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Pitchin' On The Moon
by Dave
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Giant steps are what you take
Pitchin on the moon
I hope my legs dont break
Pitchin on the moon As NASA advances its plans to go to Mars, as we review mankind's accomplishments in outer space, it is possible to envision the sorts of field conditions which might ensue should we one day, thousands of years from now, find ourselves trying to transplant Earthly games like fastpitch softball to remote, outer space locations. It is possible to envision the conditions because many of them are available right here, right now on Earth.
When I was a child, I was willing to play baseball, stick ball, whiffle ball, etc. any place, anytime, in any conditions. And we did. There were many odd locations with all sorts of physical obstacles and impediments to a decent game that I cannot possibly list them all. It should be sufficient to just note that such obstacles usually resulted in local "ground rules" which often altered the outcome of pickup games. . Still, a few such obstacles remain vivid enough in my mind to warrant discussion.
The field where we played organized town and travel ball for many years was, by today's standards, a wholly unacceptable place. The rather expensive dugouts were filled with nesting birds and hornets. The water fountain behind homeplate didn't work. And those were the second most positive attributes of the place. The outfield and infield were hideous.
Leftfield gently sloped upwards to the point that a leftfielder was standing with his feet approximately lined up with a tall batter's numbers. Behind this intrepid outfielder was a ten foot wide flat area with some of the nicest grass you'll see on any field not associated with Major League Baseball. Behind that, about 300-320 feet from home was a stand of very tall trees about fifteen feet thick at the base behind which was the end zone of our pee wee football field.
In front of the leftfielder was that "gentle slope" which rose from third base at a rate of about 1 foot up for every forty feet from third. The slope spanned from the leftfield foul line to about left center after which things were fairly flat towards dead center, but I'm gettin ahead of myself. The area in front of the leftfielder was noteable for its lack of grass. There was some grass behind the infield dirt for a few feet but after that, the soil couldn't hold any living thing. It was sandy, bumpy, and filled with rocks of various sizes ranging from tiny pebbles to bigger stones about 2 inches in diameter. There was no point in say removing these rocks because, after a few days, more would automatically appear from the Earth's core. To say that a basehit landing in front of the leftfielder was often an adventure is a rather exaggerated understatement.
Moving over to right, this field was the counterweight to left. It had grass but sloped downwards to the extent that a player in the third base side dugout who wanted to see where the RF was positioning himself would only be able to perceive his head and shoulders. Linedrives which got through the right side of the infield would take off as if hit for a second time when they hit the upper portion of the RF slope.
Center was a much kinder, gentler sort of place with actual smooth, flat ground and grass in front of the fielder. The obstacles there were behind the outfielder's normal position. Out behind CF was the pee wee football equipment trailer and a solid white brick building located about 320-340 feet from home.
I remember one of the plays which most impressed me as a youth. Our 18U team was playing a game against some out-of-towners in which the batter drilled a linedrive to slightly right-center. Our very athletic CF went back in a track which was sort of away from the path of the ball. He was positioned in dead center. The ball was hit over his right shoulder. He turned to his left and ran diagonally back towards right center as if heading to the parking lot after giving up on this ridiculous game. The ball, which clearly would have been a homerun on any open field, struck the brick building and bounded towards right. Our CF caught that ball off the building on one hop, turned and fired to second where he nailed the surprised runner coming into 2B standing up!
Whereas our outfield was in poor condition when compared to the bird- and hornet- infested dugouts, it was far superior to the infield. I don't know when they laid the clay for the skin infield but it had to be before I was born. It may have been laid before organized human civilization got going because fossils were often found on the third base side. I pulled what I am certain were Native American arrowheads up from the ground between thiurd and the pitcher's mound while suffering through walk-fests. Whatever clay was once there in the infield had fossilized and turned to stone. Our league stopped requesting pants back when uniforms were required to be returned because they were always ripped. I have permanent scars on both legs from sliding into third where there was usually only a very thin veneer of sand covering the solid rock ground.
The field of my youth was hard, rocky, uneven, perhaps downright dangerous, bu8t we had some of the nicest, most expensive lights I have seen to date. Nobody ever thought to spend money fixing up the field. They just contracted to have lights installed so kids could play until the neighboring home owners called the police to complain about the noise after 9:00 pm.
So that's my perspective on field conditions. Now let's get back to a softball discussion because I have a few salient points to make about fastpitch softball field conditions.
Several months ago, SpySoftball published an article regarding field conditions at tournaments of all shapes and sizes. The author of the article, Hess, rightly noted that many of the fields on which tournaments are played are local government-run parks. The hosting organization is often left without recourse when field conditions are less than optimum. Often laws or local practices prohibit hosts from anything beyond spiking bases to the ground and laying field liner. They may sometimes be permitted to drag or rake fields between games but they are often prohibited from laying any sort of clay down to fix lumpy, deeply dug batters boxes or pitching areas.
