My Softball Weekend

I didn't hit well and, apparently, made a number of umpiring errors this Memorial Weekend. Somehow, I had a great time! We played three games on Sunday and two more, thanks to Joe Gerber, on Monday evening on The Great Lawn. Most of the games were close. For the first time in my life, I was part of a triple play, tagging Ian Parfrey at the plate for the third out. Sunday featured the returns of Phil Ciccone, from his broken leg and David Rosengard from his heart attack and subsequent surgery. Ciccone reached firs base in game one only to look over at the opposing pitcher, Jeff Appell, and thirdbaseman, Ian Parfrey and recognize that these were the same duo who were manning the positions when Phil was last on the field )and attempted to take the extra-base, slid into third and looked down to see his foot at a 90-degree angle from the rest of his leg). The folowing hitter singled and we all thought Phil might try to take the extra base again, but Ciccone neglected to tempt the fates and settled for staying at secondbase. Rosengard, who had two stents put in his heart, pitched a brilliant game, only allowing one run, unearned, in beating Jeff Appell's team 9-1. After the game I thought I heard Jeff on his cell phone saying "Doc, can I schedule you to put those stents in on Tuesday, I want to be back on the field as soon as possible."
As for my umpiring..in my defense, I am willing to umpire and call em as I see em and take whatever criticisem comes my way. Many people refuse to umpire because they don't want the grief. If we don't take it a little easy on the kind people who volunteer to be arbiters we won't have any.
Speaking of tough jobs, being captain of a team is almost as thankless as umpiring. Dealing with players who can't play certain positions because of injuries, aging veterans who still want to play shortstop, kids whose parents don't want them to catch for fear of facial injuries, etc. We captains do the best we can to balance these needs and desires. Another aspect of captaining is to make sure everyone plays. Over the years we have worked out a rule for this. Every player must play at least four of the first seven innings in the field (baring injury or requests from the player to sit more time). Within this rule, we leave it to the captain to decide who should sit and when. This leaves the possibility that with only one extra player a single player may be asked to sit six of the fourteen innings of a double-header. On occasion I have heard from sitters who believe a more equitable approach would be an improvement. From a captains point of view, I believe the rule is a balanced one. It insures that every player is playing most of the time but gives the captain some wiggle room. For instance, on Memorial Day I was captaining and pitching for a team in which no one wanted to catch. Stoeth had just pitched seven inning in Game 1, Cipriano's leg hurt him, Connor was getting too old for this...so I was begging them to give me a couple of innings each. At the same time I was getting some pressure from team-mates to put our best defense on the field. That meant leaving our best outfielders and shortstop and thirdbaseman at their positions. This left four players to split firstbase, seconbase and catcher and also split the sitting. I'd like hear any suggestions on how to fine-tune this system.
See you on Sunday! -Havelock