As of last night, our Spring 2025 6U baseball team season ended. I say our because whether people know it or not, Bethany is as much of a coach in most aspects as I am. I may take care of what you see on the field, but she makes the whole thing run on the sidelines. It’s funny that we kind of went into this season apprehensive about coaching baseball. I saw real quick that I loved practices and that this was so much fun. By Game 2, she was enjoying it more than I’ve seen her enjoy most sports we have played or coached. I think a lot of it was dread from the teeball experience. That was more like herding goats than a sport. So I see where not only myself but my wife went into this season scared of what we signed up for.

Like I said, we more than just enjoyed this season. We are truly sad we are done with games. We felt a good ten more games would have done the entire team justice. I have had soccer teams end and felt like man, they just gelled, and we could have won a lot of games with this team at this point. I have had teams that I ran out of the post game speech and didn’t think about sports for 3 days because I was done. This team was the first I was truly sad fell apart. The team had found themselves as a team and had battled late in games to tie and had a bad lose to make them tougher and ended the season showing everyone the power they had. I will get to that in a minute.

I spent the preseason practices working the best I could on fielding. My goal was to have the best fielding TEAM in the league. I have some things to tweek in my coaching and instruction for next season, but overall, I’m not upset with the fielding as I think as a team we fielded better than almost every other team. One team had an incredible individual fielder, but as a team, I think we were the best. I will work a few more drills next season, and with a suggestion from a parent on a way to explain a portion of fielding, I think I can get an even better fielding team next season. With the addition of an entire summer of working drills hard on my 3rd Baseman who gets the lions share of the fielding duty at 6U, it should be even better.

The season itself started off pretty good with a win and a close loss. We won another and had another loss that wasn’t close but wasn’t bad. We then went and had what was either a tie game or we won. No score is officially kept at this level, and we were on a field with a broken scoreboard, so I had it as a tie my wife had it as a win and different parents on the team had it as either a win or tie. It really doesn’t matter either way it was a 5th inning bottom of the inning surge that got us either the win or tie. So it was a good game either way. The next game was also a tie. The sad part is we left a run at third with 1 out in the 5th, and he stayed there.  Then the blowouts happened to end the season.

Game 7 of the year, we bat first, and if I’m correct, it might have been the only time we  did bat first as I liked fielding early. It might be the reason for this game it might also just be a thing that happened. We get 1 hit that inning and no runs. The other team puts up a few, and then we get 3 runs in the second. Mostly off of a Timmy double with 2 on base. The kid was a beast with runners on this season.  Then it happens, the fielding just died. We were doing things we hadn’t done all season. We started overthrowing bases. We started fighting over balls. We dropped multiple easy outs. The next thing I know, it’s 18 to 3, and it’s over. Honestly, I pulled the boys in, told them the score, and told them all to go home, go to bed, and wake up and practice what they saw as their weakness that game.

Going into our final game, I knew that it was not going to be a close game. The team we tied a few days before was across the way, and besides that tie, they were undefeated on the year. I was also doing a few things differently. We did an actual lineup and not just hit in jersey number order (this is easier at younger ages because you just tell a dugout manager hey hit in number order and it happens). For this game, I took what I knew about the team and set a lineup. This could have easily backfired on us. I also pulled all defensive coaching from the field. So the boys got to do it themselves that game. Now we had a run rule in the league that up to this game we hadn’t seen used. It states, and the team can only score 7 in an inning, and then it’s like we have 3 outs. We let them put 4 on the board in the 1st, and then we came up and tied it in the bottom. We hold them to nothing in the second. The bottom of the second is when it all began. We put in 7 in minutes, and it’s 11 to 4. Top of the third, they put up 4 more to make it 11 to 8. Bottom of the 3rd, the boys bat in 7 more and run rule two innings in a row 18 to 8. They knock on 2 more in the 4th. We walk up strike out the first player and then run rule for a third inning straight. 25 to 10. Ball Game!! Time was up. I did let the other team bat top of the fifth they had no chance at the win, but I’m more about the game than the win. They had no energy. I think they scored one, but it was over rule wise, so I wasn’t worried about that. My only issue was the 4th and 5th innings. I couldn’t keep my defense going they all wanted to talk and point at the scoreboard the whole time. For many of them, it was their first multi-hit game. For some, they never missed a chance at base this game. Overall it was an amazing way to end a season.

I can’t say enough about the kids on the team. I would like to highlight four of them. The first is my most improved player. He was the little brother to one of the boys on the team. He started the season scared to even hit a ball off a tee. On our final night, I batted him in the 1 hole, and he went 4 for 4 with 4 single and 4 runs scored and a couple of rbis. He went from the little kid on the team to a star in 3 months. It was awesome to watch.

The second is my First Baseman. In Teeball, Timmy played first because he was bigger than everyone and could catch. He hated it but learned to play. He wanted to run after all the hits, not receive all the throws last season. To start this season, I was going to play him there again and show him how important the position was, and then I found a kid who could catch anything you sent his way and understood where to be with the ball. So he took first, and Timmy slid to third. This kid was great at hitting and had a solid glove all year and I am sending him to the city All-Star team.

The third kid it was his first season playing, and he just naturally understood the game. During our third game, he just became a force. He tried to take my head off with a line drive up the middle. He then slides in under a tag to tie the game up. Over the course of the season, he got better and better to the point he is my alternate pick for the city All-Star team.

Lastly, we talk about my little Tornado. Timmy was great all season. He had some mental errors while base running this season, but that’s to be expected from a 5 year old. He also had some fielding errors, but the fact he was at 3rd and fielded at least 3 to 4 balls most innings he did very well for again being 5 and his first season. The real impact he had this season was at the plate no matter the inning no matter the situation he was a hit. As me and him say Hitters Hit! He went 13 for 18 this season, and honestly, without lying, 3 of his strikeouts lay in my hands, not his. I pitched a couple of times to him, very tired, and once I pitched to him, mad at him for a play at 3rd that lost us the game or would once he struck out. But still 13 for 18 is good for a 5 year old when most kids got 1 hit every game he had 2 or 3 most games. I am super proud of him, and it’s not the end of the season for him as he will be on the All-Star team, not because of me. If you know me, you know I treat my children harsher than other players, and if I thought he wasn’t the best on the team, I would let him know and wouldn’t let him compete at the higher level and embarrass me.

This season was amazing and really opened our eyes to how awesome it is to have a baseball team full of kids who love ball and want to play ball. I hope next season is just as awesome and that the All-Star season is a blast for Timmy!