My son is playing in a 10u city baseball league. I am an assistant coach as my work schedule would not allow me to commit to the head coach position.
The HC and his wife have never played ball before but they stepped up and have done a pretty good job, she is in the dug out for some reason every game too. The HC has taken his spot very seriously and has become very frustrated with the whole experience because we have only won one game. In light of this, he asked me to take over making the line up for a couple games.
The HC and Wife spend a lot of money on pitching lessons for their boy, who does throw hard but is kind of wild. I believe in part because his dad is constantly trying to give him pitch signals from the dug out, and has him throwing 4 different pitches at 9 years old… more on that in a bit..
Knowing that I took over the line up for a bit, HC/mom calls me stating that she has family driving in from out of town to see her son play and requested that he pitch a significant portion of the game. Mind you, he has pitched in almost every game, and started the previous game. So I told her I wanted to start another kid and that her son would come in second. After that conversation I remembered I had promised another kid who has told me that he’s been working on pitching at home begging to pitch, that he could come in at the end of the game. So now I have 3 kids that I’m going to try to get in, so in my mind that’s easy, we usually only get 3 innings in, so they each get 1 inning.
So this is what I do, I actually moved my son down in the lineup, I’m not trying to show favoritism towards my own. I start kid 1. He gets shelled inning 1. Coaches kid comes in inning 2, pitches really well. Side bar, I finally broke HC down to stop giving his son signs from the dugout and to just let him throw the game he wants to, and I think the kid threw way better for it.
Here’s the grand finale that you’ve been waiting for. Inning 3 rolls around, times getting low, I go ahead and send in kid 3. Well HC/mom loses her ever flipping mind on me, yelling at me, cussing at me, threatening me, telling me that this game is all about her son today and that he was gonna pitch until she said he was done. Told me to leave the dug out and I was done. I laughed the threats off and remained. She stormed off.
Kid 3 gets shelled, time runs out, ball game over.
I gave the kid the shot I promised him, and split time between all the kids.
I receive a text stating that I’ve been formally kicked from the dug out. She’s now framing me as the aggressor and running her mouth to all the parents to validate her actions. I had a conversation with her on the phone, where she spoke for 20 min uninterrupted, said she had nothing to say sorry for, then when I had a chance to speak I couldn’t get a word in without her interrupting me. I was trying to apologize and make amends, I finally said you know what, the hell with this I’ll sit and cheer in the stands, you can not be reasoned with.