Posted on 04/30/2005 8:36:32 PM PDT by KneelBeforeZod
Column: Softball coach snaps the unwritten rules
BY JEFF NELSON When written rules are broken, punishment follows.
It's a basic tenet in sports, and one we see practiced nearly every day.
What we don't often see, and frankly, what I can't ever recall seeing, is a punishment for breaking unwritten rules. But that appears to be what took place at Central Cabarrus High this past week.
Softball coach Monte Sherrill was suspended by the school for two games after his team, which is ranked fourth in the nation by USA Today, beat West Charlotte, 55-0, on April 15.
Go ahead and read that score again; it's not a typo. And to make matters worse, the game lasted just two innings (two innings!) before West Charlotte's athletic director asked officials to end it.
According to a published report, the coach and athletic director at Central Cabarrus won't comment on the game or the suspension, but the West Charlotte athletic director said Central Cabarrus continued to play aggressively as the Vikings scored 30 runs in the first inning and 25 more in the second.
While I wasn't at the game and can't know all of the circumstances surrounding the game, I did talk with four Union County softball coaches about the score and suspension, and they helped me come to a conclusion: Sherrill could have prevented the score from reaching such laughable heights, and because he didn't, he deserved a suspension.
To make things clear, none of the four county coaches could say with certainty that they agreed with the suspension. They all said they needed more information.
But Eddie Rivers of Forest Hills, Misty Tarleton of Parkwood, Tad Baucom of Piedmont, and Sarah Keziah of Monroe all said there are a common set of unwritten rules for coaching in a blowout, and those rules shouldn't be broken.
"There's a lot of ways to avoid letting (the score) get away from you," Baucom said. "You can hit balls to the fence and stop your kids at first base. On the 35 or so passed balls, you don't take a base. And you don't steal a base."
By playing this brand of station-to-station softball, you give the opposing team as many chances as possible to record three outs each inning without an excess of runs crossing the plate. Once you have a big lead, it's also common to put in backups who aren't as good and don't often get a chance to play.
Scores can still get out of hand this way - there have been several cases of 15-0 type scores in the county this year - but teams never approach the point of humiliation.
The N.C. High School Athletic Association does have a mercy rule that's meant to protect against excessive blowouts - if one team is ahead by more than 10 after five innings, the game is called - but because of the severe gap in talent between many teams, these unwritten rules are often needed to just get to the fifth inning with a respectable score.
In all fairness, sometimes it's hard to keep the score down, Rivers said, and he can understand a bad blowout every now and then. After all, he won't actually tell his kids to strike out on purpose or make an out on purpose.
"I'm not going to make a travesty of the game to not embarrass you," he said. "On the other hand, if (Sherrill) didn't do the things you're supposed to do, then I think he's making a travesty of the game."
The things you're supposed to do ... the unwritten rules ... that's what this is about.
Monroe has been on the losing end of a couple 10-run games to county opponents this year, but Keziah said her Redhawks were facing teams with integrity who didn't let things get out of hand.
"The Piedmont team, the Forest Hills team, those are the two we've played locally and they've gone out of their way to make sure that we were not humiliated," Keziah said. "Piedmont and Forest Hills have class. They treat us with respect; they don't try to humiliate our girls."
If Central Cabarrus was trying to humiliate West Charlotte, the Vikings' motive could have dealt with personal reasons we don't know about. Or, as two coaches suggested, the Vikings may have been trying to pad their stats to improve their national ranking.
Both of those are poor excuses, however, and neither can absolve Sherrill for allowing his team's rout.
When all four county coaches were asked if there's any reason a team should score 55 runs, they all said no. When they were asked if they could prevent their team from scoring 55 runs, they all said yes.
Play by the unwritten rules, and it won't happen.
Don't play by the unwritten rules, and you get suspended.
I'm with Bobby Bowden on this one. It's not his job to keep his team from scoring.
Maybe West Charlotte should take a look at their softball program.
I can't agree. I'll never forget one baskeball game my daughter played in, her team was very outclassed by the other. The score was ridiculously lopsided and still the other team played like they were the LA Lakers in the playoffs, and the coach never even put his bench players in. It was just bullying, it was unnecessary and unsporting. All I can say to this day is those b*tches and their "coach" are lucky no one on our side got hurt.
So the United States thoroughly spanked Iraq in 1991, but it was unfair because we thoroughly spanked them.
