Things I would change about Little League

If you want to look for the absurd when it comes to baseball rules, just look at Little League. Three of its rules make absolutely no sense to me.

The first is the fact that every player has to play at the all-star level. That's a bad rule. I kind of thought that you play all-star games with the purpose of winning. I don't want to hear the argument that "they are all all-stars." If I have to hear that phrase again, I'll probably vomit.

No matter at what level of youth baseball or softball, there is an ability difference between the top guy on an all-star team and the last guy on an all-star team, and sometimes it's a pretty big gap. Most teams in Northern Nevada usually only carry 12 players because of the mandatory play rule. To put it simply, coaches, would rather play only 9 or 10 kids per game.

The second rule that I found out about this year is that if you only have 12 players on the team, you can only have one adult coaching bases. What kind of garbage is that? Kids can't coach bases, and shouldn't be asked to. Kids don't know what to look for. Little League baseball should have its head examined for instituting this rule. I think the coaches limit should be three in the dugout.

The third rule is the dropped third-strike rule which states that on a dropped third strike, the batter-runner must be tagged out or retired at first base.

If first base is occupied, the batter-runner is out. With two outs, the ball is alive even if first base is occupied at the time of the dropped third strike. The batter-runner or another runner must be retired in that instance.

How is it that 12-year-old girls can play with the dropped third rule in ASA and the boys can't in Little league? It just doesn't seem right.

There should be a premium placed on catching a pitched ball. Little League coaches don't seem to care about that. Softball coaches? They are always talking at their catchers to catch the ball the right way or frame the ball to help the umpire.

Heck, when you get to the high school level, in baseball or softball, if a pitch in the strike zone goes past a catcher to the backstop it won't be called a strike, and I agree with that philosophy. If a pitch is good enough to be called a strike it's good enough to be caught.

WRONG FORMAT

Last week was a perfect example of why round-robin Little League play isn't the greatest thing in the world, and a double-elimination tournament would have been better.

Carson American wins four straight games in pool play and then drops a game to Reno American West, and poof their hopes of getting to the championship game are shot.

In a "normal" tournament, Carson American gets a chance to work its way back through the loser's bracket and still has a chance to win the tournament, and I think Carson had enough pitching to get the job done.

Based on what I saw last week and what I've seen since I've been in Nevada is that all the round-robin format does is give weak teams a chance to play more than two games. Now they play four or five.

SPEED IT UP

Another thing that disturbed me is the lack of game management by the volunteer officials. I'm sorry, but six-inning Little League games shouldn't take 2-hours 10-minutes which is what happened last week at Governors Field.

Officials are chatting too much between innings, and it takes way too long to make changes to the official scorer.

I umpired a 56-minute Little League game when I was 21 years old, and that was in the regular season when many more changes were made. A faster-paced game will lead to better play. Too much standing around is never any good.

I blame the coaches a bit, too. They don't seem to be as prepared as they should be, and that leads to indecisiveness.

TOO MANY ALL-STARS

And my last rant is about too many all-star teams. It's gone from one when I played to five or six now. It's too many any way you slice it. Little League officials told me a couple of years ago that the Renedgade and Hooligan teams were about participation.

What I think is that too many parents complained about their kids not making all-stars, and it was done to appease them. Adding more teams sends a real bad message to kids.

Heck, what are these kids going to do when they reach high school and teams start cutting them? Playing on any sort of team should be an honor and not a given. There's nothing wrong with not being the best. It doesn't make a kid a bad player. If a kid doesn't make an all-star team, it shouldn't be the end of the world. People try and don't succeed everyday. Major Leaguers go 0-for-4 or 1-for-5 in game. It doesn't make them bad players.