Thread: HS Blow-out
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Old Tue Apr 10, 2007, 02:10am
NewNCref NewNCref is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2007
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Having been around softball as long as I can remember, and just getting into the umpiring side of it this year, I've seen plenty of examples of this (though never this drastic). I went online and looked at some news articles about the stories, and from all reports, it looks like it was a no-win situation for the coach.

I can remember the first time my sister joined a travel softball team. The first game, they were getting killed, something like 15-0 going into the top of the second inning. The opposing team's coach began having players leave bases earlier, etc, just to get his girls out, and keep the score reasonable. The only people upset that they were doing were the girls themselves. The girls, regardless of the score, wanted to play ball. The game eventually ended (though I don't remember what the final score was, I remember it was a shutout in the high-20s), and the girls were fine with it. The icing on the cake was when the girls met the same team in a tournament at the end of that same year, and lost 5-4 in the finals. They lost the finals of that tournament, but you would have thought they'd won the World Series.

All that being said, I think the best thing to do is for the adults to shut up and let the girls play ball. I'm sure the girls would enjoy it much better that way. There's not much the coach can do, other than putting in his subs, and scaling back offense (no stolen bases, etc.), but if a pitcher is walking everyone, or the players are making easy singles, what can you do? The umpires can't do a thing. They're obligated to call the game within a certain set of rules, which is irrespective of the score (though I am all for enlarging the strike zone reasonably in this case).
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