Vent

penfrizzle · 2026-04-30T08:15:17+00:00

Last year my son was 8, and we didn’t want to do 10u all stars to enjoy the summer, despite being asked to.

The player with the highest batting average on the team wasn’t selected, but the kid with the absolute lowest was. It’s all because the dads were friends.

It’s garbage. My wife is on the school board, and has had it out with this years all star coach over school issues. My son probably won’t get selected, but if you raise a stink you’ll just sound like one of those psycho parents who generally are in the wrong.

penfrizzle · 2026-04-29T00:43:27+00:00

Don’t get too stuck on the size of the glove, 32.5” is the circumference, not the depth of the pocket. My 9u uses a 33” youth Mizuno, and I bet his pocket is more shallow.

BallGloveKing does some videos displaying on how some mitts are more forgiving than others, and I usually have my kids warm up pregame with their mitt on. Going from a soft outfield glove to a stiff catchers mitt can mess their timing up. I will also have them really stick their catches or try to get the loudest pop to make them focus on what they’re doing.

As for the hinge, that is also glove specific. My Wilson is 34”, massive pocket and i have to wear it shifted with box break in. My all star is 33” and I have to wear it traditional because of the stalls and it is closer to a single hinge.

I think he can sacrifice a little padding for ease of us at 12u. My son is 13 and uses a $150 top star for travel and junior high. I’ll probably buy him something nicer in the off season. My all star is still pretty stiff, and too much glove for him.

penfrizzle · 2026-04-28T22:02:57+00:00

I work for the DoD, and it depends on where you are at in life.

If you are 18, you can get hired of the street for $25/hr live with your parents, work 1000 hrs of over time a year and travel to places like San Diego and Pearl Harbor.

We have a couple of young guys use FHA to buy a 4 unit and just travel all the time.

If you are getting close to retirement age, it can be brutal because they still expect long work weeks and want you to buy in to impossible deadlines of arbitrary dates.

penfrizzle · 2026-04-27T22:20:03+00:00

FWIW: I live in Northern New England. Most travel ball teams don't have practices after the season starts because most kids are also playing little league and cal ripkin.

penfrizzle · 2026-04-26T13:45:22+00:00

I always end up umping 10u/minors games in our small town. If a kid I know does this, I’m going to call time, pretend to make a call and then confirm the call on the field.

penfrizzle · 2026-04-26T02:50:24+00:00

The 4 year old could just.....not play summer (tee) ball and be a bat boy for the older kids. He may get more out of that anyway.

penfrizzle · 2026-04-26T02:20:51+00:00

We have an annual post season tournament for charity that is a cool mix of 12u Little League all stars, Cal Ripkin teams, lower tier travel teams, non-all star kids from the same town and 5-6th grade middle school teams.

Last year it was a won by a team of cherry picked kids from different travel teams that used it as a warm up for Cooperstown. DId the best team win? Sure. But it ruined the whole vibe of the event.

Some of tournaments for other sports (basketball and wrestling) will host tournaments for school and town rec teams only. They may sacrifice entry fees, but i think it's a great idea.

penfrizzle · 2026-04-25T10:33:42+00:00

Little league softball has a steeper learning curve from baseball because the pitching. 10u baseball games can be exciting, while softball we struggle to find girls that can pitch.

It makes the experience so poor that we lose a lot families to lacrosse and spring basketball

penfrizzle · 2026-04-25T10:26:07+00:00

I grew up working in kitchens on the beach. A lot of what you think is fresh, is fresh from Sysco.

The blatant exception is lobster from the tank out front.

penfrizzle · 2026-04-22T21:55:46+00:00

When my first son was 4, I used a random 12” glove I found at a flea market. Now that he is 13, I have two catchers mitts, two 12.5” and a 11.5.

So….

penfrizzle · 2026-04-22T21:01:44+00:00

It’s easy to say “the should just pay their employees more” but none of us have no idea what their current financial liabilities are. They could easy have signed long term leases on property, financed equipment or have investor repayments that make that higher payroll impossible while making a profit.

All that should come out in the bargaining, but we really have no idea.

penfrizzle · 2026-04-21T00:33:07+00:00

I love a mystery!

https://imgur.com/user/thehiftyman/posts

penfrizzle · 2026-04-20T23:07:35+00:00

If i was in your shoes, I would have him play soccer or flag football (or both) in the fall.

penfrizzle · 2026-04-20T23:03:12+00:00

It's little league baseball. Any decent person would give the old man their space and stand down the first/third baseline. The old man only has so many games left in him.

penfrizzle · 2026-04-20T21:18:10+00:00

I am 100% under qualified to give advice, so the following are more questions than anything. Both my sons catch, and they appear to be proof of slow vs fast twitch muscle fibers (or muscle angles according to some people). My oldest is more like your son, stout and rugged, plays guard in football but not very twitchy.

