Playing Time
Posted by The Little League Coach on 08 May 2008 at 11:35 pm | Tagged as: Board of Directors, General, Practice
Image by Glover Bryant Communications via Flickr
Inclusive
Little League is inclusive. You don’t have to try out to get into the league , only to balance the talent among the teams. Anyone that signs up gets to play! That said, back in the olden days when I was playing, there were no minimum play rules. In fact, there were no reentry rules! Once you were out, you were out.
I also started playing as a 9 Year Old. There was no minors program, there were no developmental or t-ball programs either. The fact is that playing time in Little League has increased astronomically.
Earn Your Position
That said, this isn’t "feel good league", it is Little League. You have to earn your position on your team in the Major ’s. This is NOT a bad thing! This is a great life lesson . How many times have you thought Jimmy was going to be the shortstop but Johnny beat him out. Then Johnny worked real hard and won the spot back. What was the result? Two great shortstops!
Regulation IV (i) in the Little League rulebook requires that "every player on a team roster will participate in each game for a minimum of six (6) defensive outs and bat at least one (1) time."
In minors this year for the first time consecutive batting orders are mandatory. Many leagues already did this, but now it is the rule. The minimum play times in regulation IV still apply, but free substitution is now permitted on defense. Our league made a local rule that no player in minors may sit for more than three consecutive outs thereby guaranteeing that a kid in minors will play every other inning at a minimum.
What if Your Kid Isn’t Playing Enough?
What if you think your kid is not playing enough but is playing the league minimums? The board of directors has no choice but to hear your concerns, graciously console you, and then inform you that the manager is within their rights to manage the team as they see fit. As long as Jimmy is playing the minimum, there is nothing the board can or will do.
Now what to do? Some would be tempted to "take their ball and go home" and this reaction is understandable. But what are we teaching our kids if we allow them or even encourage them to do that? Wouldn’t it be better to take Jimmy to the field and work him out? Make it impossible for the coach to keep him out of the game? How about encouraging him to support his teammates? Stepping up as a moral leader?
There are so many valuable lessons to be learned in Little League. One of the most valuable is that you don’t always get your way, or what you want. You do what is best for the team and respect your manager’s decisions. Likely you are young or inexperienced if you are playing league minimums. Your time will come. Look up to the others, try to emulate them, try to make yourself better, and do everything in your power to improve.
Or you can take your ball and go home, another life lesson?
There is a kid waiting in minors that would consider it an honor to play 6 outs and bat once in the Majors.
How do you keep kids motivated that only play minimums?
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I think the minimum playing time is a total joke and if you are honest with yourself you would admit it. It’s not “feel bad” league either! How does a kid earn his position when he is prohibited from doing it? Why doesn’t the coaches kids have to earn their positions?
It doesn’t take a lot of common sense to know that this rule allows managers to play favorites- and they do! It also is no mystery that the kid who only gets one at-bat will never learn to bat. He will never gain any confidence. He will never develop his skills or his self esteem. For one thing, it takes at least one at-bat to feel the pitcher! Six defensive outs is also a joke. When you’re outfield, which is all your gonna get, you’re lucky to get any action at all in 6 defensive outs. Who do you think you are fooling?
You have managers who have kids sitting on the bench because they don’t know how to coach. This unfair behavior is unacceptable by the manager and should not be condoned. There is no excuse and you can’t rationalize it, justify it, or double talk it into anything more than a poor joke played on innocent kids who deserve and expect more. There should definitely be some accountability on the part of the managers and coaches. Why even have a board of directors at all if it is how you describe? And you really sound like a jerk when you talk about sending the parents on a wild goose chase only to waste their time and smirk about it. “There’s nothing you can do- Ha ha ha” The manager is the king of the world and he is now your god. Welcome to hell.” If that is a reflection of our values of society then no wonder we have problems.
If you lose a game, so what? Why do managers whine so much when they lose a game and punish certain players? They blame the parents or the kid. That should be a great opportunity for the manager to show what a good sport he is and to know he needs to step up to the plate and teach the kids better skills. If some kids aren’t playing well, it’s mostly because the manager or coach isn’t teaching them anything. Not because the kids have no potential. It’s easier for a manager to put their kid in the field with a bunch of above average players to win games and give their kid the credit than to really teach the kids how to play and make it a team that plays as a team. I see it all the time. Little league is not “sink or swim” time. The kids are supposed to be getting taught to play baseball. Not show how well a “stay at home” dad can teach their kid during off season. After all, what if a kid gets injured or can’t make it to a game or moves away? You can’t play a season with only nine players. You need at least 12, right? Well, don’t waste people’s time!
