Practice in the Snow

I was looking at the MLB website yesterday to see who was playing pretend GM with other people’s money when I came across a video of a girls’ high school baseball team practicing outdoors in Japan, in the snow. Talk about eye-opening. Granted, the video no doubt edited, but even then, there were still players making nice plays on grounders and flyballs, again, in the snow! That’s just not supposed to happen. I was particularly impressed by the throws, no short-arming like in softball. This bears watching, friends and scouts. During the summer of hell, when my 17-year old daughter kept hitting homeruns unseen by D-I college coaches she wanted to impress and homeruns that didn’t impress her two travel coaches one bit, I took her to a baseball game as a release. A team of females players, including at least one college-aged, was playing against a bunch of 13- and 14-year olds from local teams. It was not a pretty sight. Basically, it looked as if the girls hadn’t been coached, not really, not seriously. What I remember in particular was one infielder trying to field grounders off her front foot. I was livid, and I’m pretty sure Clare was disgusted. Our little field trip did nothing to lighten her mood that summer. But these Japanese kids—you go, girls. And, next time, show us some BP.