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Interesting Pony Experiences
by Dave
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Well, I'm back from 12U Pony (Protect Our Nation's Youth) Nationals. I know I've been absent from this blog for several weeks but I've been trying to get an extremely young, inexperienced team ready to compete in Vienna, Ohio and that's left little time for much else. We've played a lot of games over the past several weeks. The team was finally starting to come together and believe in themselves. Then we went out to Ohio and, while the kids had an absolute blast, a few experiences out there have soured me on Pony.
Let me be clear that this team "earned" its way into nationals via a hosting bid. That is to say, we qualified by holding a tournament, not by winning anything. The best we could muster this year was a couple second place finishes, one in a true "C" level one-day round robin and another in a "B" level tournament with only a few good teams. We lost to a couple Pony National Sweet 16 teams in those second place finishes.
I was satisfied with our results because the team is majority 11U. We had 6 12s on the team but, between them, there were 4 kids with any real experience and about 75% of that involved the experience of sitting the bench. Our other 2 12s had never played any sort of travel ball before and one of them had only played a year of rec softball. Our 8 kids at 11U had maybe a half dozen 10U tournaments worth of experience. 2 of them qualify for 10U this year and one of those qualifies for 10U next year! When you start with kids like this, winning is not your goal. Personal development is all you can reasonably seek. On that score, our mission was accomplished. We built character rather than anything resembling a winning record.
Our young, inexperienced team hit bottom, as all teams must do, some time in mid-June. We had about 6 games in a one week stretch where the best we could muster was a 5-1, rain-shortened, preliminary round, 3 inning victory, though one against another Pony Nationals Sweet 16 team. That team promptly run-ruled us in 3 innings the next morning. It was rather ugly. We held them to a single base runner for the first 2 innings and then in the third inning, it was as if someone had cut deeply into the team's jugular. I don't think we ever got an out. Our team was psychologically crushed. We followed this loss with two extremely bad losses in essentially a rec league we had joined just to get some additional scrimmages scheduled. I thought it might help us build some confidence. After those two losses, I wasn't sure whether they would ever win a game again. I wasn't sure we would ever avoid a run rule again!
After one loss, we waited for the other team to leave and conducted an extremely hard, two hour long practice which went very well. I thought the kids would recover but our next several games were awful. I thought about taking that hosting bid and throwing it in the trash can. The kids seemed as if they no longer wanted to play softball. They did not seem to have the will to compete. They began to bicker a bit between and amongst themselves. I didn't know what to do to pull them out of this very deep slump.
Eventually I decided that the team was going to nationals whether they wanted to or not. We were going, after all, not to compete for the title or even a place in the Sweet 16. We were going for the experience, to trade pins, play a bunch of games, see what real softball is like, etc. So I decided that what we really needed to do was put the fun back into the sport. I decided to no longer become apoplectic when an opponent was struck out, this was followed by a passed ball, and this was followed by a throw over the groggy first baseman and past the sleeping right fielder, resulting in the batter coming all the way round the bases. I decided that I would take the "oh well" attitude whenever we made atrocious plays in the field.
The girls mostly reacted to my new philosophy pretty well. We started occasionally winning games against inferior teams - something that was rather rare for a while there. And then we started beating a few teams which I think I would characterize as being as good as us or perhaps even a little better. We didn't win often but we did win a few. One game in particular stood out as the highlight of the season. We soundly beat a team which I'm pretty sure was mostly 12s and had an overall winning record.
So we packed up our equipment and headed out to Ohio to see if our new found team confidence would stand us well enough to compete in at least some games at Pony Nationals. Things began fairly well enough. We got some decent pitching and seemed to get over our jitters. Then, when I thought we might settle down and win a game or two in pool play, the wheels came resoundingly off the cart. We started making errors on routine plays.
Competition began with us scoring a couple runs in the first inning of our first game. We then managed to get two outs while the bases were still loaded but our best fielder made an error and allowed the opponent to tie the game. Then our bats went silent for the remainder of the day. Then our second baseman made a huge error in the second inning. At that point, we stopped being able to play the game. We lost that one 7-2 but were mercied in 3 innings in the next contest. Our final pool round game went into the loss column when the clock took mercy on us while the opponent was actively trying to avoid the run rule.
