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Dear Sir or Madam,

We’re writing you this letter to inform you that your son is simply too good to play baseball for our league.

Perhaps this sounds strange.  You may think that Youth League Baseball would want to bring in as many talented players as possible.  This is simply not true.  We are, in fact, attempting to put together a league that is uniformly mediocre.  Your son simply does not fit our paradigm.  His ability to throw the ball harder than the average player, hit the ball with more power, and run the bases faster renders him ineligible for our league.

Some parents, on receiving this letter, have instructed their children to “dog it,” as they say.  We discourage this practice, and we maintain a list of players who have been rated “too good.”

Keep in mind that keeping the general level of play somewhere between “okay” and “laughable,” we’re assuring that no child feels badly about his performance.  The last thing we want is for the kids to get too involved in the games.  Why should a child have to cry after striking out?

And on that subject, there have been several major rule changes in our league.  For instance, we’re no longer counting balls and strikes.  The kids will simply get to stay at bat until they either get a hit or decide they’d rather just go to first.  Once on base, they will be able to either stay on the same base or advance to another one.  Actually, there aren’t actual “bases,” since some children might find it difficult to stand on such a small target.  What we have now is “base zones,” which allow a child to stand where he thinks the base should be.  This also allows for multiple occupancy of a base zone, which traditionally is not allowed.  But we find that some kids just are not comfortable running to another base zone.

Each half-inning will consist of all nine players coming to bat once.  The responsibility of the defensive team will be to throw the balls back to the pitcher when (or if) they are hit.  No attempts will be made to put out a runner.  The fielders will be permitted to catch a ball in play, but no outs will be awarded.

On the offensive team, all hits will be singles.  We don’t want the pitcher to feel he’s doing badly just because another boy hits the ball hard.

One really great thing about our league this year is that we don’t require umpires.  We just felt that the umps were responsible for much of the emotional distress our players experienced last year.

With all these rule changes, the games become really quite unimportant.  This will lend to the kids having a better time during the before and after game refreshment period.  Parents are asked to bring cookies and sugary drinks so the kids will feel they accomplished something:  eating unhealthfully.

In closing, we’d like to ask you for referrals of slow and unathletic kids.  We are having some difficulty fielding any teams.

Best Regards,

Lou Sirs

Commissioner, BaseZoneBall

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I know, I know…this just wasn’t snarky enough.  It comes in response to a news story about a kid being banned from pitching in a youth league because he throws too hard.  He hasn’t hit any batters.  He’s just intimidating.  His team is actually under threat of being disbanded because they’ve refused to comply with the ban and want to keep running him out there.

I played Little League.  I struck out.  I cried.  Then I went out and tried to get a hit the next time.  It was good for me.  How is this difficult to understand?  In Anchorage, there was always a Samoan team, and their kids were half again as big as us.  It was brutal to pitch to them.  I still did it.  And you know what?  When we beat them, we actually felt good about it.  Normally we got our hineys handed to us.  On all the other teams, there was always a kid who was clearly the best player.  We tried to not let him beat us.  Sometimes he did.  Sometimes he didn’t.

It’s almost as if dealing with adversity can be positive!!!  What a concept!!!

It’s true that the parents of this kid were offerred the chance to move their son up a level, to play with older kids.  While that might seem to make sense on the surface, there’s no reason to think that, just because he throws hard, that he’s necessarily ready to play all aspects of the game against older kids.  It would be unfair to make him face older kids’ pitching if he hasn’t built an offensive skillset properly.  If he’s up to it offensively, I’d be inclined (as a parent) to move him up.  But it shouldn’t be forced.

Okay, enough snark…