Collin had his first coach's pitch baseball game tonight. They lost the game, but played fairly well. The final score was 15-6, but if it wasn't for the first inning when they got outscored 7-1, it actually would have been pretty close. We won two of the innings. I was just upset the the coaches on the other team thought they had to keep running their batters around the bases no matter what we did. Not very good sportsmanship, if you ask me. We're not going to do that on our team — it's not the World Series, for crying out loud.
I am the lucky one that gets to pitch to all our batters, and boy let me tell you — it's nerve-wracking! You gotta aim the ball very well and just try to hit their bat with the ball most of the time, because most of them are going to swing at everything you throw at them. They get 7 pitches or 3 strikes (they can strike out). I told each batter "if you don't like the pitch, don't swing at it" but only about 2 or 3 of the older kids ever took me up on the offer. I'm trying my best to throw the ball consistently to them, but it's hard. With 21 games left, I'll probably get the hang of it eventually.
Collin had a strikeout, but then got a good hit the next time up. He, along with most of the other kids, needs to pay attention a little better in the field, but that will come. They're a good group of kids, and I'm having fun coaching them. The hardest part is trying to figure out who's playing where and getting all the kids in the game at some point. With so many young kids on our team, we're trying to expose them to all the different positions.
I just hope we win a couple of games before too long, or the kids will get pretty discouraged. Game 2 is tomorrow! I hope we do well.
