Never Cease To Be Surprised By The View!

Yesterday I went to the ballpark before my grandson’s scheduled game to watch the first semi-final game in the single elimination, 6-inning, no-time limit,  post-season tournament for his league. The number one team in the league was playing one of the two teams who had won their quarter-final game the night before. The boy’s team, second place in the league, was scheduled to play the other quarter-final team immediately after this game.

While watching the game, I wrote a post about the things I saw and heard during this game. It is much easier to be an observer – objective or otherwise – when the boy is not playing. Due to subsequent developments in our game, I threw out my former post as irrelevant and pretentious. I have given a lot of thought about what I want to say; and what I wrote as an ”objective” observer wasn’t it!

A few background items: 

1. The league’s first place team won the game. It was a close game; the score was close, the lead going first to one team and then the other.  
2. This league is for 10-12 year old boys. Coaches are usually dads. Umpires are paid a minimal amount to call two to three games each evening. Score keepers are parents from the home team for the book and someone from the visitor team for the board.
3. This town takes their sports VERY seriously. How well – or how poorly – your child plays sports could influence your social, political, and even ecumenical standing in this community.  For many – not all, but many – of the parents and coaches, winning is the most important thing.
4. Competition is a grand way to teach a child to stand up for himself, do his best, and push himself beyond his comfort level. It is also the perfect avenue for teaching sportsmanship, character, getting over failure, winning gracefully, and the joy of playing a game you are mastering.
   The problem is not everyone doing the teaching understands these positive aspects of competition. To some, winning is what it is all about; first, last and always.

The boy’s team played well. The Boy pitched all six innings with 7 strike outs, 1 run, 3 hits, 1 error, 1 walk, and 1 hit by pitch. The last two occurring only after the “incident” took place. The team hit, fielded, stole bases, and played their way to a 8-1 lead in the top of the 6th inning. 

In the middle of their at-bat, the coach for the Visitors walked up to the umpire behind the plate and said something. The ump brought him to the Home team sidelines, where they are met with by the Home team coach.

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, the ensuing conversation took place right in front of me at a distance of less than 1 foot.

The Visitor coach, in his most ubiquitiously apologic manner, said he was “forced” to protest the line-up of the (winning) Home team because the boy the coach had called to play as a replacement player was an illegal player. This “coach” alleged that the boy was on his team’s roster and therefore, could not play for the Home team. He then went on to whiningly say that he felt he had to do this because it was unfair to his boys to not protest!

Because of many rained-out games over the regular season, the end of the season and the post-season play is taking place late in the ‘normal’ timeframe for a season. Other committments, that would not have interferred with regualr season play, have kept many boys from playing.  Most of the teams have had to ‘call up’ players to fill these positions. At the beginning of the season, all coaches were given a list of boys they could call. The boy in question was on the list. [While not really relevant, let me add the player in question is only 10 years old playing with boys who are mostly 12 years old.]

The ‘discussion’ took almost ten minutes trying to figure out if the protest had any merit. All this time, the Boy was standing on the mound waiting for the game to resume. His team huddled around the mound trying to figure out what the problem was. They have played hard; they have played well; they are two outs from a win; they are confused.

The problem is that the umpire had no choice but to ask the official scorebook keeper to register the protest; putting our win in doubt and discounting the effort our boys had made. Once entered on the official book, the protest goes to the commissioner of the league and his committee.

It was decided to complete the game and let the commissioner handle the protest. The Boy was not given a single warm-up pitch after almost ten minutes of standing around. He walked one and hit the next. However, his team stepped up to the challenge and got the next two outs in the field. The game ended with a score of 8-1 without the Home team having to come up to bat in the bottom of the 6th inning.

The outcome of the protest is still in doubt – at least to me.

I do have a few questions:

1. Did the Visitor’s coach suffer from a comma through the first 5 1/2 innings of the game and just suddenly regain consciousness in the top of the 6th batting the bottom of his lineup?
   He was given a list of our players (which included the player in question by name) at the beginning of the game; the player in question was wearing his regular season team uniform (black and gold) while our team is dressed in blue and gray; and, fans were shouting encouragement using the boy’s name for 5 1/2 innings. So short of a comma, why did this “coach” wait until he was sure to lose by 8-1 to protest, all for the good of his boys?
2. Why would the commissioner even entertain such a protest?
   It is pretty transparent that this “coach” is a poor loser and is trying to manipulate the situation. However, as transparent as it is, the political nature of the commissioner’s position could actually support this protest.
3. What is this “coach” teaching his team, and by extension, our team?
   It seems clear to me – ‘If you cannot beat them fairly, I will twist the rules and get you the win or at least a do-over. You don’t have to have play baseball, just play politics and technicalities.’ I cannot imagine he expected to have the forfeiture of the game; I think he was trying to get the game re-played without the player in question and  at a later date. Getting a do-over and having the game replayed, might not seem like a ‘win’ to most people; but as a parent of a player on the league leader team so correctly observed, ‘Any one of these teams could beat any other on any given day.’  Having a second cut at the same piece of the pie could result in a very different outcome.
   So our boys might be demoralized and learn that doing your best and playing better than the other team just isn’t enough. His team learns that character doesn’t count in baseball…at least not on his team.

Was I angry over this?
Yep.

Will I be outraged if the commissioner and his committee upholds the protest?
Yep.

Will I do something about it?
I not know what I can or would do, but I do know,  it will not be pretty.