Right?
Couldn't the manager/coach from the other team have asked for the game to be ended before the fifth inning? Could he have forfeited in the second?
Some call it "The Big House." No guts, no glory. (Sorry Notre Dame fans, its true).
Wimpy up a society and you get more wimps. I call it liberalism.
Maybe next time they should kick more field goals rather than going for the touchdowns? ;o)
Will I be flamed if I don't add a 'sarc' tag to my post?
So the United States thoroughly spanked Iraq in 1991, but it was unfair because we thoroughly spanked them.
What a ridiculous analogy. It's softball, not survival. Yeesh.
In Little League, there's a five-run limit per inning, 'cept for the last one, where you can score 'til you win. It's not wimpiness, it's class.
IN a professional game I'd agree, but in an amateur game, and especially in a school game, it IS the job of the coach to TEACH, and one thing to teach is graciousness.
I disagree with purposely playing badly, but there are ways to play "well" but still not run up a score,many of which were mentioned in the article.
I can't help but be reminded of what is now one of my favorite South Park episodes where all the teams are trying to lose, and in the end the SP kids realise that while they were just trying to suck, their opponent had really WORKED at it (one great example was their pitcher could throw the ball and hit the other team's bat).
No. In real life you do what you need to do. Plus, there is winning in winning better in war (meaning that the fewer casualties you take the better in war, not like in a ball game where it doesn't matter how much you win by). So I guess I'm saying this was a poor analogy.
Yes, but his team showed up to play, and should have had the chance to play without being humiliated. This isn't professional teams where everybody has the same shot at getting good players.
One thing that they could do is adopt the "mercy bats rule". If at the end of ANY inning a team is ahead by more than the mercy rule (10 runs in this league) the losing team gets to bat consecutively until they either hit 5 innings of batting (and the game is called by mercy rule), or they get within 10 runs, after which the other team gets to bat until they get back to the same inning or go up again by more than 10.
This doesn't prevent a run-up in a single inning, but does prevent these multi-inning blowouts.
Unwritten rules (tradition) are rules. The Democrats in the Senate should have thought of that before they violated those unwritten rules by filibustering judges because their liberal donors (and now owners) wanted them to.
Break the unwritten rules and bad things happen. A coach gets suspended, the majority is forced to pass a bad rule because you couldn't play fair.
"So the United States thoroughly spanked Iraq in 1991, but it was unfair because we thoroughly spanked them."
Your comment is bizarre, just bizarre.
They were too brain-dead to say something in the first inning? Like, limiting the runs?
According to a published report, the coach and athletic director at Central Cabarrus won't comment on the game or the suspension, but the West Charlotte athletic director said Central Cabarrus continued to play aggressively as the Vikings scored 30 runs in the first inning and 25 more in the second.
The Cabarrus kids are just little automatons and don't have enough brains in their skulls to recognize a slaughter when they're committing one? It only takes three kids to 'throw' an inning.
They would accrue much more (informal) credit and respect for knowing what to do and doing it without being instructed (the 'wrong' action for the right reasons). "I was just following orders" ain't good enough.
The sad truth is that with this kind of mismatch there really is no way to avoid a little humiliation. The kindest thing would be to have an automatic game determination if any team scores over (lets say seven runs ) the first time at bat before even one out is made. Then we call these games early and the losing team still has to live with it. After this technical knock out, the winning team could put their second and third team players and play another four innings for fun.
In my day we ran cross country with one of the top coaches in the country. While most schools ran one to two mile workouts a day, this coach had his kids running 6 to 10 miles a day. (This worried many parents back then but is common today.) In cross country you can run as many kids as you want, but only the first five finishers count for the team. We had races where every one of our school (like 25 kids) beat the best runner at the other school. Sometimes with a long wait before the other runner came in. It must have been humiliating, and the coach had few friends in the league, but our team was very pleased with the results. I remember one race where the other coach was cautioning his runners not to try to start out with us for fear they would not make it to the finish line. What can you do? I say the losers should congratulate the winners and make it a lesson in character building.
Why is everyone arguing over girls sports? Its the most boring oxymoron I've ever seen.
The coach for Oklahoma has never gotten fired for running up the score 55-0 in college football.
...suspended, I mean.
I agree. The job of a coach is to get a win for his team, not to humiliate the opponent.
Asinine analogy.
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