For those that know me or have followed my blog, I tend to despise Little League Season. Despise may be a strong word, but detest and loathe may be more appropriate. Feel free to surf for my other baseball rants, but truly over the years, they seem to remain rather consistent so I would completely understand the desire to not surf.
My son moved up to the next league of Little League. I believe he is in the Majors. I have been the scorekeeper for my son's ball teams for the past...six years if not longer. I take any job I do, seriously, even if just volunteering. My son's past coach used to do stat spreadsheets and I was responsible for tallying not only hits and runs but strikes, balls, errors, walks, outs, pitch count, score...you name it, I did it.
This year, my son has a different coach. For one inning I had the reprieve from score keeping. Score keeping in many ways keeps me sane. It keeps me from cursing and yelling and getting overly involved in the game. Every year with almost every sport, a parent or a friend suggests that I coach. I know better.
I know my limitations. I know my competitiveness. I know my perfectionism. I know myself.
And that is why I do not coach. Other than that one time where I confronted my son's football coach for not allowing the children a water break after two hours in 85 degree weather and the kids were 8, I do not confront coaches. Better them than me I say.
Last week I hit an all time low with the frustration of baseball. As I've blogged recently, my son's team has six assistant coaches, aka father's, that help out the team. In a decade of baseball there has only been one female coach and/or assistant and not even on my son's team. Baseball clearly is a sexist sport. So while I sit quietly keeping the score, I know 98% of the rules - the other 2% are the obscure ones...like if there is an intentional walk and the pitcher chooses not to pitch (is that even legal?) and walks the batter, do you count four pitches?
So last week while our coach was on vacation or out of town or boycotting baseball by locking himself in his bathroom drinking away his baseball blues...the Assistant Coaches attempted to coach. All hell broke loose when I realized the wrong batter was batting. I attempted to talk to one, then two of the Assistants. They thrust some chicken scratched lineup at me. While trying to figure out what they were doing, I missed pitch after pitch. Bottomline, when they substituted players, they allowed the original youth in the order to continue to bat. A scorekeepers hell and completely WRONG in this league AND the league below us.
Sure, I get that these kids are 13 and 14 and it shouldn't be a big deal, right? But to me, I take my responsibilities seriously. I also had spent an hour trying to figure out the excel spreadsheet to enter in hitting and pitching stats earlier in the day. So when I had two batters in one batting position up to bat, go ahead try to keep track of that in the score book! After what seemed like ten minutes, I figured out the batting order for the coaches - at the one coaches request and he wrote the new order for the next inning. Needless to say, the next inning came up and the kids were in the previous order. Sigh...The coach from the other team came over and said, "I got a little confused last inning. What happened?" Ummm...yeah. I'm only glad that we didn't win as the boys would have been devastated to learn the win would have been a loss based on coaching and illegal substitutions and batting!
So the coach is back. We have shared a few emails. He thanked me for score keeping and understanding the rules - since I had even corrected him when someone had gone up to bat out of order. It happens, I get that. But if a pitch is thrown, it's also an out.
I found myself typing this response to him this morning when he said he would make things easy on me and thanking me for understanding the rules of baseball..."It would just seem that after most of our children playing ball for almost a decade and likely fathers that have either played ball or watched ball, that they would be knowledgeable about the game. Everything is fine. I do understand the majority of the rules although some of them do vary with the different age leagues. As far as substitutions, as long as I'm informed of substitutions, it's fine with me. Just would make it a lot easier if "Assistants" understand the rules of substitution as well. Because afterall, baseball can be rather sexist - and when trying to clarify what was happening, it was the realization that, I'm just the scorekeeper."
And then I hit cancel and decided to blog. 'Cause sometimes venting to cyberspace rather than to a person that really doesn't know you that you see on a regular basis is just better.
I feel better. That is until Tuesday night's game...
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