(from Joe Barth on another site)
Dear Sirs,
You are completely off base with your criticism of my coaches at Cooperstown. You obviously were not there. My coaches did what they could to keep the score down, short of striking out on purpose. They stopped running in the first inning, went station to station and did not advance on most balls, bunted the ball right back to the pitcher a number of times to no avail, and batted opposite handed for the last couple innings. Nothing helped. After 2innings it was 35-0. Our coach and the other coach pleaded to have the game stopped. That team should not have been in the tournament. That coach should have pulled his team off the field. We were told if we pulled our team off we would forfeit, we had to play 3 innings. The bottomline is we did what we could.We used every tactic normally used to keep the score down. The tournament offical told my coach, who was very upset, that he did everything he could have done, not to worry about it. Now, I read nothing about what really happened and the story has grown a life of its own. Here is the bottomline! The Arsenal is a first-class organization and always tries to display sportsmanship and do the right thing. The coaches and the kids did everything in their power to keep the score down and it just wasn't possible because that poor team just couldn't catch a ball. They literally ran away from the ball when it was hit to them.The tournament officials should have stopped the game. Period. You are blaming the wrong people.