And We're Off!

Off to Little League regular season that is. We got our offical schedules on Sunday and had our first game Monday night. Tuesday morning we got our first change to the official schedule. I probably should have expected this, since the League president didn't show up for the Opening Ceremonies, (allegedly due to traveling for business, which many people do on Sunday afternoons), and the speaker mentioned that El Presidente does a lot of work and we should all be patient with her. We had an email to that effect as well during the scheduling morass that preceded Opening Day. In my experience she does do a lot of work in what is basically a thankless task, but unfortunately has a habit of fucking it all up. It's fine to do a lot of work and ask for patience, but for Christ's sake do it right.

Anyway, I think we won the first game. I say I think because two of the other coaches are apparantly veterans of the Special Olympics school of "Everybody Wins Because They Played", and didn't keep score. They would also yell out "Good try!" if our kids even stopped picking their noses long enough to wave in the general direction of the slow ground ball that was turning into a home run. Whereas I was roaming about the field quietly threatening kids if they didn't stand the fuck up and look at the batter. The key to menace, I think, is to get the sun behind you so the first thing the ostensible shortstop sees as he's drawing pictographs in the dirt, is a large shadow looming over him. This should then be followed by a quietly growled "Get your fucking hands out of the dirt and stand up before you get killed wih a line drive" Seems to work.

Or it would if they let us do that. But we can't, so we just have to appeal to their better natures, which works wonders with 8 year-olds. No, as much as I wanted to schedule an impromptu game of "Catch The Line Drive From 6' Away", I only really got on one kid. One of our players is this little pain in the ass who insists he's the best player and should always play first base and hit lead-off. There are three problems with this. He can't catch the ball and he can't hit the ball. Also, he rarely pays any attention, leading to high comedy potential when one of the two kids on our team who can play fields a ball and guns it to first base. Last night he was playing second base, by which I mean he was standing near it dancing in a circle, perhaps to ensure a good corn crop this year, and the other team hit a ground ball that should ahve been an easy out. Our shortstop realizes that Dancing Bear probably isn't going to field the ball and charges across the diamond, picks up the ball and hurls it in the general vicinity of 1B, far too late to throw out Stephen Hawking, let alone the kid who hit the ball. So I sidled up to our second base dancer and mentioned that the ball should have been his, that his teammates were relying on him to catch, not please the Rain Gods, and could he perhaps PULL HIS HEAD OUT OF ASS AND PAY ATTENTION.

It's going to be a loooooooooong season.