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Old Wed May 12, 2004, 11:15pm
TexBlue TexBlue is offline
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As Mike stated, you gotta go with how you feel. If, in your judgement, she is intentionally hitting the batters, lose the pitcher. If not, you may need to talk to the coaches about crowd control.

I was doing a PONY National 2 years ago. 1 day was in the Mustang (10-U) group. I had a pitcher who was clocked in the mid 50's. This is a 10 year old. She was from Glen's area, Crystal City. She hit the 1st 6 batters of the game. After the batters quit digging in, she started throwing strikes. Towards the end of the game, she hit 4 more in a row, since they were starting to hit her. The team's parents whose kids were getting hit were getting pretty loud, obnoxious, and threatening. I called for the TD to come up to the field and got both coaches out in the infield. I told the pitcher's coach I was starting to wonder about the timing of the HBP's. I told the other head coach to control the his crowd and I didn't need to hear anymore threats about hitting their players. The TD came up and demanded I eject the pitcher on the next HBP. I flat out refused, told him it was my field, I'd do what I thought was proper. I just wanted him for what was going on outside the fence. Sure enough, she hit another batter, after a girl got a hit off her. I called the coach back to me and told him that was enough. His response was " They just need to learn to get of the way of the pitch."

My ejection of the coach was a lot louder than his protest. The pitcher left with him. Come to find out, after the game, she had already sent one batter to the hospital for X-Rays on the elbow. She hit 9 batters in a previous game that day, under the same circumstances. I was glad to not know any of this, as it left my mind unclouded about was going on in my game. I have no problem with HBP's, just not intentional ones.

Glen, you probably have called her in the last year or so. She would be in the 12-U now. Little Oriental girl, tall, skinny (or was then, anyway). She plays out of Corpus, in the Crystal City Youth League.
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