In certain relatively rare instances, only employees of the government-run facility are permitted to do anything on the field. Such was the case once this year when the skies opened up and water clogged baselines during the very first game of the day. A few good men and women could have cleaned up that field and made it playable in less than an hour's time but the park prohibited anyone from touching the fields. And the county employees had all gone home after setting up the fields in the morning. One employee did remain but his sole task was to make sure nobody else touched these fields after that crew went home. At one point, I believe a coach began looking for a rake. The employee approached the coach and let him know that if he went beyond merely thinking about fixing the fields, he would have him arrested on the spot. The coach abandoned his search and every team went home - no softball was played that day even though the brief rainstorm ended in short order and no additional precip fell that weekend.
The very best places to play tournaments are usually field complexes run by not-for-profit fastpitch softball organizations with loads of experience. These organizations often view their fields as a matter of organizational pride. Spy's Hess listed a few such places in his article. Such organizations spend a goodly portion of their annual budgets on field maintenance and take seriously their obligation to have a good surface available for play. Fields are dragged between games. Semi-wet clay is applied and stamped down to areas around the home and pitcher's plates, foul lines extending from home to foul poles are often also fixed before games begin, and other physical obstacles are repaired before players take the field. In some instances, expensive measures are applied so that fields never degrade to public park levels. Playing on these fields is not only a pleasure, but also a much safer experience and that's why I'm writing this piece today - because I have witnessed many field conditions which are very unsafe.
It is one thing to find an occassional rock in the outfield and another to have a field which contains fairly large holes or pipes, bricks, drains, etc. which may cause an outfielder to break a leg or ankle. More importantly, when holes in the infield and around homeplate are located in places where baserunners will encounter them as they begin or end their slides, that's a formula for injury. Similarly, when there are obstacles around the pitcher's circle, these are accidents waiting to happen.
The most common playing injury I have witnessed is the broken ankle when sliding into home. Batter's boxes which are dug out by successive hitters can be an inconvenience for the next batter but when the right handed batter's box degrades severely, runners coming home from third have a real obstacle to avoid. A homeplate several inches above the surrounding ground is a broken ankle waiting to happen.
The injury which is hardest to witness involves an outfielder properly getting into position on a very high flyball or popup. She approaches the ball well, shields herself from the sun, gets just about underneath and prepares to make the catch. Suddenly, she steps into a hole or trips over some sort of infrastructure, stumbles, and drops her hands to brace for the fall right as the ball arrives. She is struck, in the medium-worst-case-scenario, in the face, breaking her nose. In the worst case scenario, she suffers a compound fracture of her leg or ankle, or is cut by a rusty pipe or other metal object.
Of all the bad sorts of poor field conditions, I believe the most common one is the hole around homeplate. That's dangerous. The second most common problem area is a similar one found around the pitcher's plate. Pitchers are tough on the ground. There's no question about that. And some degradation of the area in front of the rubber is unavoidable during and even perhaps between games. But there are some circumstances which are entirely unacceptable and officials also need to consider the field conditions before making certain kinds of calls.
The worst sort of scenario I have encountered in terms of the pitchers area involves a game played at 40 or 43 feet in which the field has a permanently stationed 35 foot rubber. On two occassions I have played several games on such fields. In one instance, our pitcher landed right around where the 10U rubber was cemented into the ground. She repeatedly slipped which caused her release point to move. She suffered through several innings by adjusting her delivery and seemed to be doing fine. But as she tired, she was less adept at making the adjustment. Finally, late in the game, she couldn't do it any more. We had to replace her. So I called our number two to the circle and she proceeded to try her warm-up pitches.
On the first of our number two's five, she slipped and went down hard. I got pretty upset and wasn't sure what to do. She decided she wanted to give it a try for a second warm-up pitch. She windmilled, stepped and released, falling again hard to the ground as her front foot slipped out from underneath her. I'll stop with the details of that game except to tell you that we did find a pitcher who could throw in the conditions and we did go on to win it. But today I am upset that we continued playing there. Any pitcher who has to alter her delivery in order to avoid such an obstacle runs the risk of injury her arm, her shoulder or her back. Windmill pitching is among the most difficult, physically demanding jobs on the field. The potential for serious injury is ever-present. We are out of our minds if we expect girls, particularly young ones to just deal with bad conditions.
More recently, we had a pitcher throw a game during which she frequently slipped on landing her front foot. That pitcher was my younger daughter. She's a first year 12U player and we were playing a 14U "B" tournament. I was nervous to begin with because she relies on movement and location. She can't pitch at a serious 14U speed. On her first warm-up toss, she slipped. I had flashbacks to the previous experience and went out to look at the area.
The ground seemed pretty hard in and around her landing area but I didn't see any 35 foot rubber. We kicked up some wetter clay and then stamped it down because there were no crews around to fix the problem. She, my princess-and-the-pea kid, somehow managed to keep herself together enough to pitch the game. I adjusted my pitch calling to limit her pitches mostly to ones which would take her away from the slippery ground. Of course, this limited the available choices but you have to do what you have to do. We were up something like 6-2 in that game but gradually my kid was wearing out and I had to call pitches which involved her stepping into the abyss. That didn't work out co well. Eventually, some of those pitches ended up a bit too fat and our much older opponent began hitting the ball. They climbed back into the game and eventually tied us. It was not a happy event.
