Dont work on becoming better hitters. Dont accept the challenge and work to beat him. No , ban him from the league. What a bunch of total pathetic losers these so called coaches and parents are.
Check the story
http://sports.yahoo.com/top/news?slug=ap-toogoodtopitch&prov=ap&type=lgns
It's not about throwing 40mph because 40 is normal for a 9-10 rec leaguer. It's about BOD revenge because the player declined to join a team sponsored by an employer of one of the league’s administrators.
http://sports.yahoo.com/top/news?slug=ap-toogoodtopitch&prov=ap&type=lgns
It's not about throwing 40mph because 40 is normal for a 9-10 rec leaguer. It's about BOD revenge because the player declined to join a team sponsored by an employer of one of the league’s administrators.
I'm pretty sure this same thing happened to Joe Mauer in football and baseball.
you have to just realize there are losers in life and thats what these people are. God forbid someone is better than their future major league 9 year old son. I am starting to realize the younger parents are worse than the older kids parents. I umpired a 6 and 7 year old game so i had a pretty wide strike zone and the parents were complaining to about my strikezone. What the heck!? Some parents are justed whacked out this kid's story just proves my point.
quote from cchs07
"you have to just realize there are losers in life and thats what these people are. God forbid someone is better than their future major league 9 year old son. I am starting to realize the younger parents are worse than the older kids parents. I umpired a 6 and 7 year old game so i had a pretty wide strike zone and the parents were complaining to about my strikezone. What the heck!? Some parents are justed whacked out this kid's story just proves my point."
cchs07,
You couldn't more on target. I have been saying for years that the younger the kids, the crazier the parents. Pass by a small field on any given weekend and you can find parents screaming at the kids and the umps. Coaches pacing the 3rd base line like they have to decide whether or not to press the red botton under the glass case. And these are 10 yo games.
"you have to just realize there are losers in life and thats what these people are. God forbid someone is better than their future major league 9 year old son. I am starting to realize the younger parents are worse than the older kids parents. I umpired a 6 and 7 year old game so i had a pretty wide strike zone and the parents were complaining to about my strikezone. What the heck!? Some parents are justed whacked out this kid's story just proves my point."
cchs07,
You couldn't more on target. I have been saying for years that the younger the kids, the crazier the parents. Pass by a small field on any given weekend and you can find parents screaming at the kids and the umps. Coaches pacing the 3rd base line like they have to decide whether or not to press the red botton under the glass case. And these are 10 yo games.
Jericho Scott - would ya just look at that kid? What a cutie patootie! Ohhh and that determined face!
Bet when his mom's not lookin' he puts that glove ( which is almost bigger than him-ha!), dirt and all under his pillow at night, don't you?
I hear alot of opinions from the adults,....but I wonder how the player and his fellow team mates ( not the parents of those team mates ) feels.
Don't ya bet he just wants to play with his friends?
I hate it when adults make youth baseball complicated.
I like it alot better when kids can just be kids.
Bet they do too.
Bet when his mom's not lookin' he puts that glove ( which is almost bigger than him-ha!), dirt and all under his pillow at night, don't you?
I hear alot of opinions from the adults,....but I wonder how the player and his fellow team mates ( not the parents of those team mates ) feels.
Don't ya bet he just wants to play with his friends?
I hate it when adults make youth baseball complicated.
I like it alot better when kids can just be kids.
Bet they do too.
quote:Originally posted by fillsfan:
quote from cchs07
"you have to just realize there are losers in life and thats what these people are. God forbid someone is better than their future major league 9 year old son. I am starting to realize the younger parents are worse than the older kids parents. I umpired a 6 and 7 year old game so i had a pretty wide strike zone and the parents were complaining to about my strikezone. What the heck!? Some parents are justed whacked out this kid's story just proves my point."
cchs07,
You couldn't more on target. I have been saying for years that the younger the kids, the crazier the parents. Pass by a small field on any given weekend and you can find parents screaming at the kids and the umps. Coaches pacing the 3rd base line like they have to decide whether or not to press the red botton under the glass case. And these are 10 yo games.