We had taken our lumps and we entered bracket play against a team which would make the Sweet 16 after a few more games. Our pitcher had warmed up well but had trouble getting the ball over. She walked the first batter and then hit the second. After a passed ball, runners were on 2nd and 3rd. A ground ball went as a fielders choice as our third baseman held the runner at third. Then our pitcher struck out the next four batters. m Unfortunately, that resulted in just one out and 5 runs scoring. How is that possible? I'm not actually sure but I can tell you it happened in front of my eyes. The phrase catcher meltdown comes to mind but that's a story for another day.
Somehow we got out of that inning but our confidence was broken. And the team was ready to fracture because the catcher had a complete mental and physical melt. I was forced to remove her from the game but the reason I had to do that had nothing to do with the passed balls. She freaked out in a manner with which I am not accustomed on a softball diamond. Interestingly, the team calmed down after I removed the kid from the game. But our first round bracket game was over because we were already down 5-0 to start and our bats remained silent against mediocre (at best) pitching.
I felt good about all but the first inning of that game and I guess the girls did too. We finally got our first win of the tournament in the losers bracket. We soundly defeated our opponent something like 10-4 and went home to rest before taking on another opponent we had never heard of or seen before. As the brackets are set up, the team we would be facing was a loser in the other loser bracket game. I suspected they might be tough, however, because I thought the team to which they lost was pretty good based on completely unrelated experience. We returned to the field to watch the team we had soundly defeated romp on the winner of the other loser game. Now we had to face the loser to the loser of a team we had already soundly defeated. Does that make sense to you? I felt we had a right to be somewhat confident.
Now here we get to the point that I wanted to discuss with you. Here is the experience which caused me to write this thing. Here is the experience which has soured me on Pony.
Last year I told you that at Pony Nationals I saw some of the best and some of the worst umpiring of my life. This year, I would have to say that the umpiring I saw was on average far superior to what went on in 2006. But not all of my experiences were praiseworthy.
In this winner of a lose game vs. loser of a loser game, a contest which was in the single elimination phase of bracket play, our opponent happened to be the home town team. The local media was covering their every move. The team was constantly interviewed by TV news broadcasts. Their games were all over the local paper. These girls had become local media darlings because their area was hosting the event. And everybody, aside from me, had noticed this fact.
Our team got on TV one night because we were standing near these girls. There were all sorts of photographs in the paper from their games, etc., etc. So there we were facing elimination and our opponent, also facing elimination, was the local favorite. That's not the scenario I would have chosen, had anyone asked me!
We looked and looked for a place to warm-up. Pony had told us before the tournament that the complexes being used had loads of warm-up area. Ding - that was false. The only space adequate for any sort of warm-up was a miniature field with about 40-50 feet worth of infield and 60-70 of outfield. That would have been fine for us but there were 8 teams trying to warm-up on that space! We were forced to make do with whatever space we could find which meant four girls over here, two over there and the rest wherever we could find any sort of space. We kept an eye on our watches so we could have enough time to pull everyone back together, go to the field, get our gear into the dugout and maybe talk for a few moments.
We did this and as soon as we arrived at the proper field, I noticed the plate ump being sort of overly chummy with our local opponent. That concerned me but I shook it off. We still had 15 minutes before the scheduled game time so I figured we would relax and go over signs, maybe give a little pep talk. Then the plate ump noticed we arrived and he more or less charged us. He barked for our girls to get their bats and helmets out NOW because we're going to get this thing started very SOON. Then he grabbed two of my coaches and told them their attire was inappropriate so they would not be permitted on the field. They were wearing basically the same garb they had worn at our first five games on the same couple of fields! And we had double checked the dress code before play had ever begun.
Let me explain that a coach known to us had been approached by a facility official and told he could not wear jeans on the field. He checked the Pony rulebook for some guidance, as did I, and we could find nothing in it which might indicate that new, clean, unremarkable blue jeans were prohibited. So this other coach called higher up Pony officials and they all agreed that this was absolutely wrong. The kind of attire Pony was trying to avoid was slovenly and overly provocative clothing. They didn't want ripped or tattered clothing of any sort and they didn't want some centerfold twenty something out there wearing short-shorts. They told our coach friend to call him if there was ever an issue. He never had a problem again and the team is still playing as of this evening.
Anyway, back to our game. The umps told us two of our coaches could not be on the field so they walked over to the officials booth to get a ruling - basically to connect the higher up official with the facility official and lay this nonsense to rest. Then the plate ump noticed that there were just two of us and decided he didn't like the other guy's attire. Off he went to get a similar ruling. That left me with myself coaching third, something I avoid at all costs, a kid off the bench, with a helmet on, coaching first, and nobody in the dugout to keep order - something Pony, correctly, does not allow. You are supposed to keep a coach in the dugout to maintain order.
I quickly changed the signals to our baserunners since I don't know them off the top of my head. We adapt them game by game and I have to admit that I don't know them any longer. So I gave a simplified set of signs to the kids but I also hoped that our coaches would be back in plenty of time since game time was still more than 10 minutes away. That's what I thought. Then the plate ump charged me again and demanded that I come out for the plate meeting. He went over ground rules in a rather impatient manner and quickly did the coin toss, not allowing me to see what had come up but it must have been favorable because immediately after he grabbed the coin, he said to the other coach, "of course you want home" and we were off to the races. I started my game clock immediately but I'm jumping ahead.
The other team stormed out to the field immediately and the ump called batter up. Just then my coaches returned having obtained the proper consent and the plate ump seemed rather annoyed about it. I yelled to our kids to go back to the old signs and we settled in for a game which I was sure was going to be easy.
The first inning, we scored 3 runs before an out was made as our opponent misplayed every ball. Then we had a kid try to score from 3rd on a ground ball to short and she clearly made it despite the catcher blocking the plate prematurely, before she had the ball. The plate ump animatedly called her out. I think he thought he might get on the news since there were cameras around. And he was dead wrong. The girl was easily safe.
Now I have to digress for another moment because there's an important point here. When we attended the manager's meeting, Pony had gone to great lengths to discuss things which would be emphasized in this tournament. They wanted no misunderstandings. The point which received the greatest amount of emphasis concerned obstruction. We were told point blank something like, "You all have spent hours and hours teaching your fielders to 'block, catch, tag' but we're not going to allow that. You must instruct your fielders to 'catch, block, tag' at this tournament. If they don't do that, they WILL be called for obstruction." We had played our fair share of Pony tournaments and had never heard this point of emphasis discussed before. We had learned the hard way - at the cost of many Pony tournament outs - that the proper way was 'block, catch, tag.'
We spent a good deal of time discussing the point with the kids. We have three infielders who routinely 'block, catch, tag' because they have been taught to do this. They don't block until the ball is on the way to them but block they do when that moment arrives. You can't unteach this skill but we tried and our kids did well avoiding any real obstruction as far as I'm concerned.
Here we were in the first inning of our sixth game and we had this girl running in from third. The catcher clearly obstructed here but that didn't matter since she was clearly safe. Yet this plate ump called her out! We didn't score again after that play and then we took the field. As I said, the other team was pretty weak and their first three batters whiffed without a chance of hitting the ball.
The next inning, we went weakly. Our opponent got its first hit, a double. We got an out on a grounder but the next kid singled. The runner from second scored easily but as she rounded the bag, our shortstop was close enough to have reached out and slapped her hand - which is to say not particularly close but, I suppose, close enough. The plate ump yelled, "OBSTRUCTION AT THIRD, OBSTRUCTION AT THIRD." I happened to be looking right at third when he called it. There was no obstruction and there was no ramification of the call. The kid scored easily without a play. The call was entirely intended to completely unnerve the kid.
Later, we had another kid thrown out at the plate. This time she was clearly out but the obstruction was far more egregious!! That ended our offensive inning and our first base coach calmly walked up to the plate ump for clarification of the obstruction rule. He said, "we were told at the managers meeting ... is that correct?" The ump said with a wry smile, "why yes it is." My coach calmly asked him about whether this applied to homeplate and when he again wryly said yes, he asked about the two previous calls at the plate, one of which involved our girl sliding too far from the plate as she was blocked by the catcher who then caught the ball a full second later and tagged our runner. The plate ump rudely dispensed our coach with a warning, "Don't you EVER question a judgement call by me again."
At this point our coaches and players were all almost completely unnerved and the wheels seemed to fall off the cart again. We had several misplays and the score wound up being 6-4 with us trailing by a run. We changed pitchers and our new arm began mowing them down quickly. We scored another run, making it 6-5 but a missed signed and a really poor baserunning play cost us a potentially big inning. We hustled out to the field and got ready to put this team down so we could bat again.
