Cup of Coffee

March 18, 2025: Unfuzzy

43 Comments

Who has a nice set up for video conferences? My home one is lacking (though the guitars hanging on the wall in the background aren't bad), but my work one is very nice. I have a fancy painting over one shoulder and a shmancy clock over the other.

43 thoughts on “March 18, 2025: Unfuzzy”

  3. I use a digital video background because I just have a bare wall and another desk behind me and that desk is usually covered with papers and mail and device cables and other miscellaneous items.

  4. I'm still bumming about that Wolves game last night. Toppin killed us in that OT, he ended the night with 34 points shooting 63% from the field but drained 7 of his 10 three-point attempts, and 4 of those were in the overtime.

    1. The Wolves played hard after halftime. If they'd played hard on the first half, they would have won.

      DDV had two wide open threes that would have sealed it.

      Toppin was ridiculous

  5. My home office background features a growing “icon wall” of black & white photos printed on glass*, my Sansui 5500 stereo receiver & turntable, a number of folded US flags, a portrait of Pops in his turnout gear, and one third of a Husky heavy duty tool chest.

    * Rules for the icon wall: the subject must be a deceased American, not primarily known as a politician or a professional athlete, and underappreciated for the size/scope/precedence of their contribution to the public good. Currently I have a dozen photos; the next addition will be three more, but I haven’t decided on two of them yet.

  7. My day started poorly and hasn’t improved. I went ahead and did the first pass of my taxes…. Instead of owing 4K this year we owe 5k. I’ve tried every way to encourage the good doctor to increase her withholding but I choose to remain married….

    1. Yeah, I keep reminding myself I need to take care of that soon. At least quickly enough so there's someone still left there to process it.

      Hey, on the flipside, maybe that could work out in your favor!

  9. I'm here to poll WGOM on youth softball rule sets. Currently the 8u league where my daughter's friends play has me pulling my hair out with their rules.

    The first issue is modified coach pitch. They let the girls pitch until there are 3 balls and then the coach takes over. In theory, this is a good system. In practice, even the best pitchers last year could barely throw strikes and so you would get three non-competitive pitches where everyone just stands around, and then finally the coach comes in. It's already not a very fast-paced sport, but this just grinds everything to a halt, and with the kids throwing so many balls, it's not like they were getting good reps in.

    The second issue is letting the kids steal bases. Zero catchers in their league can throw the ball from behind the dish to second base on the fly. Zero. So second base is completely, 100% free. And as mentioned above, the first three pitches are almost always a ball, so after the first pitch, the runner is on second base. Forget the players actually throwing the ball to second base for a force out, there was practically no point at which that was an actual option. Then third base, the catcher could throw that far, but getting an accurate throw and a tag never actually happened. So after two pitches, it was a 2-0 count with a runner on third.

    I am pretty sure that this is all because they are aligned with the capital-L Little League, and these are probably the rules that get used in regional/national tournaments, but I am here to say that so few of these players are playing on regional and national tournaments that it is totally detrimental to the kids' fun and their development to run the league this way.

    So, what say you? Am I just an old man on my lawn, hopelessly yelling for the kids to stop trampling it? Or will you vote for me to take over the league and change the rules?

      2. I mean, I totally agree with that stance, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I can't really change it and I feel like it's more important for my daughter to play with her friends even if these rules are silly.

        I feel like most people I talk to more or less agree with my stance, but I have run across a couple moms who seemed to think "it's part of the game so they need to learn it early" but I guess I just don't agree that it's so important to learn it early. The stuff to learn early is hitting and fielding and throwing. Running the bases is not so complicated, especially since there is no leading off and nothing like a balk, so you don't even have to learn the art of reading the pitcher's move to home.

    2. Yes, those sound like Little League® Baseball Inc.’s rules. As with many things, homogenization seems to happen via the national level in part because of regulatory infrastructure. I’m reviewing the rule book now to prepare for assistant coaching the Poissonnière’s baseball team.

      My understanding is that the coach pinch-pitching rule is intended to balance pitcher & batter development. Our league has coaches “pinch-pitch” only in full counts, the idea being to encourage kids putting the ball in play so the batter and fielders all get to practice fundamentals.

      The stealing rule has me thinking I’ll be sending kids a lot. I was once a young g catcher and had a better arm than most, but you’re right about a lot of throws bouncing out there to whomever has arrived to cover.

      1. The coach coming in to pitch with three balls would make a lot of sense if the kids were just a little bit better at pitching. Like even with this rule, I've seen girls walk off the field crying because they were having a hard time throwing strikes. Issuing a bunch of walks feels awful. But also, these girls just haven't had enough practice reps to even throw a strike once every three pitches.

