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Old Mon Apr 29, 2002, 06:54am
greymule greymule is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Birmingham, Alabama
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At lower levels, I do expand the zone, but not all that much. A little bit all around. The ball has to be hittable, but you certainly don't squeeze the pitcher. And strike 1 has a larger zone than strike 3. I confess that I sometimes get sadistic pleasure from staying within that slightly expanded zone no matter what. Since virtually all lower level games have a time limit, and since you're going to be out there until the time limit whether the game goes 7 innings or 2 . . .

The attempts I made when I was younger to speed the game up just caused problems. No matter what the score, nobody wants to see his kid called out on a bad pitch. When you call a neck-high strike, all everybody focuses on is the bad call, not the situation. If you're staying within a proper zone, fans may grumble at the ninth straight walk, but there's not much they can get on you about.

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