Junior, who was selected to play on one of the Jimmy Fund 10 Year old teams from North Leominster played against one of the Leominster American teams last night. Final score? 28-4. It was a horrible, crushing win. At the top of the 6th the score was 28-0. The parents on both teams were completely subdued – even our kids noticed that their parents were no longer cheering for them. We all just wanted the whole thing to be over. Hey, we’ve been there at a game where our kids were stepped on like that. What I don’t get is why the don’t FORCE a mercy rule (if you’re up by more than 10 runs after the 4th, the game is considered complete) or an inning run limit (normal season is 4 runs except for the 6th [final] inning). I thought I read on the District tournament site that there was a 5 fun limit. I guess that before the game the managers of the two teams playing get to decide if they want to enforce the limit and the mercy rule, and both managers agreed to play without one.
By the fifth inning, several of us were wondering if we should offer them a second chance to call the game, as their players just seemed so horribly sad and crushed, and as parents, we just didn’t want to continue to torture them.
You know it’s bad when we all started to applaud them whenever they got an out, just because we were happy for them. Totally involuntary reaction at that point.
So yes, we were very excited for the win, but nobody wants to see that kind of blowout, unless it’s the Red Sox against the Yankees.
