Nightmares in Little League Baseball

There are so many things I love about being an at home parent. I get to see all the firsts, I get valuable time with my kids, the one on one with each is amazing, my kids do and say things like me, it’s the best job in the world. I’m not kidding. I wouldn’t trade what I do for anything in the world. It’s the most fulfilling and best job I have had, or ever will have. I will do this job as long as I possibly can. Yet there are struggles. There are lots of stresses. Some days I’m so exhausted that I collapse in bed before 10pm and pass out. It’s a great but tough job.

A few weeks back I wrote about one of the stress filled jobs of an at home parent, cleaning the bathrooms. That’s a gross and very involved job. Another thing I have come to realize that’s tough is coaching youth sports, namely my son’s 10u little league baseball team. I coached my daughter in basketball and softball, but she’s 5. It’s more about learning than competing. I also coach my son’s basketball team, and while that’s tough, that’s on me. I love basketball. I’ve played it forever. It’s the best. But I also expect the best, and at 9, my son has a few years before he has to really decide if he wants to play basketball for a long time. He has to grow into his body a bit more. He’s a big kid, but he’s also super awkward. He moves like a new born baby colt. But baseball, little league baseball, coaching that, at the 10u stage is hard.

Baseball is, admittedly, an easy sport. See the ball, hit the ball. Field the grounder, throw the runner out. Throw the ball, catch the ball. It’s real simple. Also, by the 10u stage, real baseball rules are used. You can steal, passed balls are live, you can run on drop third strikes, you can pick players off, it’s all in play. This is the first season for our team with these rules, but we’ve been practicing pretty much all year. Once we were allowed to safely gather as a team, we started working on the new rules that were soon to come. But now that they’re here, our boys have seemed to forget everything. Our catchers jog or walk back to passed balls. The boys do not understand what a lead off is. Hardly anyone swings the bat now that they’re seeing real pitching, no more pitching machine. We get picked off on a regular basis. The kids do not know how to properly slide. Our pitchers don’t even look at base runners. It’s a mess.

This all came to an ugly head at our game last night. I do want to point out that we moved up a division, we were told too after finishing high in our division over the summer, so the competition is much better. This should head to improvement, but that has not happened. We’ve taken a tremendous step back. Last night we had no business being on the field with this other team. We got one hit. We were 10 run ruled. We couldn’t get the ball back to our pitcher on a regular basis. Our fielders simply forgot how to field ground balls or catch a pop fly. The boys spent their time on the bench talking about video games or eating food. They were clueless to the action on the field. And to put the icing on the crap cake, one of our boys broke his fibula “sliding” into third on a steal attempt. He decided much too late that he wanted to slide and he caught his foot awkward on the bag and I had to physically carry him off the field. I feel awful for him. But the awkward slide was the full cause of the break. It was brutal. I hardly ever raise my voice, but I’m hoarse today. I had my head in my hands the whole two hours. I was questioning if the boys wanted to even be out there. I understand they’re 9 and 10, but I am not kidding when I say they had zero interest in the game last night. I’m an assistant, so I cannot even fathom how our head coach feels. He’s been at this longer than I have, but still, this was maddening last night.

What’s next? We are going to practice more. We are going to do all we can as coaches to get these boys more prepared. But I am not overstating how hard and frustrating it is to coach little league baseball. It’s not for the faint of heart.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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