Beat Down

Last night was one of the worst beat downs I have ever taken coaching little league baseball. Besides the 10-11 All Star team last year where we lost 31-3 combined in two games, last night was the worst loss ever. The other team had two huge kids, about the same size as me, and of course one of them was pitching. With the exception of two of the kids, everybody went up there scared as hell swinging at any pitch that looked remotely good. The pitches were coming in so fast the kids cold hardly tell if it was a strike or not so they just swung anyway. Let's just put it this way...there are 18 outs in a normal 6 inning little league game, 15 outs last night were strikeouts...at least most of them were swinging. The kids really had no idea what to do against him and it showed. As far as their hitting went; in the first inning they had 4 hits that, I kid you not, hit within 4 inches of the foul line, all fair of course, so they amassed 2 triples and 2 doubles really quickly. After that the rest of the game was basically a slaughter and we ended up losing 13-0. At least it knocked the kids of their high horse; we had won 4 straight games and I think they thought they were the shit...not quite guys. Hopefully we won't have to endure anymore 13-0 losses this season but if we do, oh well, it's little league, not the major leagues. Oh, and one more thing I had to tell some of my players last night, there's no crying in baseball.