Monday, October 29, 2018

A Walk's as Good as a Hit? I Don't Think So


Whoever came up with the baseball saying “a walk is as good as a hit” should be banned from the ballpark for life.
                I was umpiring a 10u baseball game last week when I saw that mentality cost a team the chance to win a game, cost a kid a chance to do something special, and cost an entire field-full of kids and parents the chance to do baseball the right way.
                After trading leads throughout the game, mostly by trading no-swing walks or no-swing strikeouts, the score was 11-10 in the last inning. The bases were loaded (three walks) and there were two outs. The kid at bat had a chance to be a genuine little league hero for a day. Just about any ball smacked into play would have won the game for his team. Each of the 7 balls put in play throughout the game resulted in at least a single for the hitter, and most were extra bases. Remember, we’re not dealing with a group of future hall-of-famers. We’re talking about little boys having fun eating grass in the outfield and dancing in the infield.
                I was excited for this boy when he came up to bat with the sack’s packed. I know the umpire isn’t supposed to be partial, but I was. I wanted to see a hard-hit ball and I wanted to either see a kid in the field make a play to seal the win, or a kid from second base round third with a gleam in his eye and a smile on his face on his way to score the winning run.
                What I saw instead was the unbearable product of that awful saying: “A walk is as good as a hit.” I saw a little boy hoping I didn’t call three strikes before I called four balls. I saw a societally groomed non-participant in full uniform at home plate. I saw a 9-year-old boy playing the percentages instead of playing the game. I watched the boy take six pitches. Three balls and three strikes.
But what I heard after that was the disappointing byproduct of the “Walk is as good as a hit” mentality.
                I heard 8 and 9-year-old boys saying that the game was unfair because the opponent brought in their hardest thrower to close out the game. I heard a mother say “there should be a weight limit in this league” so her little boy didn’t have to play baseball against another 9-year-old boy who happened to throw a baseball harder than her kid. And I heard the kids saying they would have “won the game if the umpire wasn’t so stupid.”
                The last one carries some validity. I’ve been watching that ump do stupid things my whole life. But the mentality is what’s wrong with baseball.
                A walk is not as good as a hit. Hits are better. No doubt about it. And at 8 and 9 years old, just about anything is better than a walk. Well, except maybe a strikeout looking without a single swing during the at bat.
                Ground-outs are better. That’s contact by the hitter, a fielded ball by the infielder and a caught ball by the first baseman.
                Fly-outs are better. That’s contact by the hitter with a launch angle that sabermetricians would encourage, and a caught ball by a young fielder.
                Strikeouts while swinging are better. That’s a well-thrown ball by the pitcher with pitch recognition and an attempt to succeed by a young hitter.  
                Even a hit-by-pitch is better than a walk, presuming that the hitter doesn’t get hurt badly enough to leave the game. In some ways, you can view a hit-by-pitch as an expeditious walk. And the “make a man out of ‘em” dad’s out there will be happy that their boy took a lickin’ and kept on tickin’.
                So, for the sake of baseball, let’s get a few things straight.
1.       Nobody cares about the score of your youth rec baseball game. Those games are about fun, learning, trying your butt off, and getting some exercise (running, not walking). 
2.       Striking out swinging isn’t so bad. Every ballplayer has done it. Safe to say that the potential reward outweighs the risk.
3.       A walk is most certainly not as good as a hit. But if the pitcher is afraid to throw you a strike after you’ve clobbered the ball all game, take your free trip to first base as badge of honor…and get ready to steal second.

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