It is a proven fact that managers can’t be trusted to be fair.
And don’t preach about life lessons. It doesn’t sound like you have learned enough yourself. Kids this age will have plenty of time to learn life lessons- you are supposed to let them play ball and have fun. There are a lot more talented kids who were discouraged to play by corrupt managers than your short stop BS. Maybe that’s why we have so many foreign ball players in the big leagues now. You can’t tell me that there are so few good players in the States that they have to go to third world countries to get players. American boys just don’t know they can play because they never got the chance because the little league coaches didn’t do their job. So now we have to recruit them from all over the world. I think it’s great that they get such wonderful opportunities to come here and be pro ball players and make more money than they ever dreamed. But you can’t tell me that the American dream is only for foreigners now. No, that alone should be a sure sign that there is something wrong with our program and it has been going on for a long time and it’s getting worse because of your type of insane mentality.
The truth is that other countries don’t exclude children and discourage them from playing during these impressionable years. They let them play ball! They build them up, not chop them down. We don’t- we think it’s ok to make them sit on the bench, piss on their leg and tell them it’s raining! The values of American people, mostly fathers who only coach to promote their own kids, and these overly competitive parents who pump their kids up on grow hormones, punish their kids for striking out, and basically robbing their own kids of their childhood, are rotten to the core.
So now we have a youth program, that preaches “for the kids” and “positive experience” blah blah blah is about as corrupt as you can get with no checks and balances at all to protect the kids from stupid coaches. That’s why soccer is becoming more popular every year and little league is a farce.
I coached for years and I would never play a kid the minimum.
NEVER! I play all the kids, I play them fair, I move them around, give them equal time, I teach the kids how to play ball and to be a good sport. I make the kids feel like they are a team, give them confidence, they play well together and we win games that way and they are eager to play next year because they love the game. As a coach, I have a job to do. But I soon realized to my dismay that I was the exception, not the rule.
It isn’t my job as a coach to discourage kids, play favorites, oppress them, stifle them, frustrate them, make them feel inadequate, send them to the school of hard knocks to learn lessons that don’t have anything to do with the game of baseball and screw them up for life. Is is as crazy as it sounds. Everyone learns good lessons from going through hard times, but that is no excuse for little league baseball coaches who are downright unfair. And if that’s such a great philosophy, then why don’t you see more coaches using it on their own kids? NO WAY! You can bet their kids are playing first, pitching, second, short stop, and all six or seven innings! I don’t see coaches kids playing the minimum in the out-field! And it’s not because they are all such great players!
That “earn your way” lesson is a cop out that can only be spoken by a manager who plays favorites. In reality, the kid will never be able to “earn their way” because the goal of magically turning into your son is unattainable. If Johnny plays better than your son, he will be resented and held back even more.
No, little league is going to have to adopt more rules to make sure kids get a fair chance, learn the game, get some playing time, and managers and coaches do their job right or step aside. Kids don’t learn anything from sitting on the bench. Managers need to teach and lead by example. Don’t tell a kid to be a good sport when a manager is the one being a total jerk. The manager should be a good sport and let the kids play ball! All the kids!
I am saying all this because my son and I have been through the ringer with little league and we are fed up!
Jerry,
Thank you for the best comment I have ever had! You are obviously passionate about your position and I appreciate that. When I played Little League there were no minimum play rules and I often sat the bench the whole game as a 9 year old. Likewise, until recently, there were no minimum play rules for all-stars and the top 9 pretty much played the entire game.
This often meant that my son sat the bench. My daughters did not start any games this year because they chose to spend their time on the computer rather than practicing. Therefore, their hitting suffered.
There is always a problem w/ coaches and kids on the team. Unfortunately, when the league is run entirely by volunteers this is unavoidable. I have seen it both ways though, sometimes coach’s kids are better than coaches think and they don’t play them.
A coach once told me, “you are right I play my kid the whole game, that’s why I coach, I put so much time into it to assure that he plays, if they want their kids to play more, they can volunteer”. This is obviously a very bad position to take.
