Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Idiot Alert LittleLeagueSoftball 2014 Version

First off, it is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much more less stress to be a parent on the sideline than the coach on the field.

I am not saying I'd rather be on the sideline; I like coaching Kinzie's team.

Luckily, there are still IDIOTS involved with LittleLeague Softball in the area, so that I still have something to blog about! LOL

All 4 of the presidents of the various LL softball leagues in the area (for the 13-14 yr old league, there are not enough girls that play, so there are only 1 or 2 teams per city, so the various cities within 30 miles play each other) got together and decided which of the rules they were going to tweak to fit our areas needs. (there just is not time to play 7 innings per game and play two games in one night, for example.)

One of the rules they tweaked and agreed upon was the time limit.
They all agreed that the game ends right at 1 hour and 50 minutes no matter where the game is in innings or "at bats" or who is up and who gets their last "at bats."

We play by a stupid rule that each team can only score 5 runs per inning until the last inning. The last inning is an "open run" inning and teams can score till there are 3 outs.

That leaves a HUGE guessing game for the umpire to decided if the 4th inning or the 5th inning or possibly the 3rd inning will be the last and "open run" inning according to how much time is left. It is just that: a guess, and it is never a right guess.

The other day, Kinzie's game was going well. Kinzie's team had to stop one of their at bats cause they had scored 5 runs. The score was 12 -9 at the end of the 4th inning. A game has to legally be 5 to count it as a game.

The umpire guessed this would be the last inning and declared it an "open run" inning. The opposing team scored 9 runs. They were the visiting team, therefore batting first, and they took awhile to score the 9 runs and to get 3 outs.

The time was up by the time they got done with their "open inning at bat".

The umpire called the game on account of time. The visiting team won.

Yep.

They ended the game with the visiting team having first and last "at bats" including the open run inning.

No one there at the game was one of the "voters" of this rule, so nothing I argued had any meaning.

The woman that was there enforcing the rule looked at me like I was an alien when I told her the game had to be reverted back to the last COMPLETED inning.

She had no idea what I was talking about.

The game ended and the winning coach was super happy, and a super jerk, about the win.

Rule 4.11 d, exception 2 states the obvious: if the home team does not get their last full at bat, which means 3 outs in the last inning, due to whatever reason, the score reverts back to the last completed inning.

HA, YOU DUMB WOMAN AT THE GAME!

Someone notified our LLPres and he fixed that mess by the time I texted him the next morning. Sure, he voted for the time limit, but he had NO idea, they would or could end the game with the visiting team having an extra at bat.


One more thing:
Our pitcher hit a home run and missed touching home plate. The other coach saw it and had his girls touch home plate to get her out. She had already gone into the dugout, therefore, creating a dead ball situation and forfeiting her right to come fix her miss.

Our pitcher pitched an amazing game, but the defense was not there to back her up. There were a lot of errors by the fielders that she had no control over. The pitcher was feeling like the loss was 100 percent her fault.

The coach of that winning team, bragged it up about his win to our pitcher after the game in the parking lot. Then, he had the audacity to tell her that he had done the missed-base play wrong, but the ump didn't catch it. She was already feeling horribly about the missed base and the loss, then this arrogant jerk bragged it up.

He knew the kids had to take the ball back to the pitcher's plate before the ball could be taken to home plate in order to protest her missing home plate, since she had gone in the dugout and made the play "dead".

It's not a very known rule, but what a jerk that he was even bragging about it, let alone to the person who made the mistake.

Stay tuned, I'm sure we are not done with idiots.



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