Just got back from my 12 year old niece's softball game. Some observations:
1. Most youth, both genders, but especially girls, are afraid of flying balls, bouncing balls, and just balls in general and cannot stop them, let alone catch them to save their lives. This leads to innings which a half hour may go by before a single out is recorded and a three inning game with a final score more befitting a football game.
Solution: Reverse traditional baseball/softball rules until these tykes learn some defensive skills. When the fielding team records an out, put a point on the board for them. They can record as many outs as they want. But when the batting team has three people cross home plate, the inning is over.
2. Most youth, both genders, but especially girls, do not want to be there. They want to be at home mashing their thumbs on a Playstation controller, or making bead necklaces while listening to Miley Cyrus, or whatever it is that 10-12 year olds do now. Largely the only reason they are playing sports is because their parents, namely their fathers, who did play sports as youths, are making them. And if dad couldn't sire any boys to live his pathetic dreams of athletic glory vicariously through, he will make do with his daughters the best he can.
3. Most parents, namely dads who become youth league coaches, develop some sort of military commander complex, and think the fate of Western civilization rests on the result of a recreation level little league game, going so far as to scream at his players for being six feet too far back, or missing the cutoff person, or screaming at the umpire who's making $10/game, because he didn't follow Rule 113, subsection D, subsection 14 of the rule book, which only he and the other George Pattonheads have read, much less care about.
4. Most of the umpires are incompetent buffoons, who don't even know basic rules of the game, like the fact that the strike zone is NOT at neck level, or that if there is no force in effect, that the fielder actually has to tag the runner for the runner to be out. Then again, when you have to deal with ding-a-ling kids who do not want to be there, and parents who scream at you like you're the antiChrist because you called a strike on their precious prima donna brat, I'd see why you want to move things along so you can collect your ten bucks and go home. Maybe they're not so stupid after all.
Thankfully, most of the niece's games are out of town and I can't go to them. I guess I'm good for another year. Just had to rant.
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