The Little League Coach

Tonight was a rough night, but every team must endure this at some point I guess. At least we aren’t the Patriots! They have to live w/ it all year, we just have to live with it until our game next week.

The Set Up

Our league is very small. We have only two teams in each of the key divisions. Because of this, we are required to interleague with other leagues and we are left to our own devices to determine a champion within our own league at each division. Our league has chosen to select its champion using a head-to-head mechanism. The important part of winning the league championship is that the district plays a “tournament of champions” at the end of the year and crowns a district champion from the regular season teams. This is every teams goal at the beginning of the season.

Last Game

Our teams play each other five times during the course of the year. Two to start the season, three to end it. Winning the first two games would be huge! We took care of business the first game winning 7-3 pretty handily. Our pitching was suspect going into the season, but one of our players has decided she is a star now and is playing as such. She pitched a 3 hitter and we won the game.

Tonight

As often is the case, tonight was a different story. We started out a little rough w/ a couple of throwing errors and a few walks and boom, down 4-0 in the first. I wasn’t all that concerned, because we can typically score. Our offense is great, but they have a pretty good young pitcher, but we should still hit her. We did fight back and went up in the 5th 6-5. They came back and were up 7-6 going into the last inning. We didn’t score, oh well.

One of Those Nights

It was one of those nights where nothing I did went right. Every call I made backfired. Rather than try and steal 3rd, I chose to bunt the runner home from second. You can do this w/ a good bunt and steal. I call it a “bunt and run”. The runner takes off from 2nd and the batter bunts, by the time they throw down to first, the runner is headed home and scores. Unfortunately, two girls in a row were unable to get a bunt down. (they both happen to be my daughters which makes it worse) Oh well, such is life in Little League.

On to the Future

For the next 14 games or so we play the other league’s teams. There is no real reward for beating them and they are a great place to train your players and get pitchers some work. By the time we get back to playing our league rival, we should be in tip top shape. The last three games of the year should be fun!

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