The next day I saw the coach of that team. he sought me out to tell me that he had found somebody with the grounds crew to inspect the area. They dug out the landing area a tad and found a 35 foot pitcher plate underneath. That was what caused her to slip.
There is absolutely no good reason to cement in a pitchers plate at 35 feet. Pitchers ten years old and younger just are not that hard on the rubber. If older pitchers can pitch with temporarily affixed rubber at 40 and 43 feet, then tens should play under similar circumstances. A 35 foot rubber in front of a pitcher throwing from 40 or 43 is another accident waiting to happen. Many 12U and 14U pitchers land around the 35 foot area. They can break their ankles or be forced to alter their deliveries enough to injure their arms, shoulders, and backs. In 43 foot contests, perhaps a much lower percentage of girls land at the 35 foot mark but some undeniably do.
One of the lamest "fixes" for this condition I have ever seen is the "let's just kick dirt over the 35 foot rubber" one. There isn't a pitcher on the planet who isn't going to go through a couple inches of dirt on her landing foot. And if that dirt happens to consist of the loose remnants of prior speed-dry applications, there is no chance that kicking it over a slippery surface is going to make any difference. The only way covering the 35 foot rubber is going to work is if damp clay is applied, allowed to dry, and then applied again, over several days, perhaps weeks, before the field is used. Even then, after the first game, the rubber is going to be partially uncovered. Kicking dirt over it is as useless as trying to stop tidal flooding with a spoon.
As I said, my kid did something uncharacteristic when field conditions around the pitching rubber were found to be poor. She tried to persevere. That's outside the scope of her "normal" behaviors. What she did was attempt to perform her leg drive beyond the 35 foot rubber. She sometimes succeeded. She also shortened her step on some pitches. That was probably easier but there were far fewer pitch types available for her to use while landing short of the rubber than there were when she lept over it. I could have maybe gone all day with these longer stride pitches but for a call by the field ump.
On an early pitch on which my daughter lept over the 35 foot rubber, the batter attempted a bunt and was thrown out at first. The field ump charged in after the play, met the plate ump, conversed for a moment and the two announced their call. The pitch was ruled illegal due to leaping. Wipe the play clean, award a ball to the batter - no runners were on base, thankfully, and let's move on.
You know, my daughter definitely leapt on that pitch. I wouldn't have argued the call anyways. She has had some trouble overcoming a natural tendency to leap though nobody has called her on that this year. We have a cure drill for it and we'll go back to the lab soon to work on it. But to me, the field conditions should have at least tempered the ump's call. The conditions around the rubber were so poor that some sort of leaping was almost inevitable. My daughter continued to leap from time to time but there was no additional illegal pitch calls throughout the game. In some ways, this makes me more angry than the illegal pitch he did call. I mean, if you're going to call it once, why not call it every time. Then I would have held up the game, complained about the field conditions and made the tournament put us on a reasonably acceptable field. Oh, and lest I forget, both of the other team's pitchers very clearly crow-hopped. If you can see a leap, you should not fail to observe a crow-hop which is a leap followed by a replanting of the back foot.
In other circumstances, ones both with and without my own daughters pitching, in games I have been involved with as a coach, a parent, or merely a casual observer, I have seen something nearly as bad as the call above. In these instances, the pitching rubber is sort of up on a small hill as a result of the repeated beating the area has taken over the years. There is a slope of a few inches behind the rubber and holes in front, especially down the power line from the center several inches of the rubber. In these instances, it is nearly impossible for a pitcher to stand balanced with both feet on the plate. When she is able to accomplish this first required feat of strength, she is still unable to drag away from the rubber on pushoff because that involves essentially an impossible act. That act is a simultaneous push off with the pivot foot while also lowering the toes several inches to make new contact with the lower ground in front of the rubber. I have yet to see a pitcher accomplish the task. But I have seen some umps call such pitchers for illegal pitches because they did not maintain contact with the ground. At some point common sense has to make an impact!
Well, enough of my complaining for today. I've played on far worse fields than my teams and kids have seen. What bothers me today is the danger bad field conditions create for our kids. Back in my playing days, I wouldn't have minded if our field contained a constantly burning natural gas pipe, a jagged and rusty one at that. We would have made that into a double or just played through. But nowadays, when the doctor's bills are paid out of my pocket, when the season ending injury means I am stuck listening to the moans of my own child, when I have the worries of a coach or parent, I just don't like dangerous conditions. large holea round home, the other bases, and the pitchers area are accidents waiting to happen. Holes in the outfield are ridiculous. And aside from thr risks associated with playing on bad fields, the umps need to exercise a little common sense.Labels: field conditions
Permanent Link: Pitchin' On The Moon
 
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