Minor programs exist where kids get more playing time. The majors are not designed that way. You learn more on the bench in majors than you do playing every day in minors.
There are only 18 outs in a little league game. If you have a legitimate major’s game w/ decent pitcher the score will be in the single digits. If we assume a score of 6-3 then that means only 24 batters came up for the winning team. Add a few left on bases and you have 30 at bats in a game.
If you have a team of 12 and you had a perfect world of free substitution, then 6 of the kids would get 3 at bats and 6 would get 2.
A coach in my league this year stated that you don’t learn baseball on the field, you learn it in practice. In practice you get 100+ swings if the coach knows what he is doing. In a game, you are lucky to get 5.
In minors we usually only get 4 innings in. That means that often a player only gets one at-bat anyway with consecutive batting orders. The fact is, there aren’t enough outs to accommodate the number of at-bats we would all love to see.
That said, I personally do my substitutions differently. If I have 12 players then I sub after the 2nd inning in the bottom 3 slots, then bring those guys back in the next 3 slots. Everyone plays 4 innings. My theory on this is I am not coaching to win today, I am coaching to prepare for the tournaments at the end of the year.
If someone is sick, or at a school function, I want EVERY kid on my team prepared for a pressure situation. The baseball Gods have a way of finding your weaknesses, so limiting them is the key to success in my mind.
The issue you are addressing here has nothing to do w/ the minimum play rules. It has to do w/ coaches that play favorites. This is an entirely different issue.
The rules of Little League Baseball are international rules. They are followed by every league in the world. All those chartered by little league must follow the same rules. So your statement about other countries rings a little hollow.
In fact, other organizations have less stringent rules than Little League. Little League’s are the most stringent. AAU and other travel programs have no minimum play rules and when I umpire those games kids sit out for entire games at a time.
I am sorry that you had a bad experience. I cannot speak to your specific experience because I was not there obviously. I would recommend that you manage your son’s team next year or join the board of directors and create change. Another great lesson little league teaches is that you can actually affect change by getting involved.
Hi. My 12 year old son is going through the same problems with Little League B-ball. He plays for a 12 year old team. Currently, he is on an All Star team. Today, he got one “at bat” and played in the outfield for 2 innings. I was shocked. Coaches kids get to play, except for the one who is in a cast. God forbid. The child that was playing my childs position, one of the coaches kids, made 3 errors and didnt get taken out, just moved to another position as my child still sat on the bench. I have no problem with my child sitting out, just let him know why, which we wont believe anyways, because he didn’t take out hardly anyone else, or the “clique favorites.” I believe, if you make an error, you get substituted until that child messes up, and if he doesn’t, at least rotate the kids every other inning. There shouldn’t be kids that always stay in, while a few select unlucky ones do. Especially in an ALL STAR Game. Any advice? Fed UP
Michelle,
Without hearing the coach’s side of this it is very difficult for me to comment. I will say that the minimum play rule in all-stars is one at bat and three outs in the field, so technically the coach played your son more than the minimum.
This is ALWAYS an issue in all-stars, on just about every team. For the sake of this reply, I want to play devil’s advocate for a moment.
Assuming your son did not sub for the coach’s son, there was probably no way to take his son out. Once all your subs are in and have met their minimum playing time, they can only reenter in the slot in the line up in which they started or entered in.
From what you describe above, it sounds like the coach may have been frustrated w/ his son and probably would have taken him out but he had no option to do this. It is not difficult to back yourself into a corner like this as an all-star manager.
I do have to disagree w/ you also about rotating players in all-stars. I am assuming you mean the little league tournament all-stars here. Little league has 3 distinct programs. Fall, where it is all instructional and players move around at will w/o regard to winning or losing, spring where the leagues are competitive, and all-stars where the best of the best compete in a highly competitive environment.
This is the best of all worlds. In all-stars, the ones the manager feels are the best play, the others do not. Hopefully the manager picks the best, and when the team is winning, this is usually how the parents feel. When they start losing though, suddenly the coach can’t do anything right. Rotatating players around in a all-stars should not be happening, that should be reserved for fall ball and spring ball during blowouts or games that don’t count in the standings.
That said, what is the best way to assure that the team is being run the way you think it should be run? Volunteer and coach the team. You may be selected as the all-star manager if you are good. Otherwise, the lesson here is, maybe the manager is right, maybe you are right, but either way, everything is legal.
