the playoffs on Friday. This was honestly the first game this year I thought was over before it ended just because of our body language and attitude. This also means we can finish no worse than 3rd place. My kids deserve credit for never quitting. This is 3 league games in a row that we've come back in during the 5th inning or later to take the lead or tie. As I also told my kids, this also shows that the top 4 in this league are capable of beating anyone else. The playoffs are going to be crazy. This also brings our record to 15-3-1 on the season with all of our loses to the Tigers. The Lions are yet another team that has told us we're better than the Tigers. Their coach said our pitching and catching are the best in the league and he told me to tell the Blue Raiders coach to put the bottle down when I mentioned that he said his catcher was better than ours. Last edited by Atocep : 06-12-2012 at 03:18 AM.

06-12-2012, 12:28 AM	#130
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	Something I forgot to mention. An awful no call in the bottom of the 6th nearly cost us this game. On the grounder that scored Joey to bring us to within 1 run in the bottom of the 6th Christopher was on his way to 1st, had to to slow up because their first baseman backed up onto the back part of the bag to play a bad throw, he makes the catch as Christopher ran right into him. No obstruction call. I went nuts. As I'm coming down the 3rd base line asking why obstruction wasn't called I get the scorekeeper for the Lions yelling that the 1st baseman has the right to play the ball. I politely told him he's wrong and discussed it with the ump while the same guy just kept yelling at me that he has a right to catch the ball. Finally, the Lions coach told their scorekeeper that I was correct but he said he didn't think it affected the outcome of the play. Regardless, obstruction should have been called there and when I got some time between innings to discuss it with the ump some more he just said he didn't see where the 1st baseman's foot was and all I could do is point out that our runner ran squarely into the 1st baseman so where in the hell would his foot need to be for that to happen? That call (or lack-thereof) sent us to the 7th and nearly had a major impact on our season. Last edited by Atocep : 06-12-2012 at 01:15 AM.

06-12-2012, 01:08 AM	#131
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	Here are the standings for league play only through this evening's games. The Tigers beat the Blue Raiders 7-4 tonight which means the Blue Raiders have lost their last 3 league games. Code: Teams W L T PCT GB GP RS RA 1 Tigers 8 1 1 .850 0.0 10 82 31 2 Rough Riders 5 3 1 .611 2.5 9 80 62 3 Blue Raiders 3 3 2 .500 3.5 8 73 59 4 Tacoma Lions 3 5 0 .375 4.5 8 77 83 5 Rockets 0 7 0 .000 7.0 7 38 115 Last edited by Atocep : 06-12-2012 at 01:09 AM.

06-13-2012, 05:24 PM	#132
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	Tonight's game against the Blue Raiders is for 2nd place and it really is a huge deal for the playoffs. The 3 seed will play the Lions on Friday and then win or lose you have a double header on Saturday. Then if you're still alive you play again on Monday. The condensed playoff schedule really makes things tough and the difference between opening against the Lions or the Rockets is monumental. It will be hard for the 3 and 4 seeds to not run out of pitchers at some point. It's really difficult not to look back at the first game we played against the Blue Raiders and get a little frustrated over the fact that a 10-6 lead turned into a 10-10 tie due to some things beyond our control. I'm hoping our kids show up ready to play tonight because the roles have reversed in our rivalry and we're now the team that they're dying to beat. We have to be ready for the challenge. Last edited by Atocep : 06-13-2012 at 05:29 PM.

06-13-2012, 11:01 PM	#133
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	Well, long story short, we got our butts handed to us tonight. It was 9-0 after 2 and a half innings. The Blue Raiders came prepared to beat a team that had their number up until tonight and we wanted to goof off. We put 5 on them in the bottom of the 3rd, but the only run we scored from there was in the bottom of the 6th to make it 14-6. Magnus and Canaan's dads are great about keeping order in the dugout while Mark and I are coaching the bases and with Mark and Canaan's dad gone that leaves us with 2 base coaches and no one in the dugout. The kids seem to think that's the green light to turn the dugout into a playground. Luckily Mark and Canaan's dad are both back tomorrow. What I decided to do after today's game was I made the kids have a team meeting without coaches to decide whether they wanted to just skip the playoffs and have a pizza party for the end of the season or actually play in the playoffs. Now, we know there really was no option there, but I sent off on their own for 5 minutes to "discuss" what their decision would be. Since they "chose" to play in the playoffs we'll practice tomorrow and it's going to be like day 1 practice. We're coasting right now thinking we're a good team and we need kick in the pants or we'll be out of the playoffs quickly.

