Sorry kid, this league is for bad players only

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Added By: Alex

Added on: 08/25/2008 @ 11:25:32 PM

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Sorry kid, this league is for bad players only

This is lame. Some people are better baseball players then others. That's life.
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	Carlos44ec - Tater Salad? 08/26/2008 @ 10:42:54 AM
I can see their point- why have a kid that will throw No-Nos all day when the objective is to develop all of the kids? Let him find a league where people are on his level. He's not going to learn anything if he's not being challanged. It's unfair to the kids in general to keep him in that league. You need swinging time to get better at batting, sure- but you also need to get some hits so that you know what it feels like to succeed.		Rate this comment Yours: Total: Rated 1 times.

	Alex - 3619 Posts 08/26/2008 @ 12:49:05 PM
Boo hoo, if you want hits go practice hitting off a tee so you get good enough to hit off this kid. You can make the same argument he should stay in the league to build confidence by succeeding instead of forcing him into a harder league where he'll get rocked. In fact, your comment is one huge contradiction. Also, it never really says what his stats are.		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.

	Jon - 3375 Posts 08/26/2008 @ 10:47:19 PM
Carlos44ec Wrote - Today @ 10:42:54 AM I can see their point- why have a kid that will throw No-Nos all day when the objective is to develop all of the kids? Let him find a league where people are on his level. He's not going to learn anything if he's not being challanged. It's unfair to the kids in general to keep him in that league. You need swinging time to get better at batting, sure- but you also need to get some hits so that you know what it feels like to succeed. If it were a two team league, I could see the point. But I'm guessing there are plenty of teams in the league, and so each team will have to face this kid once, or maybe twice. Yeah, it's an 8 team league. Wilbon had a good point today. He talked about how his league, when he was younger, had a tough pitcher that scared him. (And really, who hasn't experienced this in little league?) Wilbon said that yeah, he was scared and couldn't hit this kid, but the next year, he faced him again and hit a triple off him and he felt like he could get a hit off of anyone in the world. Isn't that the kind of experience little leaguers can use? If the parents and league are really concerned about everyone getting to hit, or about safety (even though it appears this kid is not a safety risk), they would just have a coach-pitch league. That gives a much better chance for quality at-bats and makes it unlikely for anyone to get hurt. But they don't have that kind of league. So they obviously were fine with 8 to 10 year olds facing the pitches of their peers before, but suddenly they find it unfair? Next year, they can put in place some league-wide inning maximums or something, but not letting him pitch at all is lame and not letting him pitch this year is bogus. The kids can get all the hitting practice they want in team practices and in the other games that make up the vast majority of the season. Kids, even young ones, can deal with getting overpowered by superior competition for one or two times during the season.		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.

	Jeremy - 9475 Posts 08/26/2008 @ 11:31:42 PM
These kids are tweeners to this point, so it may or may not apply, but it's still worth bringing up that often forgotten in the standard "Wussification of our kids", "Back in MY day", "Sometimes they don't even keep score!" rhetoric is that kids are starting things earlier and earlier. Yeah, your little league kept score, and you got your feelings hurt once in a while, but you were also 14, not 4-6 like some of the leagues today. That being said, this is still pretty lame, but only because they're deciding after the fact to just punish him. I do think there is some validity to the concerns though. At some point in time there has to be a league between teeball and little league where it's 95% learning about the game, innings only end 3 strikeouts and 46 errors later, and all of those things. There IS a place for the "everyone gets a participation trophy" leagues, because winning isn't even the primary purpose at that point. I think the obvious answer is to move this kid up to the next level. (There are hundreds of leagues, you wouldn't be talking about putting him in with 13 year olds) That is assuming 40 is all that good. Has anyone heard any context with that number? Is everyone else throwing 24mph and this kid is hitting 40? Or, is everyone else throwing 35ish, but he can throw 40, and is just also really accurate/good?		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.

	Alex - 3619 Posts 08/27/2008 @ 12:28:38 AM
40mph didn't seem too fast to me, but it's been a long time since I was nine. I'd have to look up some records or ask my parents to be sure, but I think by 9 I was playing in a league where the kids pitched too, so I don't think the kids starting things earlier applies in this case. For pretty much all the years once I got to hardball there was 1 team (teams could keep 5 players every year and rest were random distribute or something like that) that won the championship pretty much every year. It was frustrating at times (including the one time we were ahead in the playoffs, maybe championship game, and they stopped the game cause of a little weather (wussies) and then we ended up losing when we finished a different day), but I don't think we ever tried getting them kicked out of the league (which never would have worked because it was a Diener team and the Dieners are pretty well woven into the local sports scene). As far as the winning goes, doesn't it seem like the people who are trying to force this kid out are the ones that seem overly concerned about winning? It's hard to guess motives of people based on a little news clip, but just because this kid's coach wants to let him pitch doesn't mean he only cares about winning. The kid is a good pitcher, why shouldn't he pitch? I agree with Jon's comments.		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.

