Wednesday, Mar. 12, 2003
Baseball cuts, posted at 8:11 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com The observation went okay. She is a stern woman, and left saying that things went fine. It didn't go as well as my previous one with the supervisor that I adore, but that's because teaching is hard and those kids are angelic and 7th period freshmen are tough. I do feel like they learned today, and I'm happy with that.I am in disbelief that I return home every day at nearly 7pm, and have to return to school in 12 hours. 12 hours at school, 12 hours at home. I am very thankful for baseball, and look forward to it all day, but it certainly drains my schedule and makes the speed on returning papers a bit sluggish.
Today, I threw 250 batting practice pitches. I'm sure my arm will be sore tomorrow. Practice is a blast, even though the number of kids we've got is a bit unwieldly.
The other coach and I also decided on our first round of cuts, which we will announce tomorrow. There are currently thirty kids on the team, and we need to whiddle it down to twenty. There is no JV program at our school (budget...), so all the kids will be on our varsity team. Amongst the four kids will be two of my former students. Both are sweet kids. One is a freshmen who whispered to me in one practice this past week that this was his first time playing organized baseball. His skills aren't quite there, though I wish more than anything to keep him. I can tell he's got some raw talent. Hopefully he'll play this summer and come back strong next year. The other kid is a Junior, and also tried out and was cut last year. He is socially inept and I remember his mom being frustrated and asking for advice about this last year. He is very quiet and does not seem to have any friends. I am so proud of him for trying out for baseball each of the past two years, even though it is clear that his skills are not near the skills of the other kids. He is bulky, slow, and does not seem to have any natural athletic ability. But I know he went out and got a new glove for the season this year, and has been to every practice. I hate to cut a kid like that. In fact, it's tearing me up inside and I feel tears forming behind my eyes even as I write this. I have no idea what to tell this kid, who I know went way out of his comfort zone to try out for the team despite the fact that his skills are not there. But, it wouldn't be fair to keep him and not keep someone else with better skills who has also been to every practice.
It is times like these when I am glad that I am not the head coach because I have no idea how to handle this situation. It is times like this when I am incredibly pissed off that our school system has such fuck-ups that spent millions of dollars over budget and have frozen all spending, so we cannot have a JV team that would allow us to keep all these kids. With the younger kid, I know him quite well and think he'll be okay with it. With the older kid, I'm worried because he reminds me of myself when I was in high school and I know how rotten I felt when I was cut. Actually, both of the kids will feel rotten. I guess I've got to be as honest as possible with them and figure out a way to make it encouraging.