The Baseball Kids

We finally had our first game yesterday and it went pretty well overall. The other teams coach didn't show up until about 5 minutes before game time. According to the parents in the dugout, he thought they were just having a practice at 5:30 and not a game. So he was at the other field. The rest of his team seemed to know that there was a game to be played as they all showed up. But the person who was supposed to be running the team didn't know there was a game. Sad, really.

We were the home team and as such started out in the field while Manager Who Didn't Know There Was A Game pitched to most of his team. This wouldn't have been so bad, but he was giving them all 5 pitches to hit instead of the 3 he was supposed to limit them to. This doesn't seem like a big difference, but remember these kids are on average 5 years old. It takes them a while to get set and ready to hit. Adding those two extra pitches to all the kids really slowed the game down. A lot.

Plus, it's really hard to keep 11 little kids attention focused on the batter. I knew that this would present problems, but I didn't expect a kid to be pouting out in the field with his hat off, sitting on his glove, picking out the grass. I asked him if he was ready for the ball, he said, "No." I asked if he wanted to play another position. He said, "No." I asked what he wanted to to. He said, "I want to go home." So that was nice.

Our first time through the lineup, I just had all the kids hit off the Tee as this would help speed the game up. We started at 5:30 and it had taken 20 minutes for the other team to go through their lineup one time. It took us about 7 minutes. Everybody gets to hit in the lineup, so if there's 11 kids there, 11 kids hit. It takes some time, and I had a coach who was trying to get the kids ready to go, but it wasn't that easy. Seems that little kids don't really want to pay attention. Which I kinda knew from practice, but still, this was finally game day!!!

The second time through our lineup I pitched to most of the kids, giving them three pitches to either hit the ball or if not, they got the Tee. So that moved things along a little quicker, but after two innings, it had been an hour and the sun was shining pretty hard into the kids eyes, so we called it there. Plus, it seemed that it would probably take another half hour to get through one more inning, and we had things to do.

But the kids seemed to have a good time, and I got a much better idea of how these games are going to go. We have another game on Thursday, and hopefully the other teams coach will have a much better idea of what's going on and we can get these kids three at-bats instead of just two. Though this morning, T was very excitedly telling my mom that he got TWO hits, so I guess that's good with him, and if he gets THREE?!?! What in the world could be better than that?