I must compliment both Aaron and Shaun out on the mound as they each worked hard on the pick off moves to first, second, and third. We held their runners back and there were a lot of close plays at those bases. It is a great compliment as the Nationals coach watched Aaron’s first pick-off move to third and from then on nobody took a big first lead.

I know that some of the game frustration had to do with our before game disposition. Adam never did find one of his cleats, so he made our arrival 15 minutes late to the field and still ended up playing in his tennis shoes. Brooks went through similar frustrations as he left his glove at his Grandmother’s and this made Coach Street, Jeremy, and Brooks 45 minutes late to the field. I think that we learned a big lesson about pre-game preparation. There is the physical preparation, but this affects the mental preparation of our athletes.

RED HATS - As a side note, both Coach Street and myself now wear “Red Hats” the majority of the week as we help the Orem Youth Little League on a leadership level and we were both dealing with many mental issues on a league level when game time arrived. This affected our roles as coaches as we were being pestered with league issues instead of being able to completely focus in on our team. We are both committed to taking off our “Red Hats” during our games so that our players get our 100% attention.Today we were worried bout game schedules, umpire coverage, and then we had to deal with interactions happening at the City Center fields that had nothing to do with our game during our game. This is a huge detriment to our ability to coach our team while the game is being played... We are both committed to not letting this happen again.

OFFICIATING - I am also bothered by calls that did not go our way. The first, and biggest, is the call made on Drew when he was in the batter’s box with 2 strikes on him and the slow curving pitch was coming at his head. In a natural reaction he spun back out of the way in a counter-clockwise direction. The bat never left his shoulder and his eyes looked like a deer caught in the headlights as he was momentarily scared to death as he was trying to get out of the way. To our shock, because he spun in the direction of a swing the umpire called him out on a third swinging strike. I was dumbfounded and went up to Mike, as that was the third out, and asked him what he was thinking. Technically, he is justified in his call, yet there was no intent on the part of Drew in swinging the bat. There was no effort towards swinging. He was preserving his life, not trying to hold up on a swing. I was amazed that the batters intent was never figured into the call. If drew had spun in a clockwise direction, then he would have still had the opportunity to hit the ball on the next pitch... All I could do was say Grrrrrrrrrrr. It was so frustrating. The umpires call did nothing to help build the confidence of our player and it did not reflect on the intent and it sent Drew away having struck out on a ball coming towards his head... Grrrrrrrrrrr!!!

BALKS - The umpire staff also called about 8 balks on our two pitchers today. I believe that they felt they were doing the right thing, yet all of the pitchers in the league are still new and out of all the calls we witnessed, there was only one or two that was actually an attempt to fool the runners. Every coach that I have spoken with agrees that warning are the better option as the pitchers learn what it is that they are doing wrong. There isn’t a coach out there who is thrilled when a balk is called on either team, unless the pitcher is purposefully trying to fool the opposition and gets caught taking an unfair advantage. Everybody is getting called, and nobody is thrilled. I watched Aaron get called with a little twitch of his shoulder and a slight movement of his fixed leg. I hope that our pitching staff can get this all figured out, and that we can avoid the balks in future games. Currently it is just a distraction that is a huge irritation.

PLAYING FROM BEHIND - I wonder how the score affects our players as they are out on the field with the other team up by ten or more runs? I watched them kind of give up hope in the bigger rally innings while we, as coaches, were trying to convey the importance of learning from each play. This is hard when there are 10 plays in an inning that did not go right. The routine play was rare today while we were out in the field, yet so many plays were made. There were not a whole lot of errors that I remember, but there were a lot well hit balls by the Nationals. After enduring 4 at-bats by the Nationals it was good to get our team together for our last pre-batting huddle. I assured our team that there was nothing to lose in the last at bat. We were down by about a dozen and all we could do was relax and have some fun at the plate. This led to some huge hits, and attempts to hit, as well as two more runs. We did all of this with a smile on our face and we looked at today’s game for what it was... We got spanked, yet we kept our dignity, remained excellent good sports, and gained a lot of experience in the process.