By the way, this part amazes me, and it shows how much the game has changed: Diamond Dad wrote: My pitcher walked the kid on 4 pitches. I didn't tell him anything -- on his own he was very, very careful not to give the big kid anything good to hit. When I was nine years old, any pitcher trying to "pitch carefully" would have immediately thrown it to the backstop. Our pitchers had one strategy: "Throw it over the plate as often as you can."