Realistic Image of DD

Damn defensive they are worse for DD then other pitchers! Hate them all, coaches too for putting DD in that position.

Michele1377 said:

I'm an outlier in most aspects of my life, so I guess I'm one in this respect too!

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I'm poking a little fun. I have met quite a few parents and parent-coaches that are realistic about their kid's abilities. That said, I've met plenty of crazies, too.

Eric F said:

In my experience, pitcher's parents are LEAST likely to be in the .002% category.

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they would be if the defense would just make an out occasionally and the catcher's learned how to block a friggin pitch and the coach would call the game correctly, and the ump didn't have such a small zone, and the sun wasn't always in DD's eyes and the wind wasn't always at the batters back and the hot dogs in the snack bar were kosher all beef and if the bathrooms had paper towels stocked and the hole on the pitching rubber wasn't so deep. Not making excuses but pitchers face a LOT of adversity so it is understandable that their parents truly see that every walk is the ump's fault and every hit is bad D..or bad hot dogs....hard to tell the difference sometimes. I have a complete set of stats with ATP on the end...like ERA_ATP....my DDs ERA_ATP is -5.35. It means that According To Parent teams would actually have runs deducted if the game could be scored solely on her performance without her having to overcome all the obstacles mentioned above.


So I am firmly in the .002% when all proper adjustments are made.

Eric F said:

I'm poking a little fun. I have met quite a few parents and parent-coaches that are realistic about their kid's abilities. That said, I've met plenty of crazies, too.

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Same, I probably was "too" realistic with my DD's abilities and I actually shouldn't have sat her as much as I did. She is 20 now, but did play from 10U-18U so that was fun and I have fond memories. I remember one game she was in CF, a shot was hit, she took 3 steps in then realized how hard it was hit. As soon as I saw her charging in, I got up from the bucket yelling and walking down the dugout "you know the first step is back", then while I was being a douchebag the parents started yelling, my AC was jumping up and down saying she caught it. I missed seeing it, but what was told to me was she caught it while completely facing away from the field running toward the fence an over her head catch. I failed to mention we were up by 1 with bases loaded and 2 outs.... Yeah I learned my lesson that day!!

I'm not big on keeping stats, but parents can get a realistic view of their DD by looking at

(1) strikeouts, (2) walks, and (3) the number of times the batters blasted the ball, whether it was an out or a hit.

If a parent can focus on those items, over the course of several games you will get a more realistic picture of you child's ability.

mikfish711 said:

Ok, I starting to wonder if I am crazy (well, crazier than I am already aware of). My DD is 9 and as far as I can tell is a decent pitcher. She is on a pretty good 10u TB team as the #2 pitcher and I am one of the AC's. Recently two other teams have shown interest in her to come play for them and their coaches have expressed how impressed they are with her pitching. Maybe I am missing something, or maybe its because coaches are always harder on their own kids but I just dont see it yet. Yes, she is working hard and has shown good improvement over the last few months but I still dont see what they are seeing. She still struggles with consistency regularly. Anyone else see their DD differently than others do??

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Well, you're a softball parent - so yeah, crazy. Mad hatter stuff here.

The obvious aside, have you also seen that your dd has the skillset and energy of two different people? One day, mine is on top of the world and the next, whose kid is THAT?

As they get older, you'll see the mental struggles kick in more and more.

Luckily, when my DH is down on her, I'm usually up - and vice versa. We only ever reached the pinnacle of truly bad parenting once at a tournament last year, when dd was complaining about a new bat, after going down looking twice. DH told her, "Well it works a heckuva lot better when you swing the darn thing."

Then he said he's gonna get her a $30 little league bat, and until she learns to make contact, she loses the spendy one. This is the part where I usually jump in with the rah-rah-rah, sis-boom-bah, yay team stuff. Instead, I muttered, "$30? I say a 2×4. And she owes us for hitting lessons."

The next tournament? RBI's, solid doubles, triples. Coach singled her out in post-game pow-wow and said, "I'd like everyone to take a moment to welcome back one of our players." She thought it was hysterical.

That's why we're crazy. We know what they can do, have done before, and will probably do again. We just don't know when those moments will happen (probably when we aren't looking), and we can't believe the stuff that goes down in between.

Good luck on the crazy train.