This last weekend, my wife took our 14u son to his baseball tournament and I had the two younger ones. When faced with this scenario in the past, I followed my son’s games pitch by pitch through the GameChanger App. If I was going somewhere, I would drive (somewhat recklessly) with one eye on GameChanger. If I was doing something with my other kids, GameChanger would always be open and sucking away my attention.
I don’t enjoy GameChanger. When I’m following one of my son’s games on the app, I nervously pant like James Gandolfini’s trademark heavy breathing on the Sopranos.
Another problem is that our team doesn’t have a committed GameChanger person, so we don’t do the scoring in GameChanger ourselves, and I’m relying on opposing team’s GameChanger feed. And as everyone with a travel baseball kid knows , every GameChanger person is different. For example, some never (or hardly ever) call errors on the other team and give their kids hits every time they reach base. So if my son is pitching and GameChanger says my son gave up a double, I don’t know if it was a scorched line drive in the gap or the left fielder dropped an easy fly ball. This ambiguity is maddening.
So I made a big decision this past weekend and decided that I would no longer follow my son’s games on GameChanger. I wouldn’t even open the app. Instead I would go old school and simply wait until after the game for my son to tell me how he did. Feeling positive about this change of course, I wished my son luck as he left the house with my wife to go to the field. I also instructed my wife to not under any circumstances write me about how my son or his team was doing.
I got a text from the field a couple hours later when my wife asked what I was doing with our other children that day and suggested that I take them to a local art fair because the weather was nice. It was an innocuous text, but if my son had gotten a hit she would have surely said something, right? So this text probably meant he got out in his first at bat, possibly struck out, since she would have told me if he hit the ball hard and got out. Yet it was also possible she was honoring my request not to provide any news about how he was doing.
More ambiguity! But I didn’t follow up with her and instead put the phone back in my pocket and carried on with my day. Twenty minutes later, my wife wrote that the game was in the bottom of the fourth and the score was 2-0 us. She ended the text by saying “no plays.”
I wanted to scream. So I was right that he hadn’t gotten a hit, because she definitely would have said something about his batting if she was also going to report that no balls came to him.
A little later, she wrote that our son “got on with a hit and came home,” presumably in his second at bat.
I felt elated, but I also knew my wife wasn’t the most reliable reporter of the happenings on a baseball field. In the past, she’d told me my son hit the ball over the left fielder’s head when he had in fact hit the ball over the third baseman. She’d told me we were up four in a game when we were in fact down by seven. She’d told me my son bobbled a ball in the field when the batter yanked the pitch down the third base line and he didn’t even touch the ball. In her defense, she didn’t grow up a baseball fan. But still, our kids had been playing baseball for like eight years now and she should be able to relay basic information about the games.
“Where did the hit go?” I texted her.
“Just over second base,” she wrote.
“Line drive?” I asked.
“Maybe,” she said.
“Ground ball?” I asked.
“Not high or low,” she said.
“Soft line drive?” I asked.
“Maybe,” she said.
“Did his team cheer after he hit the ball?” I asked.
“I think so,” she said.
“What specifically did they say?” I asked.
“I don’t remember,” she said.
That night I would find out my son had grounded the ball back to the pitcher for a fielder’s choice. But at the time, I figured my son got a hit somehow and I was thankful about that and I slipped my phone back in my pocket.
I was in the car when my wife texted me an hour later to tell me my son was warming up to pitch the second game. GameChanger started to beckon to me like the irresistible ring in Lord of the Rings.
“He’s getting hit,” my wife wrote me after the game started.
“Hits or erros?” I asked, freaking out.
“I think both,” she responded.
“Where are the balls going?” I asked.
“Far, but not all of them,” she said.
I opened GameChanger on my phone.
“The coach is going to the mound to talk to him,” my wife wrote.
My other kids were talking to me and I ignored them as I frantically searched for my son’s game on the app.
“What do you call it again when the catcher makes an error?” my wife texted.
Other cars were beeping at me. I finally found the game and just like that I was back in the old routine panting like Tony Soprano as I followed the action pitch by pitch.
For more Club Baseball Dad, see:
- Should You “Reclassify” Your Kid for High School Baseball?
- Are You On the Wrong Baseball Club Team? Maybe.
- I Spent 30K on Youth Baseball Last Year; Here’s How
- How to Deal with Bullies in Baseball
- Anger Management and Youth Baseball: How to Calm Down
- How to Manage Your Kid’s Baseball Tantrums and Meltdowns
- What’s Your Baseball End Game?
- How to Stop Being a Crazy Baseball Dad
- How to Be a Good Baseball Dad in the Backyard
- Is It Okay to Complain About Fielding Errors?
- Are Local Little Leagues Bad for Baseball?
For information on hitting, see:
- How to Get Out of a Hitting Slump
- 4 Best Baseball Batting Aids (No. 3 is Free)
- 4 Hitting Drills You Need to Do Before Every Game
- 4 Old School Baseball Drills You Need to Be Using
- 6 Mistakes to Avoid When Buying a Baseball Bat
For information on pitching, see:
- What You Need to Know About Little League Elbow
- 4 Ways To Increase Your Kid’s Pitching Velocity
- Is the Circle Change Dangerous for Youth Pitchers?
- Why I Don’t Let My Son Pitch in Little League
- How to Make Sure Your Kid Isn’t Overpitched in Basebal
For ways to get faster, see: