New Season of Baseball

Well, I am coaching Zack's fall ball team again this year. We've got a more solid team this year. They did a blind draft this year, so it was pretty much luck of the draw. I ended up getting 2 kids that were on the team last year. We started the season on Saturday with a 7-5 win. Zack hit a double that would have been a triple if he had been watching me signal him to round 2nd and keep coming to 3rd. It worked out cause he ended up stealing 3rd and home anyway.

Last night, we had a great night of baserunning. We won 10-7 on 3 hits and only 1 RBI. That means we had a lot of steals. 23 if I counted them right (which I probably didn't). Of course, a lot of those were on wild pitches or errors, which would mean they don't really count as steals, but these guys are 9 & 10 (some are only 8), so I keep simplified stats.

And before I get any angry emails from the soccer infested, competition in kids sports is bad, the only score should be how much fun did we have? crowd, let me say a few things. 1) The stats I keep are available to the parents/kids however, unless the parent shares the URL with them, they don't know how to get to them. 2) I do not talk about the stats in practice/games, or even tell them I keep them. 3) the only reason I keep the stats is because I have a terrible memory and often my first impression sticks. I only use the stats to make the lineup. At this level, every player hits, so I'm not using them to choose who doesn't get to play. And truthfully, I don't really look at batting avg. I look more at on base % (OBP). I put the kids that get on base the most at the top of the lineup. 4) The kids have fun whether they win or lose and that is the most important thing. But teaching them not to compete at all will not help them later in life.