06-15-2012, 10:59 PM	#134
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	We had a tough practice last night. It was very similar in pace and difficulty to one of our early practices. The idea was to remind the kids of how hard we have to work to have success. Today when I showed up for our game I made sure to stay upbeat and get the kids excited to play. After a hard practice and a long talk yesterday evening it would be very easy for the kids to get down and put too much pressure on themselves. My goal was to get them out there focused on playing their game and having fun. We did that. This first game of our playoffs was over pretty quickly. We dominated in every aspect against the same Lions team we struggled with on Monday. The final score was 11-1 and we looked great. We started off a little slow at the plate and then took over. 1-0 after 1 and by the end of 4 it was 11-1 and that was ballgame. The Lions coaches are my favorite in the league. Hands down. All great people, fun to play against, and you don't get that sense of hostility you get with other coaches staffs. They were planning on entering a 9U tournament from the 6th-8th of July and had 3 players drop out. After seeing our team play they offered Joey, Quentin, and Magnus a chance to play with them in that tournament. I know Joey and Magnus plan on playing and Quentin is undecided. I think it would be a great experience for all 3. Things get difficult from here. The playoffs are double elimination and we have the Tigers tomorrow at 10am. Win or lose we play again at 1pm. Then if we're still alive we will have to play another game at 6pm. IMO it's ridiculous to have 9-10 year olds playing 3 games in 1 day in a playoff setting, but I don't make the rules.

06-16-2012, 12:41 PM	#135
hoopsguy General Manager Join Date: Oct 2000 Location: Chicago	Good luck against the Tigers (and whoever else you face) in the playoffs today.

06-16-2012, 12:47 PM	#136
BYU 14 Coordinator Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: The scorched Desert	Damn, three games in a single day is nuts, major league teams don't even have enough pitching for that!! Good luck coach!!

06-16-2012, 07:21 PM	#137
Atocep Coordinator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Puyallup, WA	Today was not a good day for us and for me it went beyond just baseball. We had a rough start against the Tigers. They scored 4 in the 1st mostly off of soft grounders that were finding their way through our infield. Their hits were 2-3 feet out of the reach of our infielders. Our hits, at least in the early innings, were hit hard but right at their defenders. We found ourselves down 5-0 entering the 5th inning and we finally started getting things going. Our hits started falling and their pitcher got a bit wild. We found ourselves with the bases loaded, 4 runs in, and only 1 out and the Tigers went to their ace. He struck out the first batter he saw and then walked home our 5th run of the inning to make things 5-5 going into the bottom of the 5th. Kaden shut down the heart of their order in the bottom of the 5th and in the top of the 6th we put a couple of baserunners on but failed to do anything with them. The bottom of the 6th started out with a strikeout. Then we misplayed a popup to give them a runner. Kaden walked the next batter then got a strikeout to give us 2 outs, but 2 runners on. Their next batter, however, on a 2-2 pitch softly put one into left to end the game 6-5. Another heartbreaking loss for our kids to the Tigers. I'll take this opportunity to say Kaden is as competitive of a kid as you'll see. He wants to win. I've absolutely never had a problem with him disrespecting another team in any way at all. It's never been questioned by an umpire, a referee, or a coach. Never. As Kaden came off the field after giving up the game winning hit he was crying and as he came off the mound and threw both his hat and his glove into the dirt. The umpire came out to put his arm around him and tell him what a great job he did and looked at me and said "that kid is a competitor". After we shook hands with the Tigers and I'm putting our equipment away to take it over to the next field for our 2nd game I get one of our parents come up to me. This is a parent that maybe watched 2 of our games last year at most. He's been at a few more this year, but has been at less than 50%. The parent tells me that the stuff with the hat and glove throwing from Kaden was out of line and if it was his kid he'd "have him out of here." I was honestly stunned. I really didn't know what to say. There were many things I wanted to say, but with some of our kids and parents still hanging around in the general area all I ended up saying was "I'll take take care of it" in my best fuck off tone possible. Our next game was against the Lions who had just beat the Rockets in a close game. I found out the reason it was a close game was because the Lions saved their only good pitcher for our game and we came out flat after another loss to the Tigers in the bottom of the 6th with 2 outs. After having my parenting questioned it was honestly difficult for me to get into the game. We were ahead 5-2 at one point, but then Quentin started complaining about feeling sick and Joey said his arm was bothering him. So both of them were more or less shut down. We really didn't get much going at the plate after getting those 5 runs and their one good pitcher actually pitched all 6 innings. Something I've never seen at this level. We lost 9-6 ending our season. Never in my life has my parenting ever been questioned in any way. I don't care if people question my coaching. I can deal with that. Suggesting that I'm not parenting my kid or something like that crosses the line and was a kick to the stomach during what was already a tough day. I mentioned the incident to Quentin's dad along with our our coaches and all of them were just as stunned as I was. Quentin's dad apparently thought it was so ridiculous he was telling others because I had someone come up to me and ask if it was true. I honestly think I'm done coaching. I have thick skin on a lot of things, but how I treat my kid is a sensitive subject and this put things in a different perspective for me. Maybe I'm in the minority, but as a coach give me 9 kids that come off the field the way Kaden did after a tough loss and I'll gladly take them. He did not yell, did not point fingers, did not try to blame anyone but himself, and he got right into line to shake hands with the Tigers players. I want kids that care whether they won or lost. If I'm in the wrong on that then coaching kids isn't the job for me. It was a great season for us. We were team that was nearly folded and widely considered a joke coming into this season and we went out and showed we could play with the very best 9-10 year old teams in this area. A team with zero wins in 2 years found it in themselves to win 16 games this year, challenge for the league title, and show that they would win any other league around here. My pride in these kids is immeasurable. The one thing I'm proud of myself for doing is stepping up and taking this job rather than become part of the problem here. The attention belongs to my players though and I'm working on some things to make sure that they get more than the typical end of season pizza party. Last edited by Atocep : 06-16-2012 at 07:25 PM.

