Why Do We Little League So Early?

Sure, in Arizona, I bet it’s an AWESOME time to be out throwing the horsehide around the diamond.  But we ain’t in Arizona.  This is the Pacific NW, and our ground has a ton of water in it, and it’s messing up my season!

We do this every year.  We get started, we do the draft, we meet our teams, and then…  we gotta cancel our first 7-8 practices because we don’t have the fields.  There’s simply too much water.  And you might say, “play in the rain!”  I don’t love that idea anyway, but for real, it’s unsafe, it messes up the fields, and the county won’t allow us to do that anyway.

So my question is…  why do we start in March?  It ain’t like April is TONS better, but it IS a little better, and the ground has had a little bit of a chance to swallow all the water from the Winter.  Playing in a marsh is nobody’s idea of fun, and it doesn’t really do much to prepare you for the season anyway.  Drilling needs to be done in game situations, or else everything gets thrown off.  The field we like to play on?  Hiteon Elementary?  That grass out there might as well be cattails!  It’s a SWAMP.  So in order for my boys to get some BP tonight, I’ve got to tell them to duff grounders, and that’s not what I want them doing come gametime!

Let’s just plan for baseball being an actual Spring sport next year, eh?

~”Coach” Jake from 98.7 The Bull