No Brains No Brawn...or...Kick'em While They're Down

Followed a game yesterday where a neighboring town's high school put up 23 runs to the opponents zero. No hitter and seven home runs spread across three players. Maybe I've already put to much thought in to this game, but when I see those numbers it's strikes me as a failure on the part of both of those coaches. I understand that players are required to hit, throw, and catch in order to win or lose the game. That being said even if you did nothing to scout the other team at some point don't you stop pitching to the girls hitting it over the fence? And for the coach's team that put up 23...what did you teach ?

YoungBuck said:

And for the coach's team that put up 23...what did you teach ?

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Did the team who was winning put in their subs? If not then yes that is not good. However if they did, then it is one thing to be taking extra bases, etc up by a bunch of runs but you
have to go up there trying to hit..anything else would be more embarrassing for the other team.

Poor sportsmanship for sure.

Only remember two games that stuck with me that my kid was part of but nothing to that extent.
One game the opposing parents and coaches talked so much junk prior to a game and we throttled them but nobody really felt good about it.

The other was just a fluke game where we couldn't miss the ball and everyone put it in play. By the bottom of the second inning our kids hit opposite of what they would normally hit. Turning lefty, righty, slapping and again we just kept hitting the dang ball. It was crazy.

Finally we just had to alert the umpire's and had our girls step off the bags to get through the remaining innings for the run rule to end the game.

That opposing pitcher got a tip of the cap from our entire team and our parents because she battled so hard. No life-line given to her and very little help from her team. I truly hope she brushed that day off and is still pitching. She was truly inspirational in the way she didn't give up and kept grinding. A softball and life lesson for all the kids that day for valiant effort!

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Depends on a lot. What was the winning team doing? Were they taking extra bases, running on every opportunity? Did they put in subs and a girl off the bench hit 2 of those HR?

Can't tell players to not try, you can only rein them in on parts of the game. You certainly would never tell a pitcher to give up a no hitter.

One for sure way to insult a HS aged player is start stepping off the base. My dd would rather take the 23-0 loss then a 15-0 loss where the other team stepped off. At that age its rubbing it in their faces.

Blow outs are a big part of HS games. Some teams are just that bad. I think stepping off the base for an out is OK. I don't think that's an insult at all. That's more sportsmanship than running on passed balls or stealing with a big lead IMO. We had a game where our starters had 2 at bats in the 1st inning. The next inning all the non starters were playing and hitting for the next 3 or 4 innings. I've seen some coaches have their girls intentionally strike out which I don't agree with at all.

chinamigarden said:

Depends on a lot. What was the winning team doing? Were they taking extra bases, running on every opportunity? Did they put in subs and a girl off the bench hit 2 of those HR?

Can't tell players to not try, you can only rein them in on parts of the game. You certainly would never tell a pitcher to give up a no hitter.

One for sure way to insult a HS aged player is start stepping off the base. My dd would rather take the 23-0 loss then a 15-0 loss where the other team stepped off. At that age its rubbing it in their faces.

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Mine too. Whatever happens, it's painful to watch, even on the winning side. But it's a lot MORE painful on the losing side.

All i know is if that was my travel team and they had their starters in, i would bunt every batter until I broke the no hitter. at 12-0 its one base at a time, 15-0 we are stepping off. However on defense during pool play its still lights out. We lost a tournament in KC last fall because we got lazy playing defense up 9-0, ending up giving up a few runs. Bad weather rolls in during bracket play, championship game canceled and we end up go undefeated settling for second place due to standings going into pool all because of runs against. Those runs became the difference.

Poor sportsmanship for sure.

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Well said !



It's unfortunate we try to quantify the details in order to justify the results. A score of 23 to zero is poor sportsmanship and poor coaching.

YoungBuck said:

Well said !



It's unfortunate we try to quantify the details in order to justify the results. A score of 23 to zero is poor sportsmanship and poor coaching.

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Not unfortunate at all and definitely relevant. If you were the pitcher and a kid went up there and purposefully tried to get out how would you feel? If you
were any sort of competitor it should make you feel like garbage...If the coach didn't pull his starters and were taking extra bases then yes that
is bad sportsmanship...hence the detail questions. If this was a non-conference game then the only thing that can be said without details
is that it was a bad scheduling decision...

Let me give you a view from both sides.

We have some conference teams that are just that bad. We play a 15 after 3 and 10 after 4 run rule at their request. We start our #2 or #3 pitcher depending on how many we have that year. All the subs start. Once we have a run rule lead, we step off. We do not steal, but do advance on PB and WP.

On the other hand over the years we schedule non-conference games against really good high division teams for the experience of playing a truly good team. We are competitive for maybe 3-4 innings and then the talent from these larger schools takes over. Their #3 pitcher is better than our #1, their bench players are better than some of our starters because of sheer numbers of students they draw from. It hurts to look up at 15-5 score with the opponents celebrating on our field dancing to music they brought (all I do is win...ugh). What that does for our players is open their eyes, it makes them work harder, and respect all our opponents,

If you have a decent team see if you can schedule a game vs. a really good team and be prepared to write down all the areas your team is not a good as you or the players believed.