I’ve mentioned before how my two oldest kids are on the same LL baseball team. They are now in the thick of Districts for All-stars.

Just to provide some context, the commissioner of the league has been stacking his team for years and wins most years. Well, this year our team beat his team FIVE times. Well, when it comes to putting the All-star team together (its a combination of his team and our team), he selects himself as the coach, even though our team beat his FIVE times. Thus, it makes sense that our coach should be the All-star coach. I knew that if he were the coach, it would mean our players don’t play as much.

Well, for tonight’s game, our team jumped out to an early 3-0 lead. This caused our coach to make the decision to pull our ace pitcher (my oldest son) early and save him for the final game. I didn’t think it was the correct decision at the time but would only be a bad decision if they lost the game. The second pitcher is also very good and had very good stuff tonight. But he also approached his pitch threshold for being allowed to pitch the final game. So, the coach also pulled him with ONE out in the game and put his son in to pitch.

Before I tell the rest of the story, I just say that in each inning, we left several players on the bases. One inning we left the bases loaded. The other team was making all their plays. Our team, on the other hand, made many mistakes (dropped fly balls, dropped 3rd strikes that led to a free base, etc.). We should have gone into the final inning with a 5+ run lead but we headed into the final inning with only a 3 run lead.

So, the coach puts his son in to pitch with ONE out left in the game. Well, he promptly gives up 3 runs!!!!! The final out was made with a player on third base!!!

So, the game goes into extra innings! The other team scored two runs in the first extra inning. We responded by scoring two runs. In the second extra inning, the other team made a base running error that caused their player to be thrown out at home, thus saving a run. Then in the bottom of the inning, my oldest son grounded out to first base which advanced a runner on second to third and then he scored when the throw to third was overthrown.

It was quite the exciting game but could have come back to cost the coach, and the players.

Coaching 101 … you play to win the game right now … don’t look ahead! It BARELY worked out but nearly ended in disaster.

Oh, also, the game wasn’t without a disagreement on pitch count. The other team pitched one player 6 innings. One person had 86 pitches, another 88, and another 81. Well, the 81 was considered the official count and so the other team adverted forfeit. It was entertaining!