        So that rule at least, I understand the spirit of it, but the local leagues need to have more discretion in setting the rules to where they serve the players that are showing up.

        As a coach, it seems like you kind of have to have the kids steal, because all the other teams do it. I suppose in theory, you could reach a peace agreement with the other coach before the game, but I wasn't coaching, so I wasn't in a position to make such an agreement. But then it might also be confusing to the kids to switch the rules from game to game.

    3. Aristotle's softball experience matched this - only they didn't ever bring in the coaches to pitch. Almost no one swung the bat ever, so all plays were either strikeouts looking or walks.

      Also, they were able to steal 1st on a dropped ball, and since catchers couldn't catch, almost every strike 3 also ended up in a steal of first.
      Also also, they were able to steal home. Very very rarely was anyone ever out at home on a steal, so basically it went "strikeout, but steal of first so no out. Steal of 2nd. Steal of 3rd. Steal of home."

      5 run max per inning, and they played "up to 6 innings" but each inning took so long so they never got past 4. Games were regularly 20 - 19, with no more than about 3 balls in play all game.

      Aristotle doesn't play softball anymore. Heidegger is reaching that level this year. Sigh.

      1. Allowing steals of home and advancing to first on a dropped third strike is jaw-dropping. I guess at least I can count my blessings that our league doesn't allow that. It would play out exactly like you are describing.

        They really would be better off just playing t-ball at that skill level. There would be no downside. They would learn more and they would have more fun.

      1. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I guess I haven't gotten far enough along in the process to see kids quitting.

        It seems like such a huge change in complexity to me from when I was a kid. When I was 7 and 8 in the summer, I was playing co-ed t-ball. Then at age 9 and 10, we used a pitching machine for games, and finally for age 11-12 we had kids pitching. Now it's not even an option for me to put a 7- or 8-year-old into t-ball. I'm sure that technically, for the very best players, starting earlier will probably make them better when they get to high school. Well, as long as they don't burn out or lose interest.

        There's a 10U club softball team here that plays a Sep-July schedule which somehow seems more insane to me than year-round club soccer. I see at least one Nov-July club baseball team starting at 12U, so I guess it's no wonder that everyone's UCL is exploding when they get to the majors.

        1. I think part of the problem is the number of parents convinced that their child is Draft or DI recruitment material. The market for youth sports has essentially been hijacked from recreation to amateur talent development with a pipeline directly to the NCAA and pro leagues.

          1. This, absolutely.

            Spamtown was not part of the Little League Industrial Complex back in the day. I didn't miss it. We had "club league," with (summer) youth teams sponsored by all the local service clubs: Kiwanis, K of C, American Legion, Eagles, etc., with two levels (junior, for like 3rd to 7th grades, and senior, for 8th and 9th, after which kids graduated to American Legion ball.)

            I was a track guy, so I didn't play school ball, but in those days all the "real" players did.

            Now, club sports are crowding out jr high and high school sports. Even worse, some of those leagues are basically year-round. In our day, playing club during the school year would make you ineligible for varsity teams. Now it is often the other way around. Blech.

            1. We had our draft last night. Teams are limited to three travel ball players. One kid on my head coach’s travel ball team broke his arm last week. He was in the draft pool and was counted as a travel ball player. Kid isn’t even in a hard cast yet, so he’s out for half the season. He didn’t get picked until the seventh round and his dad got hacked off and text-blasted the travel ball coaches who also coach in this league for disrespecting his kid by letting him fall that low.

              The kid is 9 years old.

              2. Some people really are unhinged. It's arguably even better for his kid to fall in the draft anyway, since he presumably will have better teammates this way.

                Growing up in a small town, I kind of hated the draft. It's kind of necessary in baseball because you need to make sure all the teams have pitchers, catchers, etc., but inevitably some of the dads knew the kids way better than the other dads and the teams would wind up being imbalanced anyway.

          2. I think that's a big part of it, but growing up in a rural area and now living in a big urban area, my perspective has shifted somewhat, and I see it's not even just about going to college. Where I am now, if you want your kid to play, say, high school soccer and they aren't playing year-round club soccer by at least 4th or 5th grade, then it's probably just not going to happen. There are enough kids on club teams from a young enough age that you're just going to be hopelessly behind them if you just play in a rec league 12 weeks a year and spend a lot of time in other sports. It's way more likely that my kids would make a low-level club soccer team during their high school years than for them to make their high school team.

