Uhh…pull Carlos Mármol a lot sooner?

Too soon, man.

To end the inning the Mohawk runner missed home plate intentionally for the third out.

I can see how a sense of sportsmanship could lead someone to do this, but aren't there about eleventy billion less obvious ways to intentionally make an out?

If you're going to take pity on them and make outs on purpose, swing and miss three times. It accomplishes the same thing without embarrassing the other guys any more than you already have.

I've heard similar stories from youth league umpires. The coach will alert the umpire to watch for the rules technicality and then the ump will call the out.

Dan

Because then you are asking a kid to make an out that is far more 'personal' if that makes sense.

Having umpired in similar situations this is one of several recommendations I have made where the kids can do it without giving the immediate reaction of "Hey, why do I have to make the out?"

I suppose, HW. I can definitely see your point.

Maybe I'm expecting far too much maturity from teenagers, but it seems to like it should be something that's obvious to them. On the other hand, I was the ultimate good-glove-no-hit player as a kid, so maybe I just made so many outs that it wouldn't have been a big deal to me.

I guess the fact that baseball isn't timed can lead to some awkward situations like this. If it's high school basketball, you can just go four corners offense and kill the clock. In football, you run up the middle and burn clock. You can't do that in baseball.

Dan

It's the strikeout part. It's too high profile. And don't forget the parents. Mom will understand but if Dad is in the stands he will grouse for two innings.

And your last comment was a classic Earl Weaver quote when he was dismissive of other sports. He growled out that same comment almost verbatim.

How did Iowa end up with Iroquois mascots? Even looking online I can't find where the tribes had any movement out to Iowa.

The trouble is, swinging and missing is really the only way to make an out that isn't really, really obvious (and, even then, it requires some acting). If you hit the ball you have to run really slow, which is obvious, and you still rely on the other team to catch the ball or catch and throw and catch the ball. The latter things are things that teams that get beat 40-0 have trouble with.

Really, what is needed is another level of run-rule. If it's 10 after 5 or 15 after 4, it should keep going: 20 after 3, 25 after 2, etc.

More, what is needed is to not have a stacked team play a crappy team.

Des Moines North will now be inundated with Houston Astros' scouts looking for some pitching to boost their staff.

Couple of things:

1) A HS team uses a computer to keep score!?!? Really!?!?

2) Des Moines North seems like it should be a pretty big school. How can they be bad enough to give up 31 runs in an inning? Could nobody throw strikes?

More, what is needed is to not have a stacked team play a crappy team.

A couple of things - Mason City is a much smaller community than Des Moines; that doesn't mean that Mason City High has fewer students than Des Moines North but it could mean that Mason City plays with more motivation, especially when they play against the "big city" schools. Also, in high school teams tend to play the same opponents year after year, who is to say that DM North might not have run up the score against Mason City in the past and Mason City was getting some payback.

I RTFA, and no mention of how the runs scored; I'd really like to see a box/line score. They mention Des Moines North only had 10 players, but that shouldn't matter that much.

I think it had to be the pitchers walking the ballpark and a ton of errors. I'm pretty sure I could hold a HS team to under 40 runs, if my fielders could catch the damn ball.

It does sound like Des Moines North is a small school, since they've merged with another school to field a wrestling team.

The head coach for the winning team sent 12 pinch-hitters to the plate. As hard as it is to ask your regulars to make an out for the team, it's got to be damn near impossible to ask guys who might not play very much to do that. Not much he can do.

The easiest way to make outs on purpose (without being too obvious) would be to be overagressive on the basepaths. The downside is it looks like you're trying to pile it on AND you might just end up safe anyway.

When I umpired these games (as well as girls fast pitch softball) there was a game like this every 7th game or so, especially in softball. The youth games are dictated by the pitchers, and either it is nearly a no-hitter, or the kid can't find the strike zone. I would tip the coaches that my strikezone was going to get very big, very soon. It is usually a combo of walks and miserable defense that leads to this.

One league I was worked (under 13) capped batters per inning at 12, which is a pretty sensible solution. It allows for big crooked numbers, but functions as a merciful remedy to this.

There were 17 hits, 10 walks, and 4 errors in the inning.

http://globegazette.com/high-school/mchs/article_b0861e02-8bea-11e0-85fb-001cc4c002e0.html

Article I found with the most detail, but still not a complete box score.

The head coach for the winning team sent 12 pinch-hitters to the plate. As hard as it is to ask your regulars to make an out for the team, it's got to be damn near impossible to ask guys who might not play very much to do that. Not much he can do.