	Jon - 1 bajillion posts 08/27/2008 @ 02:00:11 AM
Jeremy Wrote - Yesterday @ 11:31:42 PM These kids are tweeners to this point, so it may or may not apply, but it's still worth bringing up that often forgotten in the standard "Wussification of our kids", "Back in MY day", "Sometimes they don't even keep score!" rhetoric is that kids are starting things earlier and earlier. Yeah, your little league kept score, and you got your feelings hurt once in a while, but you were also 14, not 4-6 like some of the leagues today. That being said, this is still pretty lame, but only because they're deciding after the fact to just punish him. I do think there is some validity to the concerns though. At some point in time there has to be a league between teeball and little league where it's 95% learning about the game, innings only end 3 strikeouts and 46 errors later, and all of those things. Your point may be valid for some situations, but I don't think it applies here. I don't know about the rest of the people here, but the age group of the league in question is the same age group I was in when I played little league. (Before that, I had played in t-ball and what we called "junior baseball" through the parks & rec where coaches pitched to you and there was no striking out and everyone batted and all that.) So, I guess I agree that if the kids were four or six years old, they should be concerned with kids learning the game and all that, but these kids aren't that age. They're pretty much the standard little league age. In general, I'm not one that gets in the "in my day we ate dirt and liked it" mode, and I don't really think this issue is that type of thing anyway. They're just being unfair. If they want to make a league that's less competetive or something I think the kids are still in that range where it's appropriate. Looking back, I think the little league rules we played with were pretty good. The league that had the 3rd and 4th graders playing together was a combination of coach pitch and player pich I think. I don't remember exactly how they split it up, but I think at least for the first half of the year, the coaches pitched all or maybe half of the game. I think by the second half of the schedule the players were pitching the full game (no one player could pitch for more than two innings per game though). Also, I think there weren't called strikes when the coach pitched or something like that, so kids got to take some cuts. It seemed to go pretty well. Maybe not perfect but it was pretty good.		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.
Jon screwed with this 3 times, last at 08/27/2008 2:03:14 am

	Jon - 3375 Posts 08/27/2008 @ 02:58:27 AM
Here's an article from the local paper in New Haven, CT with more details in it. If you read the first article Alex linked to, I think you'll find this one interesting. http://www.zwire.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=20092647&BRD=1281&PAG=461&dept_id=624602&rfi=8 Edit: I found this next article on the same website. It's worth reading too. The link might look the same, but it's not. It's a different article. http://www.zwire.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=20092648&BRD=1281&PAG=461&dept_id=624602&rfi=8		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.
Jon edited this 3 times, last at 08/27/2008 3:11:27 am

	Jeremy - 9475 Posts 08/27/2008 @ 09:36:16 AM
Ok, so from the articles I gather than 1) His 40mph fastball isn't head and shoulders faster than what other kids can throw, as I wondered above he just does does it very accurately. (Which should be a good thing, safety wise.) 2) The league apparently has 12 year olds in it as well. I don't know what to make of that. On one hand those kids should be able to "take it," on the other hand if 12 and 9 year olds are in the same league, it seems to me that might point to the fact that it's really more of a "all about fun" league. 3) In typical modern american sports league style the children seem to be taking everything in stride and the parents are acting like 4 year olds.		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.

	Matt - Nutcan.com's MBL 08/27/2008 @ 11:30:38 AM
"Liga Juvenil De Baseball De New Haven" Shouldn't it be Béisbol?		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.

	Matt - Washington Bureau Chief 08/27/2008 @ 11:47:11 AM
Like most local/regional stories that get picked up nationally, the first accounts are usually only a part of the picture. Too bad that by the time the rest of the story is revealed (if it ever is), it's too late to stop the media circus. It seems like the league kind of brought this on themselves. What's with allowing teams to "sign" their own players (especially players who already play in an admittedly superior league)? If you care about balance, then assign players randomly, and if you are going to be a developmental league then perhaps have a rule on the books where players in higher leagues are ineligible.		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.
Matt perfected this at 08/27/2008 11:48:21 am

	Jeremy - 9475 Posts 08/27/2008 @ 12:05:55 PM
No doubt.		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.