The bat wag and a bit more...

[chris s]

11-12's tonite. One team real sorry. Couple of kids who could not hit at all would come up and square well before pitcher set. Then proceed to wave bat up-down, forwards and backwards, I mean damn near dancing in the box! They got ten runned, so I saw it twice in the first 4 innings, kids struck out so I really did not think much about it. But, B5, kid comes up with R1/R3(lefty). Here he goes again, but now feet are dancing forward and backward along with the bat wag. I feel he's trying to mess with f2, obviously no intention of bunting or hitting. Pitch comes in a bit high, I bang a strike. Kid looks at me like I'm nuts and Manager chews him out. "That stupid dancing got that one called on you!" I was glad to hear that instead of something else outa skippys mouth.

I took last season of youth ball off, just worked FED,(never see that crap there). How have you guys been handling this stuff???

[greymule]

I let them wave the bat all they want, but I haven't seen the dancing around. I suspect that at some point it becomes USC so you stop it. The house rules of some leagues (none that I do) prohibit waving the bat as if to distract the pitcher.

When I pitched, bat-waving never bothered me. I knew the batter wasn't going to swing, so I just threw the pitch right down the middle. I can't remember seeing much of it past Little League, however.