Sunday brought us the 3rd game of our tourney; we needed a win to advance out of the pool play. In the first 2 games, we played 2 teams from the suburbs, Evanston and New Lenox; next would be Skokie. I noticed right away how fricking big this team was; I was thinking to myself, no way these kids are 11, or newly turned 12 years old. I remember back in the day, in little league. One of our opponents all of a sudden had a new “kid”; this “kid’ had one of those light mustaches already. He pitched too… fast. I remember barely getting around and hitting a ground ball to first base. Our coaches requested a birth certificate. After further review, the kid was like 4 years too old; we didn’t see him again. I didn’t see any mustaches, but that starting pitcher was bringing the heat; one of their kids hit one over the fence in left field. These kids were twice the size of my son… game on?!?!
You see, I’ve learned from these tourneys, that these other teams are really good. It’s bad enough we’re out-talented on the field, but it seems like all the bounces go the other teams’ way. There is the saying you make your own luck… I don’t know; it doesn’t help that we help the other teams out with our defensive abilities. When you add in free passes and wild pitches, it makes it tough to beat any team. In this one, we finally ran into another factor that would work against us.
You see these viral videos about umpires, right? Well, I don’t like to blame them. They’re doing their best out there; they’re going to make mistakes. A lot of these umpires may be volunteers, or maybe getting a few bucks. I’ve seen bad calls. There have been some bad strike and ball calls, some missed calls at 1B, and last weekend, a missed interference call that went against us; I wasn’t that pissed. But in this one… we finally ran into an umpire that I felt like I could place some blame on. He called a few strikes against our kids that were shoulder high. One of them was against our best kid, who then, based on that absurd strike call, would swing at the next 2 pitches at that height, and miss both of them. Then, there was the ground ball that one of our kids hit down the line with runners on 1st and 3rd. The kids ran around the bases, only to find out 30 seconds later, that the ball was foul. Maybe it was; I couldn’t tell from my vantage point, but IF it was, the umpire should have let us know immediately. The home plate umpire didn’t even make the call… relying on the umpire positioned at 2B to make the call, who had about as good a view of it as I did. If they had called a pitch shoulder high against my son, I may have started chirping; I already yelled “foul” after one of their kids hit one down the line, that was called fair… It was borderline ridiculous.
It wouldn’t matter at the end of the day, taking another one on the chin 12-1. My son struck out looking his first AB against probably the fastest pitcher he’s seen thus far. He did get on base in his next AB, and made a nice catch in CF with runners on base to prevent the score from being worse. He still seems to be having fun, learning the finer points of the game, and getting better, finally breaking out of his slump the day before. I’m good too. One more tourney on the schedule for this summer, as well as, a few more single games. Hope to carry this momentum until “fall ball” which I need to sign him up for this week. Let’s keep it rolling…
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