We managed to have a fairly short practice tonight in spite of the wet field. My goal for the evening was to give everyone a turn on the pitcher's mound to see what they all had. League rules mandate how much each kid can pitch, so teams need a minimum of four hurlers. Ideally, I'd like to have more - after all, as Jack reminds me, you can never have too much pitching.

After working everyone through a couple of turns on the mound, there's two kids who I'm sure will be pitching, and another four or five who will have a shot at it. (There were at least two others who weren't there tonight as well.) I'm going to continue giving everyone some time on the mound if possible, because it's a pretty good way to see who has good throwing mechanics and who needs work. I'm hoping that by forcing some of them to think about what they're doing and to do it in a specific way, I'll help them improve how they throw in all contexts.

I do have to be a little more careful about how I approach the issue of who will and will not actually pitch during a game. After one of the kids who I know will pitch did his second workout, I said out loud that he would be on the staff. Tiffany mentioned to me afterwards that some of the parents on the sidelines got a bit worked up by that. I don't think everyone else realized how many kids would wind up on the mound, and a couple of the kids took my words to mean that they had been ruled out. I did talk about the need for numbers, though, so I don't think this will bite me. When I send out my next email, I'll reinforce that.

Next practice will be Saturday. I'm hoping the weather will finally cooperate so we can do some more infield/outfield drills and give everyone some time at bat as well.