True. You tell them to swing at anything close, and put a non-pitcher in to basically throw batting practice.

At least a 40-15 score doesn't look quite as bad.

Edit:

It's funny, my HS baseball team once blew a 20+ run lead, and lost like 30-25.

The pitchers just wouldn't throw strikes. I remember begging the coach to let me pitch after about 10 BB and 10 runs (figuring some line drives would eventually get caught), but the idiot let the "pitchers" flush the game away.

Because then you are asking a kid to make an out that is far more 'personal' if that makes sense.

Having umpired in similar situations this is one of several recommendations I have made where the kids can do it without giving the immediate reaction of "Hey, why do I have to make the out?"

This makes sense to me. When I was playing, I knew my new batting average as soon as I was running to first (or headed back to the dugout). It would have been very, very difficult for me to intentionally make an out as a hitter, but much easier to do so on the basepaths.

No mercy rule? I think way back when we capped innings at 7 runs and the game ended with a 10 run lead. Something like that.

DM North isn't a small school, but, how shall I put this... it's sports programs are lacking. The near north and east sides (where the school is located) are populated by a lot of poor immigrant/minority families. I'm willing to wager that the structural and administrative support necessary for athletics is lacking. Any kids with much talent probably end up at WDM Dowling (a Catholic powerhouse) or East.

/DSM knowledge drop

When I was in Little League, I played on a dynastic team that won 31 games in a row, and 40 out of 42, over the course of a couple of seasons. There was at least one game where our manager (my dad) had to ask us to strike out because we didn't have lights and unless we got to three (or was it four?) innings, the game wouldn't count and trying to do makeups in Oregon in spring is well nigh impossible. I don't remember anybody on our side being too upset about it, honestly. The biggest problem was making sure that kids on our team didn't talk #### about it to kids on the other team. We were given VERY strict orders not to tell the other kids about it.

Beat me to it, karkface. Those poor Polar Bears. (Yes, that's North's mascot.)

Not mentioned in TFA is that Mason City is ranked second among the state's largest class (4A), so this had the makings of a beatdown from the very start.

My coach's play in high school when we ran into an overmatched team was to tell us that if we bunted for an out he would make sure it was scored a sacrifice so it wouldn't hurt our stats. Even the third out. Worked pretty well, never hurts to work on your bunting, although you are counting on the other team being able to execute the throw to first.

A couple of things - Mason City is a much smaller community than Des Moines

Little known fact, Mason City is also probably one of the five best ever Fiery Furnaces songs. I'm kinda surprised Repoz didn't make a Fiery Furnaces reference.

When I was in Little League, I played on a dynastic team that won 31 games in a row, and 40 out of 42, over the course of a couple of seasons. There was at least one game where our manager (my dad) had to ask us to strike out because we didn't have lights and unless we got to three (or was it four?) innings, the game wouldn't count and trying to do makeups in Oregon in spring is well nigh impossible.

My last year in organized ball was in Senior League as a 15 year old. We were getting killed in a game that was going to be called off due to the time limit, and if it didn't go enough innings, it wouldn't have been an official game. The other team started striking out on purpose. I begged our coach to let me pitch (for the first time since I was 10), and ended up striking out six guys in three innings. It was awesome, at least, after I through the first pitch about 10 feet over the catcher's head.

1) A HS team uses a computer to keep score!?!? Really!?!?

Uh, yeah. Really. Some OS's still use pencil and paper, but a few of them use their laptop and scoring software. It's simple, and it adds everything up for you. Saves a lot of time.

Actually, one of the OS's I've seen used his iPad to score the game.

Mason City, Iowa, incidentally, was the prototype for River City in "The Music Man." Looks like Des Moines North had something even more sinister to worry about than the presence of a pool hall...

Or some of that horserace gamblin': not a wholesome trottin' race, no, but a race where they set down right on the horse!

My son's HS team just finished up a state championship season, so you can imagine that they had a few routs over the course of the year. Had one inning where they sent 20 batters to the plate, and I thought that was pretty impressive until I saw this. Coach always eases up in those situations by first going station to station on hits and not taking bases on wild pitches/passed balls. If keeping forces in order and emptying the bench isn't enough to get to three outs, then one of the starters who hasn't been lifted yet will be asked to bunt back to the pitcher. None of the opponents ever complained about these tactics, nor did the players asked to bunt. They actually consider it a something of a compliment, in fact. The parents of the kid asked to bunt do sometimes have a different reaction though.

They graduated eight seniors and three first-team all-state players, so we're not expecting to see any of those kinds of games next spring.