Shameful!

In the past DD played in some tournaments that were 7 innings with no time limits. The TD touted "This is the way the game is supposed to be played." The trouble with it. Every one of them would be hours behind schedule. You could start 3 hours after your scheduled game time if you have games later in the day. It made for some REALLY long days at the field.

The move to timed games is warranted by expanding tournament entrants, limited fields and other factors. A new wrinkle I've seen in double elimination tournaments is the elimination of the "If" game in the championship round. There have been many teams who have not played the "If" game or the championship game and settled for co-champs or dropping from tournaments once they have their bid secured.

I know I've used stalling when trying to run the clock out to make sure my team made it to the next round in bracket play, and I've had it done to my teams as well. As others have said, it is now part of learning how to coach.

The longest 60 seconds in the world. The last minute of a close basketball game.

We were up 4-1 against a 14u team that considers themselves one of the elite.

An elite team that avoided the state tournament to go get a piece of plastic in a small out of state tournament. Last time we played them we lost 24-0. We missed a pair of balls in the outfield and they got up 5-4. The coach tells his girls to not swing until they had 2 strikes on them. 2 outs 0-2 count and the coach calls time and time expired.

If you don't believe in your girls, call time.

The sack of crap then tells his team to do their "we won" cheer in front of our team.

I don't know if the winning team has ever been such big losers.

I think you are making a mistake if you do not play the clock if it matters, I hold no grudges or think less of the other Team if they do.

(It does get silly when one of the teams is running out the clock though)

Quincy

If winning is everything you should consider beaning their #1 pitcher, trucking the catcher and taking out the second baseman.

I will take an honest loss over a cheap win.

We spend way to much time working to not have faith in our players.

I have never run out the clock, as I have mentioned before never have been in a clocked game that mattered. Other Teams have run the clock out on us.

IMO you are making an unfair comparison, which was your point.

Get over it, nothing cheap, cheating or anything about it.

I'm on the side who think stalling tactics such as those in the original post are bush league. However, I have no problem with batters taking more pitches or pitchers working a little slower to bleed the clock. The most blatant thing I've done is a visit to the pitcher in the bottom of an inning with time running out to try to avoid going through the inning too quickly. And even that was a fairly quick visit, and it ended up being moot because our pitcher put a couple runners on and used up the time. We ended up getting out of it and holding on.

One thing I've thought about doing, but would never actually do, is in the situation where we are down a bunch with two outs in the bottom of the inning with time running out, and having a batter intentionally strike out so we go to the next inning. The thinking is that it's going to be tough to score 5 or 6 with two outs, and if we can hold them in the top of the next inning, we'll have a better chance of coming back starting a fresh inning. But telling a hitter to strike out goes against everything I believe in as a coach.

Like I said, if you don't have faith your girls can get the job done, stall.

But that's sad and cheap.

I want to thank those who responded to this post. I really can handle the within the rules stuff like putting a pitcher in when its not needed and the normal time outs. What set me off was getting these girls the results they wanted the wrong way. Poor sportsmanship will be something that will always exist. I will not have my kid on a team doing what that team did ever. I want the right results the right way.

Update. The team was fired up today and won three straight and won the tournament. It was gratifying for the kids and parents to send those trophy hunters 130 miles back home with nothing.

True story - we are up 4-0 against a bitter rival in the bottom of the 6th with 5 minutes remaining (we are the visitors). My pitcher starts the inning by throwing 6 balls in a row, so I jog out to see how she is doing. The other coach goes nuts, telling the umpire I am trying to burn the clock. I'm just shaking my head as I know any other coach would have been out there twice, changed pitchers, etc. I believe we played it straight up and beat them (the final score was still 4-0). If he really waned another chance at bat, he should have had his players step off and end the inning early. No matter what you do, in a time limit game, someone will always think you are out there milking the clock.

We were closing out a game recently with a big lead 7-0. We had a few minutes to kill and a runner on 2nd. On every pitch the runner on 2nd liked to take a big lead and then play chicken with the catcher. I told my catcher, we're winning, she's wasting time, if she wants to play games you walk out towards her and let her play games as long as she wants. We didn't kill the inning but that runner eventually had to step off intentionally to end it and give her team another at bat. Down multiple runs I'm not sure why the 3B coach didn't have her glued to the bag.