But I wanted to share the full story here (and at VTTW), where I can type it all out and not offend anybody in my town. I'm going to be a little long winded but it's a fun story.

Like most small town youth baseball / softball rec leagues, ours has some politics that you have to deal with. There is one coach in particular that coaches to feed his competitive fire more than he does it to coach his daughter. He's a very nice guy, but he is a win at all costs type of coach. My oldest daughter actually played for him two years ago in 9-10 year old ball, and she had a blast because they won... but even then, I knew he was a rule bender to put it mildly. At the time when Kristin played for him he was the president of softball and he would obviously change rules to benefit his team... he used "league option" type of rules on coach pitch and replacing players to have enough to play to his advantage, plus, he would make gentlemen's agreements with the parents of good players to stack his team. He would never actually cheat during a game, but you'd better believe he is going to do whatever he can off the field to put his team in the best position to win.

Last year he moved up to 11-12 while Kristin stayed down. When he moved up he was able to keep the three best players on his existing team and grab the four best players that were moving up. Then, he dominated a 2 team league with those players. Four of those girls who played as 11 year olds last year slid just under the cutoff line with January birthdays, so they were playing as 11 year olds when they were actually 12. All 7 of those girls returned, including the four now 13 year olds.

This year, the dad of the best pitcher in our entire city regardless of age got tired of the politics he had to deal with as a parent and the politics of playing travel ball so he decided to coach his daughter for the first time. This guy is not what I'd call a popular guy in town, but his daughter is a really good pitcher and a solid overall ballplayer. He came in as the third team in a three team league where both of the other teams were returning to the age group, so he was left with the entire pool of 11 year olds to choose from. He ended up with a bunch of girls he knew little about and that had never played together before, but he felt pretty good because his daughter is a great pitcher and he drafted another good pitcher. But before the season started, the mother of the other really good pitcher (who also happens to be a former college softball player and the lady who taught my daughter and the head coaches daughter to pitch) went to the board and complained because she knew that her kid was not going to get to pitch a lot... the board caved and forced a player trade to the third team, claiming that we had an unfair pitching advantage (never mind that the other team had three GREAT pitchers returning) . We ended up getting a really good player who already had a sister on our team, but the catch was she was in middle school ball and couldn't play the first half of the season. Our coach didn't argue, he just decided to make the best of it and have fun with what he had. At the first practice he asked me if I would mind helping him coach. There weren't a whole lot of other options, to be honest.

In practice, I thought we had some potential to scare some people, but I was thinking forward to next year when we'd return everybody. We had a couple of scrimmages with the other two teams and while we didn't keep score, we got rocked in every scrimmage. The "best" team had two pitchers who might as well have been Monica Abbott to our girls... they were big and strong and threw hard and changed speeds. Also they were both 13, and you can imagine how intimidating that might be to an 11 year old girl. The head coach and I talked about just hanging in the first half of the season until we could get the middle schooler on the roster... she would be our only 12 year old and she was a really good ballplayer... maybe we could contend in the 2nd half. The one thing we thought we had going for us was our one pitcher and that 7 of our 10 girls had good to great speed. We agreed that we were going to run, and run a lot.

We started the year with a preseason single elimination tournament. With three teams, we had a coin flip and we won the bye to the final. Of course we ended up playing the best team in their 2nd game. Those other girls took the field with a lot of attitude and undoubtedly expected to roll. Then a funny thing happened on the way to the coronation... their pitcher was a little wild... she walked two in the first inning, we stole two bases, eeked out a little grounder in the deep hole at short, and then our first base planted one off the wall in the left center field gap and all of a sudden we were up 3-0. I was shocked to be honest. Then, our pitcher took over and was completely zoned in. It was like a video game... fastball, fastball, changeup, sit down. We won that game 7-1. We didn't play great, but our pitcher was superb and you could see the girls' confidence just explode.

We've played that team four times so far in games when it counted. We won by 1 run twice and they won a close one once. The fourth game was last Saturday in the 100 degree heat and we run ruled them 13-5. The third team has offered little competition. Today we sit at 13-1, 7-1 in the league, with two games left to play tomorrow night... one against each league team. If we win either, we win the league outright. If we lose both, we still should win the league outright in my opinion because we would own head to head, but the political wheels are already turning for a best 2 out of 3 playoff if we end up tied. Luckily our girls have no intention of losing either.

The girls have no idea of the politics that they have in effect defeated. They are just out there having fun. From a parent/coaching perspective, what excites me is that they still have joy... the older girls on the other team have no joy. All they hear is yelling from their coaches and parents who are used to them winning and not knowing how to deal with it. Their coaches are frustrated because we beat them often without hitting the ball out of the infield... we beat out ground balls, we steal, we slide, we are aggressive and we go after people and those girls eat it up. We play defense and catch the ball and do the little things well.

It excites me that we are getting better. We had a game early on against the third place team where we could've scored 20 runs if we hadn't gotten thrown out on the bases five times due to girls not sliding. Last night we scored about 6 runs between two games where girls were safe because they slid. We looked up at one point and 9 of the 11 girls had dirty uniforms. I can't even explain how gratifying that was. Also in one of the first practices I had to take the first base over to the side to do soft toss because she wasn't hitting anything. Yesterday she hit a ball almost 200 feet, over the left field wall.

Oh, and the pitcher that is so great? She's actually 10 years old, playing up a level. I guess what I've been reminded of this year is that kids are still kids and they are still pure at heart and they are still capable of coming together and creating something where the sum is greater than the parts. I'd be hard pressed to find a more rewarding two months that I've spent in my adult life.