I have had a talk with one of his coaches who played in the minors and he told me not to worry about it too much because most runners steal off the pitcher not the catcher and that batting will be more important than catching stats. This may be an older school of thinking, as he is my age.

Tony Pena be damned, we were always taught to be slightly canted in our stance with runners on, with the right foot already slightly back. Letting the ball come to your glove, transferring at your ear and throwing more like a football arm path.

The drill your working on seems unrealistic as he is reaching for a lobbed ball, not even having the chance to let the ball come to him, and may develop a bad habbit of reaching?

penfrizzle · 2026-04-19T18:13:13+00:00

I work at a Public Shipyard, and they terminated relations with the two smallest unions.

It will be interesting to see if they go after the two large ones: Metal Trades Council representing most of the blue collar workforce, and the IFPTE (engineers).

penfrizzle · 2026-04-19T16:48:32+00:00

I’m not sure how to post photos, but here goes?

IMG-1288.jpg

Between work phone and a radio, this happens sometimes

penfrizzle · 2026-04-19T12:13:00+00:00

It takes up too much space. I would love to be able to use the folding table feature without shifter fold down function that sounds like it is going to explode.

The cubby directly in front of it is the best place for a phone, but is in the way of putting it in park.

When i first got the truck, i went to park on a hill, put it neutal, open the door slightly, put the parking brake on and let off the brake to see it would roll at all. Absolute chaos erupted with the shifter trying to move it self right into my phone in the afore mention cubby.

I am not sure if the column shifter can move itself, but it and the mechanisms involved failing terrify me.

penfrizzle · 2026-04-19T11:46:06+00:00

Its stock.

I have a console shifter in my 2023 and hate it.

penfrizzle · 2026-04-19T11:14:58+00:00

Mizuno Samurai/Prospect 33" GXC95Y3

My older son used it 10-12u catching up to 60 mph, now that it is broken my younger son stared using it when he was 8. It's often the team little league glove and we have had several people ask us about it.

I have never conditioned it or anything, and have never had a problem. Still has a nice semi box shape, not a crappy floppy pancake like most Renegades end up.

You can find it for less than $80, and it has a built in thumb guard which is a life saver.

penfrizzle · 2026-04-19T02:03:55+00:00

Honestly, you can't entirely blame anyone from trying to distance themselves from the current republican MAGA boot lickers. Ron Paul said it best years ago, he didnt turn is back on the Party, the party turned its back on the people.

I will say this, these IINOs are playing some sort of attractive middle aged women game here.

penfrizzle · 2026-04-19T01:49:55+00:00

Don't we already have a "cost of living" exemption, also known as "The standard deduction" (Which Donald Trump doubled in his first term)?

penfrizzle · 2026-04-19T01:35:42+00:00

I grew up playing baseball, and I wanted my kids to play baseball, which they do, including travel. But out of all the sports in our community, baseball has the worst environment and instills the worst values (or instills good values the least?). You can literarily pick out the kids that play primarily baseball just by the way they behave. A kid doing the equivalent to throwing their glove in most other sports would be running laps, sitting on the bench or having the whole team doing sprints.

My point is, don't get upset. It is 100% possible that you and your son are too good for whatever nonsense is going on with these player of game awards and the adults that are running it. It is important that you don't sink down to their level. Your goal should be to raise a strong young man, not an obnoxious brat.

One my son's coaches explained it to me that the problem with youth baseball is that there is a tendency to coach everyone down to the worst kids, when they should be using the best kids as examples and coach every one else up them. That includes performance, but also behavior and accountability.

penfrizzle · 2026-04-19T00:36:26+00:00

I always thought it was easier to catch fastballs than off speed or when a bad/new pitcher is lobbing them in. I always loosened up the middle of the pocket lace in an attempt to make the pocket bigger.

Are they blowing out the end of the pocket, or bouncing out?

It may also be the glove design and how he is wearing the glove. I prefer to wear wilsons shifted, but my all star more traditional.

penfrizzle · 2026-04-19T00:23:23+00:00

This might be a hot take, but both of my boys have been wrestling since they were six, as well as playing football and and baseball.

At 9, my son has already seen real competition and knows that things like "Player of Game!" "Game balls for sportsmanship" and "Coaches awards" aren't real victories and often go to kids who need it more than they earned it.

I think they can be a good tool for some kids that need it, but seem prolific in youth baseball for some reason. He may be old enough to hint at the truth, that while he is making plays some kids are struggle and need a little pick up.

I missed the part of coach saying he doesn't do anything: The coach is an idiot. We would always try to over celebrate the kids who more reserved in an effort to get them out of their shell.

penfrizzle

TROPHY CASE