"I was calling it cap to cleats and dugout to dugout, but my assignor says I need to shrink it."
Everybody in the park has a decent view of the vertical bounds of your strike zone, so there isn't much wiggle room for expanding the zone there. Yes, you can get away with it if you are consistent, but I think it's a bad idea to teach kids to swing at stuff that's chin high. With the tykes, I call them shoulders to knees. You, the catcher, and the pitcher are the only ones with a decent view of the horizontal bounds of your strike zone (no matter what the 3BC thinks). As long as you are consistent, you can stretch that by a ball or two either side of the plate.
If the kid gets on base, he is involved in the game. He has just as much opportunity to trip over fielders, steal bases, ignore his base coaches, run the wrong direction, and score a run as everyone else.