So True, My oldest is 17 youngest is 10. Going to those games is like night and day. I actually enjoy watching the parents of the young ones get their undies all bunched over silly things.
Also, the first time parents and the parents that have already been through it are totally different.
We parents do live and learn, for the most part.
This is one of the craziest stories I've read in a long time. Playing up could be an option, but what about the kids opportunity to play with his friends and be in a league where he could truly excel as opposed to playing up and possibly be only a middle or the road player, or less.
Travel ball may not be an option due to cost, proximity, or time commitment.
Although I'm not strictly in favor of a lawsuit, I don't opposed it as long as the intent is to allow the kid to play rather than financial gain. The league administrators obviously need a kick in the pants.
Travel ball may not be an option due to cost, proximity, or time commitment.
Although I'm not strictly in favor of a lawsuit, I don't opposed it as long as the intent is to allow the kid to play rather than financial gain. The league administrators obviously need a kick in the pants.
quote:as opposed to playing up and possibly be only a middle or the road player, or less.
You mean like the other players in his age group as compared to him?
Playing up and being "average" is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it can be a very good thing if the player has the mental strength to handle it. Players don't get better by dominating. They get better by being challenged. At least that's been our experience.
Thank goodness my son was never good enough to be banned from the mound? 
From the looks of that mound maybe they did him a favor by banning him from it! 
I agree with this story to a point.
http://msn.foxsports.com/other/story/8495030/Parents-se...sage-about-adversity
I have seen young pitcher's throwing real hard, and it was scary.
They did not have the control needed to pitch that hard.
It's up to the coach to recognize this and protect the other player's from wild pitcher's.
Getting hit with a baseball every once in a while is part of the game. Unavoidable sometime's.
The league should buy protective equipment.
And put those players back out there to face there peer's (fears).
EH
http://msn.foxsports.com/other/story/8495030/Parents-se...sage-about-adversity
I have seen young pitcher's throwing real hard, and it was scary.
They did not have the control needed to pitch that hard.
It's up to the coach to recognize this and protect the other player's from wild pitcher's.
Getting hit with a baseball every once in a while is part of the game. Unavoidable sometime's.
The league should buy protective equipment.
And put those players back out there to face there peer's (fears).
EH
It appears there’s more to this story than first reported.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=080827/...otlight&lid=tab8pos1
The kid is playing in a weak league and dominating. He also plays in another league where he's no even the number one guy. It looks like the coach brought in a ringer to win.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=080827/...otlight&lid=tab8pos1
The kid is playing in a weak league and dominating. He also plays in another league where he's no even the number one guy. It looks like the coach brought in a ringer to win.
quote:Originally posted by obrady:
It appears there’s more to this story than first reported.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=080827/...otlight&lid=tab8pos1
The kid is playing in a weak league and dominating. He also plays in another league where he's no even the number one guy. It looks like the coach brought in a ringer to win.
This article seems like a more reasonable approach for those of us in the know.
The parent's lawsuit just P*$$@s me off!
.
Said this at the very beginning...there is more to this story...rational parents don't call 911 and file lawsuits...
Some highlights from the article...
44
Said this at the very beginning...there is more to this story...rational parents don't call 911 and file lawsuits...
Some highlights from the article...
quote:
So cut it to the bare essentials and solve it. Jericho Scott, the boy at the center of this week's baseball storm, is in the wrong league.
It really is that basic. Not as s*xy as the hyperventilation that is occurring over the civil rights issues around the story, I know. But just that basic, all the same.
Scott is not Cy Young; he's a kid who throws a good fastball against mediocre competition and struggles against better players. The organizing body that doesn't want him pitching anymore is not the "Satanic Summer League"; it's a group of volunteer parents who clumsily tried to clean up a gaping inequity between Scott -- a midseason import to his team, by the way -- and most of the other kids in what is clearly a developmental, low-wattage, newbie-strewn kid baseball enterprise.
