I couldn’t believe he actually said it. But he did. We all heard it.
It was an 11 year old fall baseball game last Saturday afternoon. My son’s team was playing this team of kids who absolutely mashed. These kids could really hit the ball. After the first two innings, I think our kids were behind by 4-5 runs. Something like that anyway. I was there watching most of the time, but also tossing a football around with my 6-year old boy.
In the 3rd-4th inning the game tightened up a little bit, as our kids clawed their way back within a couple runs. It was cool; they were making a game out of it. And then the wheels fell off just a little bit. In what would wind up being the last half inning, our kids gave up a few runs, then a few more, until the margin was 10 runs.
At that point, the umpire stood up and said “game over, that’s the ballgame”. They play these games on a strict time limit, but there were about 20 minutes left before time was up. There is no rule that says the game is over when a team gets up by 10 runs. However, there is a rule that says a team can score a maximum of 6 runs in an inning.
So basically the situation was that the umpire had decided that with only 20 minutes left in the game, a team down by 10 that can only score 6 runs in an inning wouldn’t have enough time to come back and win the game. Hard to argue with that. By when my son’s Coach asked why the kids couldn’t play until the time limit was up, the plate umpire looked at him and said, “What’s the point?”
I couldn’t believe what I heard. What’s the point? I was just there watching so I kept my mouth shut, but I knew what the point was. The point was that there were 20 boys who showed up excited to play ball. The point was that Coach Dunn does a fantastic job of teaching our kids to play hard and to enjoy the fact that they are out there playing the game, regardless of the score. The point was that the reason we have 11 year old baseball games isn’t to simply play until one team has been mathematically eliminated on the scoreboard, but rather to let kids play the game until it is actually over.
When you were 11, how much did you look forward to getting your turn to hit? How lousy did it feel when a game ended with you in the on deck circle? “What’s the point” guy cost at least 5-6 kids a chance to bat one more time. That kind of stinks.
This is not a tragedy. It’s not a big deal really at all in the scheme of things. I understand that. But it really was disappointing to see a game the kids were enjoying called early, simply because an adult failed to see the point.