moondog80 said:Managing a majors team in fall ball this year, mostly 10-12 years olds. We had out first game Saturday, I get to the dugout, put my stuff down, within 30 seconds a parent (who is not an assistant and apparently has a rep of being a major pain in the ass) comes in and we have this conversation:
Him: Is Johnny pitching today?
Me: No.
Him: Why not?
I explain to him that he'll get in there at some point, just not today. He tells me that Johnny is a great pitcher, has been pitching AAU, all that. Later one of my assistants tells me that Johnny just signed up for AAU this fall and has yet to play a game. Johnny isn't a bad player, but he's maybe our 7th best pitcher. It's fall ball so he'll still get some opportunity, but probably not as much as dad wants. Even less so since we have 14 kids, which means lots of bench time for everyone when they show up. Fortunately, that probably won't happen much.
This guy has laid low for a little while but today I got an email (that may as well have been written by a third grader) saying that I should have his kid start the next game, and he should hit leadoff too. He also said I should stop batting "my kids" higher than him in the order.
The kid has pitched for an inning 3 times this year and each time gave up 5 runs (which is the max in our league). My son, who is far better, has pitched the same number of times, with far better results (let in 2 runs overall), but he's just not one of our best so that's why his appearances have been limited. That's what I told him -- this is majors, the best kids pitch, I'd like to pitch my son more too -- but the guy either doesn't care or doesn't understand. The kid has also hit higher in the lineup than my son every single game -- I think he was talking about the kids of the assistants, who do hit higher, because they are better.
The sad thing is that the kid is the sweetest, most polite kid on the team. Tons of enthusiasm, really wants to be there. And he's an OK player -- alternates between 3B and OF, definitely not one of the "bad" players. But I would rather take the worst kid in the league than draft this kid next year.
We do have back-to-back games this week, one of which we are going to get beat badly, so my plan is to pitch our B squad that entire game, so he'll get in then. Which I almost don't want to do, but I'm not going to make the kid pay for dad's sins. But before that, we have a game tomorrow, and the plan is for just our top 3 to pitch. I half expect him to pull his kid out of the dugout (he did that once too, kids was bawling because he was going to bat the next inning, not sure if it was over lineup because, frankly, I was afraid to ask).