Pitcher Parent Psychosis

Coaches, you know we all have pitcher parents who have completely lost their minds at times. What are your best stories? I'll post mine later this evening.

Not our team, but another local TB team. Had a dad calling pitches from the bleachers. If the dad called something different than the coach his daughter would throw dad's pitch, completely throwing off the catcher. Left the team before the last tournament with the dad blaming the coaches for his daughter's lack of success. Only lasted 2 months with the next team.

I like the parents that stand behind the backstop and live or die on every pitch.

Beats me how this can be helpful to anyone.

The best thing I ever did for either of my kids (DD or DS) is leave the backstop. I hang out down the foul line somewhere pretending not to be stressed out. They catch. They hit. Neither activity goes better if they feel me or DW breathing through the chain link fence. The only downside, is now and then some other parent decides they need to coach them through the fence and I'm not there to tell them to leave it to the coaching staff. That's only happened a couple times, and I've handled it with a quick phone call or face to face chat.

At 12U, our TB team picked up a flamethrower from a local rec league for the first year 14U season. She dominated her rec league since she was throwing 60 MPH FBs (she was clocked at various college camps so it was legitimate). The problems came when 1) Mom, who was a college pitcher, decided she knew more about pitch calling than us coaches and was calling pitches from the stands. The coach calling the pitches has been a TB coach and HS V coach for almost 30 years. 2) That was the only speed she had. She had no change up and was an East/West pitcher that threw with the same speed no matter the pitch and of course, got rocked by teams that practiced hitting at faster speeds. 3) Mom was so overly competitive that any other player that outshown or outplayed her DD in any way, she bad mouthed, caused divisiveness among the team and parents as well as driving our best players from the team including us. It just so happened that we qualified for the NSA nationals with that team for the following year.

Everything came to a head the following year when the other coaches finally figured out what Mom was doing during the NSA Nationals even though I had told them the previous year what was going on. She was told to either stop, or her DD would be off the team. Needless to say, when she didn't stop the following game, a big blow-up ensued and they were done. I mean, how would you like to be an 11 hour drive from home and have your DD get booted?

Apparently, no other team would take them after that so the DD's PC had to start a TB team for her and made Mom the coach. I hear through the grapevine that the team's not that good, the pitcher has gone really downhill since she hasn't improved beyond that and basically, all of the colleges that were thinking of recruiting this potentially outstanding pitcher are no longer interested. She was a good kid but her mother...oh boy, what a piece of work she was!

I'm waiting to meet a crazy pitcher's parent, I'm sure it'll happen. But we've been in kid pitch for all of 6 months and it hasn't happened yet. On the team we just left, loved both the other pitchers' parents. I suppose one of the dads could be considered "crazy" by some but he's just very involved IMO, not at all crazy. Very vocal, like encouragement (not just for his kid but for whichever kid was pitching, or hitting, just in general really) not like calling pitches. I can't believe there are parents who do that. That just seems completely insane to me which I guess is the point of this thread. On our current team we have 3 main pitchers and one who's learning and gets a little pitching time and all seem sane so far from what I can tell. We're only 2 tournaments in so maybe the crazy will come out. So far so good though.

As for me, I keep score. It keeps me focused and quiet. Not that I would try calling pitches or analyzing every pitch or whatever. It's very sad when the parents ruin it for the kids.

How does an insane person decide whether someone else is insane?

One out of three pitcher's parents are crazy. Look at the parent to your left. Look at the parent to the right. If they both seem sane...

Ken Krause said:

One out of three pitcher's parents are crazy. Look at the parent to your left. Look at the parent to the right. If they both seem sane...

Click to expand...

There's the saying that in any group, there's one person that everyone thinks is an idiot. If you don't think anyone in your group is an idiot,....

It sounds like y'all are accusing me of something.