As a sports clerk for the Saratogian newspaper here in upstate New York, one of my main duties is to collect game results, mostly high school and college sports, via the E-mail, the fax machine, or from a phone call from a coach. I gather the data that is provided, and from that data I write short stories to bring you, the reader, the best game synopsis that I can, given three or four paragraphs.
As many of you may or may not know, there are several rule differences when you compare amateur-level sports to the professional ranks. In most amateur baseball and softball leagues, there is something known as the "Mercy Rule". The mercy rule generally states that depending on how many innings a full game is, if a team is ahead by 10 or 15 runs, the game is called to spare the losers any more embarrassment.
For instance, in a little league game that is scheduled for five innings, if a team is ahead by 10 or 15 runs after the third inning, after the losing team bats, the game is called. Children need to be spared their dignity, and spectators need to be spared the boredom, and rightfully so on both counts.
With that said, I learned yet another rule in high school sports (it has been so long since I played at that level that I have forgotten many of the nuances in the rule differences).
In high school, there is a mercy rule for girls' softball. In a seven inning game, the rule would take effect after the fifth inning. There is no such rule for boys' baseball.
The county where I live is in Section II. As in many counties and Sections, there are large schools and small schools. Being a native of New York City, a large school here would be considered a small school in the Big Apple.
In a large school there are tryouts for the sports teams, and you have to earn a place on the squad. In smaller schools, it's all that the coaches can do to round up enough recruits to field a team. This was the case between two Section II teams that played baseball last Tuesday night.
Galway High School, a school so small that its baseball team consists of just 10 players, hosted Northville, a school of similar size. What happened in that game should never happen to a high school player.
The Galway Eagles defeated the Northville Falcons by a score of 38-0. Since the scheduled seven innings must be played in its entirety according to high school rules, there was no stopping the beating that Galway laid upon Northville.
The Eagles scored several runs in the first two innings, and then exploded for 12 runs in the third. That gave them a 16-0 lead, and by the fifth inning, when the lead was increased to 24-0, the game should have been called. Since Northville was the visiting team, the game sould have been stopped due to the mercy rule in the middle of the fifth inning.
However, there is no said rule, the game was required to be played in its entirety, and the Falcons of Northville were bound by rule to take a beating that no team should be forced to endure. Especially when it involves young athletes who can have their confidence severely shaken after such a lopsided affair, possibly to the extent that they never recover.
There was a second game with a similar outcome on the same night. Waterford-Halfmoon defeated Hadley-Luzerne by a score of 27-4.
Waterford opened the game with three runs in the first inning. Hadley responded with a run in the bottom of the second to make it 3-1, but then Waterford answered with a 12-run third. Four more runs in the fourth made it a 19-1 game.
In the fifth, Waterford scored 2 more to go up 21-1, and then Hadley plated three to make the score 21-4 after five innings. The game should have been stopped at that point.
What is the rationale for making these teams suffer such humiliating defeats? Is it necessary for high school kids to be ashamed of themselves, their schools, and their teammates for being beaten by 30-some-odd runs? Is that supposed to build character? I don't think so.
Put yourself in the position of being part of a baseball team that was so small that you knew, as a starting pitcher, that there was no way that you were working less than five innings, no matter how badly you were hit or how many runs you gave up.
Can you imagine surrendering 20 or 30 runs simply because there was no one else to pitch?
I spoke to the Galway coach that night. His team was the winning team, and he only had 10 players. He had no bench players to replace starters that had terrific games. He had no choice but to play all of his players until the game was over.
He told me that as the winning coach that the game was painful to watch.
I won't reveal exactly what he told me that he did, but let's just say that he advised a player on the other team. The player took the advice, but he still didn't make the play, scoring more runs for the winning team.
I have been involved in baseball as a player, a radio announcer, and a writer for more than 35 years. Never, in all of my experience, has a 30-run annihilation been a part of the spirit of baseball.
It leaves a bade taste in your mouth. This is not healthy competition, or even an easy game for the winners. It's hard. It's hard for the coaches, the spectators, the parents, and most of all, the winners and losers, or the players. And, after all, isn't that what the game is all about?
We need a mercy rule in high school baseball. If we, as a community, are going to support amateur sports, as we should for so many reasons, we should be advocating healthy competition.
In football, they score in seven-point increments (for the most part). To lose 38-0 in football would be an embarrassment. To lose 38-0 in baseball, where you score one run at a time, is an absolute atrocity.
If it happened at the pro level, that would be ugly enough. For it to happen to teenagers is simply unnecessary.
We need a mercy rule in high school baseball. The kids don't need to be embarrassed like this.