And Scott is just a kid who shouldn't be playing in the LJB, the Liga Juvenil de Baseball de New Haven. Forget the legal ramifications for a minute and deal with the player himself. Scott is good enough to pitch in a much better league -- and that league, the Dom Aitro Pony League for all-star teams, is already available to him.
In fact, Scott plays in it when he isn't suiting up for the Will Power Fitness team in the LJB.
But in that other league, Jericho doesn't dominate.
And that, I suspect, is the real genesis of this story.
"We'd just move him up," said one of my colleagues, a man who runs a youth baseball league in California.
That's dead-on accurate. The most common response to a dominant player in kids' sports is to move him or her up to the next level of competition -- an older age group, a higher classification of league, whatever remedy is available.
And the national rush to judgment on the relative merits of the "case" is being led by a body of columnists and commentators who don't necessarily set out to come to dunderheaded conclusions, but who (it must be said) likely haven't seen a youth baseball diamond in either years or decades, depending
In all the blathering on about deprivation of rights and the de-Americanization of youth sports (and consequent wussifying of the Guitar Hero-addled U.S. child), this basic tenet has escaped the grasp of too many adults who should know better. The most American thing that a youth sports league can do for a talented kid is to get him the absolute best competition available to him, no matter what the "age" bracket says.
...In the case of Scott, he already has been given that opportunity. As a member of that advanced, Dom Aitro Pony League, Scott is a good player -- but not the best. He is the No. 4 pitcher on his staff, good enough to go against the top players in the area, but not guaranteed of a blowout victory every time he steps on the mound.
So what is this kid doing in the LJB, a league that is made up significantly of kids playing baseball for the first time? Why were he and another Pony League all-star added to the Will Power Fitness team in midseason?
Why, when the LJB organizers realized that Scott, as a pitcher, was a comical mismatch against the competition, were their offers to move him to a higher age group rejected by the boys' parents, who are now suing for relief and emotional distress?
In a news conference on Tuesday, the LJB's position was made clear: It offered to move Jericho Scott up, because he was crushing the competition at his current level.
Jericho's parents declined the offer, according to the league's attorney. Now, tell me again the part about the big bad league that is beating up on the kid who just wants to pitch.
I'm sure he does want to pitch. And he should be able to.
But at the right level.
44
Poor little Jericho wants to play with his friends. Awwww. So did I when I was a kid, but I wasn't good enough to make the neighborhood team. I was able to get on another team in another neighborhood and had to bike or get rides to practice and games. Somehow I managed to survive.
The ESPN article sheds a lot more light on the story and was a great find obrady. Thanks. The article that EH references must have been written without looking deeper into the situation as in the ESPN one. In retrospect the Fox guy looks like a fool. It all goes to show that the press prefers sensationalism to completeness.
Good luck with that lawsuit, Ms. Scott. I hope you wind up paying the defendants legal costs on top of your own. And I also hope little Jericho doesn't get the same infamy as Danny Almonte.
The ESPN article sheds a lot more light on the story and was a great find obrady. Thanks. The article that EH references must have been written without looking deeper into the situation as in the ESPN one. In retrospect the Fox guy looks like a fool. It all goes to show that the press prefers sensationalism to completeness.
Good luck with that lawsuit, Ms. Scott. I hope you wind up paying the defendants legal costs on top of your own. And I also hope little Jericho doesn't get the same infamy as Danny Almonte.
http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-us&vid=b90935d1-5aa3-44da-...HP&tab=m24>1=42003
You can hear from Jericho himself, his mother, and others on MSN video.
( bottom left hand side )
You can hear from Jericho himself, his mother, and others on MSN video.
( bottom left hand side )
I don't get this, sorry. If he is 9 playing in a 9 year old league, is there some law that says that if he is better he doesn't belong there? Maybe he does want to play with his 9 year old friends. Maybe being with 9 year olds is more fun that being with older players? If he was put there on purpose mid season to win, than those that did so were wrong, not his mom. And wasn't he asked to play for another team? How many innings does he pitch anyway? This, IMO, is baseball politics at it's finest.