Jerry and Michelle,
How cathartic to read your comments.
I got my first taste of All-Star baseball Saturday, when my 10-year-old son was allowed to play only three defense outs and a single at-bat. (He got hit by the first pitch, so never even swung the bat once.)
Who played? The coaches’ kids (6 in all) and three boys who played for the coaches during the regular season. They made repeated errors and stuck out repeatedly, but were never taken out. My son was among five boys who warmed the bench.
“Tommy” was a first-round draft pick during the regular season, a star pitcher, shortstop and catcher . . . However, he was never considered for a starting position by the coach, who has essentially ignored him and his considerable talent, even in practice.
When Tommy was upset at not playing during the game, the coaches told him to suck it up, because “baseball is a team sport.” It occurs to me that the 14-boy roster is primarily so my son and the other boys who didn’t play can share in the costs of the all-star tournament. (We have paid more than $300 so far).
My son can outplay any of the “starters” and regularly did so during the regular season. My solution is to let him play travel ball . . . so he can experience non-parent coaches for the first time.
Beth,
Thanks for getting involved! From the sounds of your reply, the game did not go well. I am sorry about that. Obviously I can’t really comment on your specific circumstance but I am intrigued by the fact that you have paid $300 for all-stars?
Why the additional fees? My prior league charged nothing and my current league charges a $35 uniform fee. Also, the draft selection process is strictly confidential, how do you know “Tommy” was taken in the first round? This information should never leave the room.
Little League had attempted to try to find ways to make leagues put more kids on the roster to get the experience, this is the downside. If you have 14 players, the maximum you can take, then 5 have to sub in for 5 others. That means only 4 play the whole game. This is a very difficult task for any coach to accomplish.
Travel ball is good for developing advanced skills but it lacks the sense of community that Little League has. Playing with your friends is always more fun. Likewise, I don’t know of many travel teams that have coaches that aren’t parents either. I know they exist, but not many.
Again, why not volunteer yourself? League will always take volunteers.
I am not defending your coaches, if they did not play the best players at the best positions in all-stars shame on them. Unfortunately, we often disagree on what is best, but we should always respect the manager. They are after all, the authority figure and teaching our children respect is much more important than winning one all-star game.
Thanks for participating!
Coach, thanks for your reply.
I am not sure why $300 in fees. For that, the boys received fancy uniforms, an all star jacket, and a batting helmet. I assumed the remainder was to fund the District tournament, but did not think to question it.
Tommy’s coaches told me at the first meeting of parents that he was the first round pick for the team. I didn’t know that information should have been confidential, though I didn’t relay the message further.
I would not take Tommy out of little league, but supplement it with a travel ball program that runs from the end of all stars through November. We are lucky enough to have a team run by ex-MLB players in our area. These gentlemen also give pitching and hitting lessons to area kids, including my son.
I am confident none of the boys lacks respect for the coaches. What concerns me is that the coaches are displaying a lack of respect to some of the boys which, during these formative years, threatens to negatively impact their self-esteem on a long-term basis. My son, who is incredibly “nice” and full of confidence, believed he would be lead off batter and starting shortstop. I spent two weeks before the tournament began trying to figure out how to lower his expectations, but in the end, there was no way to do that. (I concede I am ultra-concerned about my son’s emotional well-being as his father was a casualty of the Iraq war seven months ago; knowing what I do now, I would not put him in all stars.)
Thanks again for your counsel.
First, thank you for the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. I know I speak for everyone reading this that we sympathize with you and we are sorry for your loss.
We don’t get jackets and helmets, that is a huge expense and you probably have fancier uniforms than we have. Each district charges differently, but we pay $75/team to play in the tournament. That covers the cost of the flags, pins, etc.
Travel ball is a great experience. My son plays also, I wouldn’t push him into it, but he was asked and wanted to do it, so we let him. He definitely had fun, but he gets much more out of Little League. Of course that’s because he has such a great coach!!!..lol.
It has been my experience that kids are super smart, very intuitive, and able to understand situations much better than we give them credit for. How they respond is what they must learn because they do not always do the right thing.
We often don’t give them full credit for being able to handle things, but they are very resilient. Short term setbacks often lead to much higher self-esteem and a better understanding for the future. We cannot learn what right is, if we never experience wrong.