            I feel the same kind of pressure for baseball/softball. If you don't have your kid playing t-ball at age 5 and 6, then they just aren't going to get to play t-ball. And then you send them in to play baseball at age 7 with no experience playing t-ball, that could be pretty rough. If you don't play at all before you're in 5th grade, it's hard for me to see how you'd get much playing time even in the most recreational leagues, because you would just be so far behind. So I wind up putting my kids in leagues which I don't necessarily think are age appropriate, but the only realistic alternative is for them to just not play at all.

            In the grand scheme of things, it's not critically important to be able to make a high school sports team, but I had those opportunities when I was a kid so it's hard not to want my kids to have those same opportunities, too.

            1. I wish that my kids had done fewer youth sports. One of the three did soccer on high school but not at the varsity level. All three did track and two did cross country.

              In my small town, sports were the main activity. In the suburbs, there are so many other things to do that I don't think sports are that important.

              It took me too long to get to that point.

              1. I really wanted my kids to have the varsity sports experience. The Boy did it with wrestling (and volleyball). The Girl with cross-country.

                Neither was a star athlete. But competing and being a good teammate are worthwhile skills to exercise.

                Mostly, the club sport obsession saddens me. It feeds the worst Sports Parent tendencies, encourages Mean Girl and Dudebro cliqueyness, induces overtraining-related injuries, and takes the joy out of sports for too many kids, too early.

                1. I grew up in a family of 5 boys. 3 of us were pretty darn good athletes. My older brother played college football and baseball (D3). Our parents did not encourage us to play sports, nor did they go to hardly any games. We had to find our own rides to and from practices or games when school transportation was not available. We all played 3 sports through most, if not all, of our high school careers. We played fastpitch softball in the summers and skipped all "club" sports. We developed as strong athletes as we had 10-12 buddies who would go to the park and play ball everyday. In the winter we played basketball in the barn on my family property. My own 2 kids played all the club sports and had to deal with parents (like myself) who got too involved. We tend to coach and parent the passion out of the sports for our kids. Most don't have the opportunity to just PLAY like my brothers and I did. If I could raise my kids all over again, I would move to a small town and find an abandoned ball field and just create a place for the kids to PLAY.

                  1. Most don't have the opportunity to just PLAY like my brothers and I did. If I could raise my kids all over again, I would move to a small town and find an abandoned ball field and just create a place for the kids to PLAY.

                    I agree with this conceptually. Plus, I think you learn more by organizing things as a kid. Conflict resolution, etc.

                    The problem is that if all the other kids that like sports are too busy already playing organized sports, your kid is the only one at the park.

                    1. Agree with you on this. Wasn't saying it was necessarily feasible. A boy can dream though.

                    3. May be a blessing then that my kids aren't interested in sports. Doesn't help that since was eight years old, whenever he's tried to join a pickup game of baseball or basketball at the park, other kids were mean to him about his poor athletic ability.

                      I suppose kids were mean to me, too, but I wanted to play so badly I dealt with it. My son is such an empathetic kid the thought of teasing or calling a stranger names is unthinkable to him.

                2. My oldest daughter is probably still a bit too young for the worst mean girl stuff to come out -- I think we are just about to enter that phase -- but one thing I'll say for her club soccer team is that she really loves hanging out with those girls and they have a good time. I think we got somewhat lucky in that sense, no bad apples, etc., but it also kind of goes to show what the upside of this could be in a more ideal world.

                  Like, in a big city with big schools, having club sports could actually boost participation at the older ages and with higher participation, you could arrange teams and leagues so that kids aren't playing in so many lopsided blowout games. Kids could make friends while doing something active after school, and learning a bit about teamwork, etc. But it just doesn't play out that way, for a lot of reasons.

                  With overtraining, I do wonder if having multi-sport clubs would help with that in any way. Like if you are missing spring soccer practices because you are playing softball practices for some other club, it's generally not going to be viewed favorably, but if it was all part of an overarching Sporting Club, maybe they'd see value in that. Like I said elsewhere, learning that there is a 10U Sep-July softball club around here just screams overuse injury to me. I think soccer is not immune to overtraining, but it's mostly running and jumping, and even if you do multiple sports per year, most of them are going to involve running and jumping. Our bodies are pretty adapted to high volumes of that. But high volumes of overhand throwing? No, we're not really built for that.

    5. My gosh, that sounds miserable! My first year of softball was the summer after 3rd grade, and coaches pitched the whole time and there was no stealing. We consistently got through all 6 innings of our games.

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