My son was pitching at 8-9 and dominating, no one told him that he had to move up and he never joined a team that was older. At 10-11 his league allowed the best players to form a travel team, the first in it's league who played a handful of teams within the same age bracket in other towns.
How many parents here have had their players in two leagues at one time, one their own age group and one older? If so, why?
My son was pitching at 8-9 and dominating, no one told him that he had to move up and he never joined a team that was older. At 10-11 his league allowed the best players to form a travel team, the first in it's league who played a handful of teams within the same age bracket in other towns.
How many parents here have had their players in two leagues at one time, one their own age group and one older? If so, why?
When I was 13 I played in Babe Ruth as well as with an 18 Ubder travel team---Coach picked me up for every game in a white cadillac convertible which I thought was pretty cool
obrady, thanks for the ESPN link, which really did shed a lot more light on the story.
I guess I'm on the fence on this one, seeing both sides of the story. All of the ESPN writer's comments make a lot of sense, and come from a man who has coached this age of kids at a more competitive level. However, in the video that SSmom posted, the kid genuinely seems to just want to have fun playing baseball with his friends.
I bet a lot of parents on this site have had a similar situation where their son was complained about for being "too good" or throwing too hard, etc. At 9 yrs old, mine was involved in something like that, and a couple of the dads solved it for the next year by moving some of the better 10-yr-olds up to an 11-12 yr old league that didn't strictly enforce the age cuts. That all seems pretty logical, but if a kid just wants to play with his friends on the team he's currently on, that has a lot of merit, too.
I hate to hear about the whole lawsuit approach, though!
Julie
I guess I'm on the fence on this one, seeing both sides of the story. All of the ESPN writer's comments make a lot of sense, and come from a man who has coached this age of kids at a more competitive level. However, in the video that SSmom posted, the kid genuinely seems to just want to have fun playing baseball with his friends.
I bet a lot of parents on this site have had a similar situation where their son was complained about for being "too good" or throwing too hard, etc. At 9 yrs old, mine was involved in something like that, and a couple of the dads solved it for the next year by moving some of the better 10-yr-olds up to an 11-12 yr old league that didn't strictly enforce the age cuts. That all seems pretty logical, but if a kid just wants to play with his friends on the team he's currently on, that has a lot of merit, too.
I hate to hear about the whole lawsuit approach, though!
Julie
My understanding of the situation is this league is a co-ed developmental league. This kid is obviously beyond their definition of developmental. The kid is in the wrong program. However, if my son was on an opposing team and feared this kid, I tell him to get up the the plate, give it his best shot and learn something from it.
In my son's first kid pitch at-bat as a nine year old, he took a 50+ mph fastball in the butt on a 40 degree/30 degree wind chill evening from the hardest throwing ten year old in the program. He didn't quit the game. He learned something from that first at-bat. You don't die when you get hit. Sometimes you can take one for the team to get on. Six years later he's still a ball magnet.
In my son's first kid pitch at-bat as a nine year old, he took a 50+ mph fastball in the butt on a 40 degree/30 degree wind chill evening from the hardest throwing ten year old in the program. He didn't quit the game. He learned something from that first at-bat. You don't die when you get hit. Sometimes you can take one for the team to get on. Six years later he's still a ball magnet.
quote:Originally posted by TRhit:
When I was 13 I played in Babe Ruth as well as with an 18 Ubder travel team---Coach picked me up for every game in a white cadillac convertible which I thought was pretty cool
I am assuming that you were way better than most of the 13 years olds so you played against better competition but you also remained in your age group because, 1. you wanted to play with your friends and peers, 2. your folks wanted you to be with kids your own age. Is this different?
I just thought of something, it's not ok to play with 9 year olds because he might hurt someone, but it's ok to play with older players where he might get hurt?
