Another mis-match story

[Tony B]

Saturday morning I had a AAU double header. My partner and I were both pretty early and went onto the field as one of the teams was still taking infield. The other coach walks up between us and starts telling us how much he doesnt want to play the other team. He tells us he's lucky to have 9 players a few didn't want to come out to play the other guys, he's going down the list of tournaments the other guys have won, and it may sound cliche' but he was the textbook definition of being beat before stepping out on the field.

We start the plate meeting and the defeated coach then says I know this isn't a tournament, but we'd like to have the 15 run rule after 3.5/4 and 10 after 4.5/5 for both games. And both agree.

The first game took about 50 min and was probably 18-2 after 3.5. The second game had a closer score of 19-8. We finished that in just under 1.5 hrs because they were winning only by 14 runs after 4 there was a bit of a rally but not enough.

I had never had a game where an AAU coach was so negative about his team. Usually these guys are all the macho obnoxious guys who only loose because of bad calls by the umpires.

[blue bomber]

Saturday morning I had a AAU double header. My partner and I were both pretty early and went onto the field as one of the teams was still taking infield. The other coach walks up between us and starts telling us how much he doesnt want to play the other team. He tells us he's lucky to have 9 players a few didn't want to come out to play the other guys, he's going down the list of tournaments the other guys have won, and it may sound cliche' but he was the textbook definition of being beat before stepping out on the field.

We start the plate meeting and the defeated coach then says I know this isn't a tournament, but we'd like to have the 15 run rule after 3.5/4 and 10 after 4.5/5 for both games. And both agree.

The first game took about 50 min and was probably 18-2 after 3.5. The second game had a closer score of 19-8. We finished that in just under 1.5 hrs because they were winning only by 14 runs after 4 there was a bit of a rally but not enough.

Wow. I can usually tell how the game is going to go by watching infield, but I haven't seen any attitudes like that yet.

I had never had a game where an AAU coach was so negative about his team. Usually these guys are all the macho obnoxious guys who only loose because of bad calls by the umpires.

Glad to see that those don't exist only on fields where I'm the umpire.:D

[Tony B]

Around here a bunch of guys like to refer to AAU as Always Angry and/or Upset.

I don't know how many times I've heard someone say;

I've paid or our parents pay a lot of money for our kids to play in this league and you're taking the game away from them or some other Horse$h1t. Too many of these coaches and parents think because they pay a lot to pay they can abuse the umpires.

In all honestly many of these teams are just glorified PONY or LL teams where little Johnny didn't make another AAU team so daddy starts his own. That said there are also a number of really good AAU "franchises" here that have teams starting at 9 y/o and go up to 18 y/o these teams play together for a long time and are really good.