Posts Tagged ‘Little League’

Pearland Made Us Proud

August 29, 2010

The Pearland Kids didn't wreck the car. They just ran out of gas.

By now, most of you know that Pearland, Texas bowed to Hawaii Saturday afternoon in the American LLWS Division Finals – and that Hawaii will square off today against Japan, the winner of the LLWS International Division title, also yesterday, by a 3-2 score in seven innings over Taiwan. There was nothing close about the Pearland @ Hawaii game. The Hawaiians took it 10-0, ending the game in five innings by the ten-run mercy rule, as out-of-gas Pearland walked away with only two hits. It wasn’t pretty, but it’s one of those things that happens every now and then, even among evenly matched clubs, when you play enough games over pretty much of an everyday business. If they played that same game again today, who knows, the results might turn out to be exactly the opposite.

Pearland wasn’t involved in a car wreck on Saturday. The other fine little club just caught our boys on a day they had run completely out of gas. It happens. Look a Taiwan, They went into their game with Japan hitting in the high .400s as a team, and with a record in the tourney that included victories of 23-0 and 18-0, but not Saturday, not against Japan. Saturday, Taiwan wobbled away with only 2 runs and 4 hits.

Does Taiwan still have the ability to crush Japan, if they played again today? No question. It simply wasn’t meant to be and isn’t going to happen. Instead, Pearland (Texas) and Taiwan will play at 10:00 AM Central Sunday in the Preliminary Consolation Game for 3rd Place prior to the 2:00 PM Central Sunday  Championship Game between Hawaii and Japan. And both games unfold again at Lamabe Field in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

In this LLWS, Pearland’s Mike Orlando really stood out as everything a Little League coach needs to be as a teacher and role model to the kids. He never abandoned them when they needed his encouragement, and he put their final departure from the championship run in the perspective it needed to be all along – and was – with the Pearland kids.

“I’m proud of you guys,” Orlando told his team in defeat. “I kept telling them that I didn’t care about the the results. I tried to keep the spirits up, and I just kept reminding them that thousands of Little Leaguers would trade places with them in a second.”

Message delivered, heard, and there for the players as a whole piece of very grown up thought for that moment in time of losing that otherwise feels like a sudden free fall into a giant hole in the ground.

Life is full of moments that may feel like the end of the world if we haven’t had some kind of emotional experience with sane survival – and the formula for sane survival laces its way through the simple words of Mike Orlando to his kids.

What we don’t win from, we try to learn from. If it doesn’t kill us, like the old saw goes, it will make us stronger the next time we are facing a similar kind of situation. People who get that connection, learn and move on with their lives on the wings of wisdom. People who don’t get it, well, they just stay stuck on blaming circumstances and other people for their disappointments and bad feelings – and they gear up for becoming dedicated losers. The only real losers in life are those people who refuse to learn their own lessons from the pain of a bad outcome and who always need to blame others and circumstances for their setbacks.

Fortunately for the kids from Pearland, they had Mike Orlando as a coach. His lessons were all about having gratitude for the experience, learning from what happened, and moving on in the joy of knowing they just had a rare and beautiful experience that others would have loved having for themselves.

Good Luck to Mike Orlando, the kids of Pearland, and the people who make up that community. You’ve made the whole Houston area proud of you.

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LLWS: Who Says There’s No Crying in Baseball?

August 28, 2010

Back in 1950, we never sang for our fathers - and we never danced our way into a game - but who knows? Maybe we should have. It's just not the way we were.

The Little League World Series in Williamsport. Pennsylvania and the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska are both on my “bucket list,” but, like the rest of you Houston area fans who didn’t make it this year, we probably missed one the best opportunities we shall ever have this time. With Pearland perched on the steps of winning the American division crown today and then facing the International Champion either Taiwan or Japan, tomorrow for all the marbles, we may have missed our best shot at being there as local support to some of our regional kids at the LLWS this very time around.

I really like the way the spirit of Little League comes across over the ESPN screen – and also the way commentators Bobby Valentine, Orel Hershiser, and Nomar Garciappara handle the coverage and their contact with the kids. Each is a walking role model for the players to follow on ow to walk around with a major league mentality about baseball and life.

Most of the coaches, especially Mike Orlando of Pearland and the two gentlemen from Japan and Hawaii have both impressed me in their handling of the kids. As for enthusiasm and obvious respect for authority, no other team beats the Japanese kids. They live and die with their in-game play outcomes – and they listen, listen, listen to their coaches. It’s not hard to see how they took over the automobile and technology industries for years.

One uncomfortable coach and player moment came about in the Thursday Pool B American Division playoff elimination game on Thursday. As Letterman likes to say, i wouldn’t give that coaching problem to “a monkey on a rock,” but it was there, all of a sudden, and the people involved were going to have play through it and eventually get over it.

Take Orlando's HR in the top of the 6th gave Pearland a 6-5 lead over Auburn, Washington.

Because of restrictions on the use of pitchers, the coach from Washington (whose name I cannot readily find – and it’s just as well – because my comments here are driven more to the situation than the man) so, as I was saying, the Washington coach had his own son pitching with the game tied at 5-5 and one man out.

It was a bad spot for both the coach and his son. What happened next is almost easier to tell in pictures than words. (By the way, the son’s name escapes me too.)

The Washington pitcher collapsed on the mound in tears. He had allowed the lead run to score in the last inning of play.

Coach said three things to his pitcher/son once he reached the mound: (1) "Will you stop?" (referring to the crying); (2) "Gimme the ball;" and (3) "Go to right field."

Look! Baseball is about winning and losing. And it’s a game that comes ready to teach us about the joy and heartbreak of each. We still need to remember that kids are not grown ups. Their abilities to feel OK about themselves are still tied to pleasing the important adults in their lives.

The Washington kid had just finished pitching his club out of contention in the Little League World Series and, if he’s anything like some of us, he had just given up a home run that he will see in his mind forever. I certainly hope that he heard something from his father/coach before the day was too far done – and way beyond the scorching tone of disappointment he got from his dad in the moments that followed.

I have to think that fathers and sons would be better off never being put in these kinds of game situations. We play baseball to win and we have to learn that it is a team game to win or lose, no matter who gives up the winning home run or makes the error that costs the game because, sooner or later, unless you’re Joe DiMaggio or Willie Mays, it’s going to be you.

I only coached my son in kid baseball a single season as head coach. That was enough for me. The rest of the time, I either helped out or watched quietly from the stands.

Maybe Little League needs to look at what they can do to here. Maybe coaches need to not pitch their own kids in games like this one.

What do you think?

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