06-17-2012, 10:54 AM	#138
BYU 14 Coordinator Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: The scorched Desert	Don't quite know what to say about that, other than you will always have that one guy and it is usually as you described. Very poor attendance, second guesses everything you do when he is there, no matter how well things are going. Then quick to criticize when things don't go well. It is annoying as hell, especially when you know how much or your heart and soul you have put into those kids, which is why you can't let it counter the way the team and ALL the other parents feel about you. Don't think for a minute they don't all appreciate what you have done. This season is a memory that will stay with them and you are the main reason. Don't let one parent who is likely jealous/bitter at life/or just a dick take that away from you.

06-17-2012, 12:00 PM	#139
JonInMiddleGA Hall Of Famer Join Date: Nov 2000 Location: Behind Enemy Lines in Athens, GA	As BYU said, there's always somebody, more often than not it'll be somebody that's clueless. What you described in Kaden is an admirable trait afaic, not one to be criticized. He sounds like the kind of kid that you want to hire, or have working on your side someday. I'll spare you more flowery praise of it than that, because that's really the bottom line as far as I'm concerned. As for any coaching future, I'll leave that to your own judgment because I've been there, done that, and would probably rather face a double root canal without anesthetic than ever do it again. The cons ultimately outweighed the pros for me -- personally, internally, however best to describe it -- and I won't criticize anyone for walking away. That said however, I'd caution you against making any decision either way while under the influence of the various emotions that go with the end of the season. By what I can tell from many miles away, you moved several mountains with these kids. My experience is that you did with them and for them what few others can/will do. Whatever the future may hold I hope that you're able, with some time, to let that be the most lasting memory of the season. __________________ "I lit another cigarette. Unless I specifically inform you to the contrary, I am always lighting another cigarette." - from a novel by Martin Amis

06-17-2012, 12:05 PM	#140
JonInMiddleGA Hall Of Famer Join Date: Nov 2000 Location: Behind Enemy Lines in Athens, GA	Now, more important personal matters aside, from a baseball perspective I kind of get a sense that the team overall simply ran out of gas, emotionally more than physically. Playing meaningful games late in a season was largely a new experience for them, to actually have expectations was new as was reacting to the ups & downs that goes with those. At some point I think that takes a toll, one larger perhaps than just a single result. They're young, they have things to learn, in the bigger picture this is one of those learning opportunities. Unfortunately those lessons sometimes get in the way of short term outcomes. Truthfully, I'm not so sure that navigating those situations is something that can be taught nearly so much as it's something that has to be learned through experience. __________________ "I lit another cigarette. Unless I specifically inform you to the contrary, I am always lighting another cigarette." - from a novel by Martin Amis