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Talked to a retired HS baseball coach. Told me he had a loaded team 15 years ago, but only had one definite starting pitcher. The JV squad had four very good pitchers, two sophomores and two freshman. He decided to pull up the two soph pitchers to varsity, give them both innings, and hopefully one of them would become a starter.

He had one kid in homeroom and told him he was going to move him up. He wouldn't see the other kid all day and planned to tell him if he saw him, but if not, he would let him know before practice started. This is before everyone had a cell phone, so the first kid went straight to the office and called his dad and told him he was moving up. As it turned out, the coach did not see the other kid he planned to move up.

However, before practice started, the dad of the other kid had already heard about the other one being moved up and was waiting for the coach before practice started. He started yelling at the coach about the one being moved up and why haven't you moved my son up, etc... Coach tried to get him to calm down so he could tell him that his son was, in fact, being moved up, but he hadn't had a chance to tell him yet. The guy just kept on and on and never let the coach explain.

Finally, the coach said, yep, he is on jv this year and that was that. Wasn't worth the headache. As it turned out, both kids ended up as very good pitchers and both went on to D1 schools.

 

 

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Obviously, the parent didn't handle things well.

I doubt this situation occurs all that often but if you are going move two kids up, why not tell them both at the same time and eliminate the possibility for something like this.  Hindsight is 20/20 but maybe some coach reading this thread will apply that principle in the future if the situation should arise. 

I agree, but I don't think he anticipated what ended up happening at all. He also said he was younger, and still a little bit hot headed himself when he told the guy his son would stay on j.v. Today, he would have waited him out, let the guy calm down and then told him his kid was on varsity. Of course, today, with cell phones and social media, he would have made sure both knew at the same time to prevent this from happening in the first place. All hindsight now.

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