I agree with MN-Mom, I'll bet lots of our kids (who are much older now) were in the same situation but no one asked them to leave. I guess youth baseball has really changed, and I am not sure it's all for the better. I truely feel sorry for this little boy, all he wants to do is play baseball and now has to contend with a bunch of adult BS.
We've had discussions where folks have asked if their players should play up because they were "better than their peers" and wanted more competition and many responses have been let him play and have fun with his friends.
So how is this different?
Reading the news stories made me wonder if this is really not about the kid, but about some rival coaches and parents ... and egos and stubbornness.
Think about it. Apparently the coach of the 8-0 team brought in a "ringer" mid-way through the season, and the other coaches, or parents of kids on opposing teams, think that this coach is putting his own desire to win ahead of the recreational purpose of this league. They complain ... some league volunteer/administrators make a ruling ... but the coach of the 8-0 team defies the ruling by putting the kid on the mound.
So the opposing coach says "We won't play if you insist on pitching that kid in spite of the ruling," figuring Coach 8-0 will back down. What would you do if you were Coach 8-0? Maybe argue a bit, but then when the other coach stood firm on refusing to play, you would say, "This is stupid, I don't agree, but hey, we have two teams of 9-yr-olds who came here to play baseball and I don't want to disappoint them. I'll have another kid pitch, and talk to the League office again tomorrow. C'mon kids, let's play some baseball, and we'll have juice boxes after the game!"
I bet that is what most of the coaches among us would do!
Julie
Think about it. Apparently the coach of the 8-0 team brought in a "ringer" mid-way through the season, and the other coaches, or parents of kids on opposing teams, think that this coach is putting his own desire to win ahead of the recreational purpose of this league. They complain ... some league volunteer/administrators make a ruling ... but the coach of the 8-0 team defies the ruling by putting the kid on the mound.
So the opposing coach says "We won't play if you insist on pitching that kid in spite of the ruling," figuring Coach 8-0 will back down. What would you do if you were Coach 8-0? Maybe argue a bit, but then when the other coach stood firm on refusing to play, you would say, "This is stupid, I don't agree, but hey, we have two teams of 9-yr-olds who came here to play baseball and I don't want to disappoint them. I'll have another kid pitch, and talk to the League office again tomorrow. C'mon kids, let's play some baseball, and we'll have juice boxes after the game!"
I bet that is what most of the coaches among us would do!
Julie
TPM
My choices had nothing to do with playing with my friends, most of them did not play baseball, and my folks had no input in my decision---it was a whole different world back then plus I played in a town with a superb semi-pro team with a lighted stadium with 1500 seats and that was in 1955
Why do the choices have to be what the parents want ?
What about a kid making the choice?--I know I did-- I was allowed to stand on my own two feet--get knocked down you got back up
You also continue to use the word "assume" in your posts ---you can use that word with others but please do not use it where I am concerned---assumptions can lead to wrong and erroneous info and posts
My choices had nothing to do with playing with my friends, most of them did not play baseball, and my folks had no input in my decision---it was a whole different world back then plus I played in a town with a superb semi-pro team with a lighted stadium with 1500 seats and that was in 1955
Why do the choices have to be what the parents want ?
What about a kid making the choice?--I know I did-- I was allowed to stand on my own two feet--get knocked down you got back up
You also continue to use the word "assume" in your posts ---you can use that word with others but please do not use it where I am concerned---assumptions can lead to wrong and erroneous info and posts
Leave the coaches and the parents outside the park and have them pick up the kids after they have played some baseball. I bet they would figure it out alot better and would have alot more fun in the process.
I have very accurate records of my kids' pitching speeds. At age 9, both of my boys could hit mid/high 40s. Neither was considered especially fast even in the rec leagues they played in then.
Lets cut to the chase. Much of what we discuss on this board has nothing to do about kids but what adults have done to screw things up. I went for a walk in my neighborhood the other day. I saw something that made me feel good. Kids were in the street choosing up sides for a stickball game. I happened to go by a few hours later they were still at it. nobody told them what to do and how to do it. they did not count pitches. They decided out safe fair foul. there is hope