The WIAA is going to discuss what to do about fall high school sports which are supposed to get going in the near future. One of the proposals that is going to get consideration today is to move fall sports to the spring and spring sports to the summer. I can’t pretend that I can be unbiased about this suggestion. As the long-time American Legion baseball coach in Wausau the idea of moving spring high school baseball to the summer is a non-starter for me. But I’m not alone. It may seem like an easy solution to a tough problem but I can almost guarantee that if that decision is made (even for a one year period) it will mean the destruction of not only many summer baseball and softball programs around the state, but the high school programs themselves will suffer with lower participation rates. Will players give up summer jobs, travel teams in other sports as well as baseball and summer vacations to play a May-July schedule? You may be kidding yourself if you say yes. I sympathize with the fall sport coaches and participants as they try and figure out how to not lose a season during a pandemic…but as Coach Holler puts it in the release below, the spring sports athletes have already lost a season to the pandemic themselves. I also understand for many high school sports people in the state that football rules and will get special consideration when these decisions are made. As someone who has been involved as a player, parent, coach and media member I also understand the tough decisions that may need to be made. I would only ask that the spring sports coaches and players don’t get run over by the football steamroller in the process.
Here is the position on this issue taken by the Wisconsin High School Baseball Coaches Association
Coaches Association wants to leave the 2021 season intact next spring
WBCA President Scott Holler shared the following statement with Wade Labecki, Deputy Director in charge of baseball, at the WIAA, in a statement that the WBCA Executive Board feels our membership desires.
“As President of the WBCA, I’m writing on behalf of the Wisconsin Baseball Coaches Association Executive Board. We are well aware of the many challenges/factors facing the upcoming decisions that the WIAA and its member schools will have to make in a very short time regarding how to proceed with high school athletics for the 20-21 school year.
Our stance is quite simple: We would appreciate the WIAA keeping the Spring Baseball season at its regularly scheduled start and end date as already determined. We have seen the different proposals, particularly the one that came from the Southwest Superintendents, and we do not agree with it.
There are a multitude of reasons why we do not think the baseball season should be moved, but mainly, it is that our Spring student athletes have already been affected once by this pandemic, losing their entire 2020 season. We do not feel it would be the right course of action to alter that same group of student athletes and coaches season once again.
Furthermore, the challenges facing running high school athletic programs/events in the summer would be vast. Making students and families choose between jobs, vacations, club/travel teams, are just a few of the issues that would be present. As a former summer baseball coach, I can tell you from firsthand experience that unfortunately, playing baseball in the summer would lead to low participation numbers across the state as many families would pursue the travel ball option versus high school baseball. While I don’t agree with that stance based on the great experience we provide our kids across the state, I’m also not naive enough to pretend it won’t happen. It’s simply the truth with where we are at with baseball in this country right now.
We also have many rural communities across the state that simply would struggle to keep their programs alive if the season were pushed to the summer, based on students in those areas other commitments in the summer time, as well as their already strong connections to American Legion Baseball.
This is obviously a very brief snapshot of our stance, but at least the WIAA is aware that we, the WBCA, are in full support of keeping the 2021 baseball season scheduled as planned.
Scott Holler
Head baseball coach, Oak Creek High School
President, WBCA
Here are some interesting numbers to watch in major league baseball during a shortened season…courtesy of Jayson Stark of The Athletic.
In a 60 game season every game is now worth 2.7 games in a 162 game season. Which means that a four game sweep is equivalent to a 10 game winning streak…and vice-versa.
Fangraphs has a projection that 17 teams could win between 30-33 games this season…which means that 17 teams could be fighting for playoff spots…which means every game will have playoff ramifications for tiebreakers and everything else.
The trade deadline is only five weeks away…imagine the stress in MLB front offices if your team is in the hunt.
MLB has the smallest “home field advantage” of any major sport. How will it be with no fans in the stands?
Extra inning games will start with a runner at second base. As much as purists hate this, you really can’t have 15 -20 inning games that wreck bullpens for two weeks. Some are suggesting it wont have to be used very much and will add some strategy to games…to bunt or not…to intentional walk or not…to pinch run or pinch hit etc.
It’s an interesting read and is part of a package that makes The Athletic well worth the small investment to get.
This tweet from Brewer beat writer Tom Haudricourt
#Brewers David Stearns said he anticipates keeping 16 pitchers and 14 position players on opening 30-man roster. They must be submitted by 11 am today.
Singer Annie Ross has died. She was popular in the 1950’s and early 60’s as a jazz singer and worked with Jon Hendricks and Dave Lambert in a popular musical trio. She also worked with jazz names like Zoot Sims, Gerry Mulligan & Count Basie. She also wrote the lyrics for Twisted… a funny tune of vocalese that tells “story” of her visit to her analyst.
Here is Joni’s version from Court & Spark with Chuck Findlay on trumpet and Max Bennett on bass
Covers Of The Day
Annie Ross covers Duke Ellington and Cole Porter
Trumps new ad about “violence and chaos” in the streets uses picture from a pro-democracy riot in Ukraine from 2014. Read it
here
The plot to sabotage the election…read it
here
Quotes Of The Day
Matt Gaetz “concedes that he improperly sent $28,000 in taxpayer funds to a LLC connected to the speech-writing consultant, Darren Beattie, a former WH aide who was ousted after appearing at a convention known as a forum for racist and white supremacist views.”
https://politico.com/news/2020/07/22/gaetz-florida…
“This is reprehensible. These are soldiers who protect our country. And if they have COVID they sleep on the ground for 14 days as their “quarantine.” Shame on you @realDonaldTrump”-Debra Messing
https://twitter.com/joncoopertweets/status/1285907…
“I just wish her well, frankly.”
— President Trump, on child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. A terrible president. An even worse human being.”-Bill Kristol
Ghislaine Maxwell paid Jacob Wohl ‘to smear victims’ Federal documents filed this month show a company linked to Maxwell had hired Wohl and Burkman to lobby on ‘issues relating to US DOJ, Senate
https://dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8531293/Ghisl…
“the government has no business making me wear a mask” i say before i buckle my seatbelt, drive the speed limit to a restaurant built to code, eat food made in a state inspected kitchen, receive the heimlich maneuver from a waiter who learned it from a mandatory workplace poster,”-Ben Rosen
Dear @ABC
This is an embarrassing headline. There is no “new tone” Donald Trump is the same POS he has always been. He is an unapologetic racist, cager of children, sexual assaulter of women, hatemonger and ANTI-AMERICAN. That’s his tone.
Today.
Tomorrow.
Next year
Forever “-Don Winslow
https://twitter.com/ABCPolitics/status/12856173006…
“How bad is it when the president of the United States offers encouragement and support to a woman at the center of an international underage rape ring and his supporters are praising his new “tone?”-Stuart Stevens
Riddle me this: Where were the federal government agents cruising around black-bagging citizens into unmarked rented minivans when armed militias stormed our statehouses?
“’The department was established to protect America from the ever-present threat of global terrorism. It was not established to be the president’s personal militia,’ ex-Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said…”
https://penncapital-star.com/civil-rights-social-…
via @penncapitalstar