The count went 0-2 on the first batter and our pitcher tried to get her fishing on an outside pitch. She missed with a really wide one, one the catcher could not possibly catch and the plate ump called "strike 3" whereupon all heck broke loose and the girl reached first. The next girl got a hit and the runner, who had reached second on a PB, scored making it 7-5. Our pitcher settled in and threw the ball hard down the middle since we had reached the bottom of the order. She quickly struck out the next two kids and the third girl approached the plate to hopefully also strike out. I knew we were going to win because I had a watch on this game and we clearly had another 3 minutes before the no-start-new-inning would go into effect. The new inning starts with the moment of the 3rd put-out.
The plate ump suddenly looked at me, looked at the small, frail girl coming to bat and quickly removed his mask. He hurried over to his clock and cupped it in his hand. He then announced, "the time for this game has expired." He then, still standing next to our opponent's dugout, asked loudly, "please tell me the score." Our opponent said 7-5. He said, "and you're the home team?" They said "yes" as if there was any doubt in anyone's mind. The plate ump immediately called the game on time. When I looked down at my clock, I saw there were still 2 minutes remaining even after the theatrics - which did not, by the way, make it onto the news that night.
This plate ump did not do what every single plate umpire I have ever witnessed normally does, which is, to show the losing team that time has actually expired. Instead, he pushed a button on the clock and slipped it into his pocket, then quickly left the field without so much as the usual "thank you folks, have a nice day" which every umpire I have ever witnessed routinely does unless there is some serious ill will going on during the game.
Now our team did not deserve to do very much in this tournament. We gained as much as we really needed. What the girls needed was to go have a nice relaxing time, which they did, after each of them cried for an hour because they felt they should have won this game. I know in my heart of hearts that they would have won this game had this umpire not taken it away from them for God only knows what reason.
He tried to have our coaches removed but failed. He tried to prevent us from scoring by permitting the opponent to obstruct while calling obstruction against us at times which could only have been meant to intimidate our 10, 11, and 12 year old players. He deliberately threatened our coaches when he couldn't get rid of them by bullying when all they had asked about was a simple clarification regarding the single most important rule in the tournament. He controlled this game in a manner which is unbecoming of anyone who puts on an umpire's uniform and dares to claim they are out there for the kids.
For our part, I was glad the whole thing was over. We never complained once about umpiring in this tournament. The closest was that clarification request which was intended harmlessly. Yet, we left this thing with a bad taste in our mouths because something was stolen from us.
One remarkable aspect of this tournament was that given this previously unannounced dislike of jeans, you would have thought they were absolute sticklers about all Pony rules. Want to get a good laugh? For the first day and a half, the tournament did not use safety bases! It isn't actually funny. Pony rules state unequivocably, "safety bases SHALL be used" yet Pony itself did not bother to use them! They rather apparently went out and purchased new ones after receiving numerous complaints!
Several collisions, some sort of serious, occurred as a result of their failure to follow their own rules. We had one collission at each of our early games, though none was serious. Another team, one that had only 10 girls, had a player collide hard with an opponent and both girls were down for ten minutes. I heard something about a concussion at another game but I cannot confirm it. Pony disobeyed its own MANDATE for safety equipment at its OWN national championship tournament! But they still found time to chastise a coach for wearing a perfectly nice pair of jeans - the sort most American white collar workers wear to work on Fridays!
I shall endeavor from this point to distance myself from Pony. Truth be told, there were any number of high caliber teams missing from this year's national tournament. They've gone to ASA, NSA and FAST. To a lesser extent, some of them went to ISA. Actually, I believe the competition at the much smaller ISA World Series was quite a bit fiercer than it was at Pony Nationals. NSA had a far better field than Pony did this year at 12U and 14U. At the older age groups, FAST is a better alternative to the more serious play in ASA.
I won't much miss Pony though I'll likely be back again given the age of my kids. But on this blog, I will never again advocate Pony. Rather, I will tell you all to play ASA, NSA, FAST and, to a far lesser extent, ISA or one of the other smaller sanctioning bodies. Pony seems to be lost in the woods of their own confusion. They need a good slapping session. I hope this was one.Labels: asa, coaching, injuries, rules, safety
 
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