Just before a game, pause to enjoy the setting:

• The beauty of the clean field.
• The field's bold, distinctive geometry.
• The smell and green of the grass.
• The brown of the dirt.
• The crisp white of the lines.

The colors, and lines, and structure await you. You’ve got a whole game ahead of you on this beautiful field. You’re about to have fun.

This beauty and anticipation echo throughout later life, such as starting a vacation, or a semester, or a hopeful new job.

Opening Day. Mason’s 11th birthday. Einstein’s 126th birthday. Splendid weather. Don and I think we’re in pretty good shape.

BOY ARE WE EVER!

We were up first and staged a hitathon. We more than batted around: 12 or 13 at-bats, against their highest-rated pitcher. We scored the league-maximum 8 runs with only 2 outs; actually a 9th (Alex, our mouse) crossed the plate on the final hit but couldn’t be counted because of the 8-run rule.

Mason dominated as pitcher, with very quick innings. 5 of his 9 outs were strikeouts. By the time he finished his 3 innings, we were leading 17-1. His left quadriceps was hurting so he sat out the 4th inning to massage it. His knee was also hurting — worse and worse as the evening went on — but he insisted on playing shortstop.

Tyler also had a headache — which for him is very rare — and sat out an inning. He batted very poorly that time up, in contrast to several powerful hits.

Steve hit a grand slam home run!

With such a commanding lead, Don and Frank held our kids very conservatively on baserunning, so we wouldn’t make the other team look overly bad.

Don agreed to try an arrangement I recommended. I noticed that most 9-year-old outfielders, and a lot of 10s, can’t go backwards to catch a long fly ball. For that matter, many can’t dependably catch flies at all. But they can go forward, retrieve the ball, and throw it to the infield. So I recommended stationing them 3 steps in front of the fence, so they’re right there for the longest hits, and coming in on almost everything. By conceding that they won’t catch the fly for an out, we get them to run forward, see all the action in front of them, and throw the ball in the same direction they’re running. This holds a lot of long, powerful hits to mere singles. Don points out that this only applies to the strong part of the opponents’ batting order; the weaker part can’t hit the ball past the middle of the outfield anyway.

Our little outfielders played very deep when we told them to, and got to balls startlingly quickly, and threw them in to second base quite well. That held several long Phillies hits to singles and an occasional double, where error-prone little ones would normally allow 3 or all 4 bases. I like how fast they got to balls. They even almost caught a few flies. I think the experiment merits continuing.

Rocky pitched well. He walked a few, and the Phillies’ strongest hitters (especially Cale Rafael, their catcher, who was so impressive last year on Lumin’s Reds) hit him pretty hard, but our fielders minimized the damage. Rocky pitched a lot of strikes, and once even shut the Phillies down after loading the bases — a pressure job every pitcher on Earth would appreciate. He faded toward the end but daylight was fading faster. We were so far ahead, it would have delayed things worse to put in a different pitcher. The final score was 17-9.

Naturally the kids are very, very happy to win, very dominantly, and by playing well and doing things right. I think every single player is happy with the overall team. I doubt that any regret is bigger than a swing-and-a-miss at bat.

The parent corps was large, and entirely positive and supportive. It all worked the way things are supposed to.

All-in-all, a sensational start for my coaching career. Most of the things that made us successful aren’t my doing, but I did reinforce several of them, and contributed a couple of helpful supporting practices.

I joked to Lumin that I ought to retire right now, since my record can’t get better. He scowled, pointing out that our team looks VERY impressive and should continue so all season.

Many times every year, I hear coaches criticize whole teams for letting down in the latter half of a game. “Late-Inning Letdown” is so common that experienced coaches have a routine speech about it.

But the kids didn’t give up. They’d gone too long without eating. At their age, they have very active metabolism but small internal reserves. Warm-ups plus games run more than 3 hours. Games commonly end as much as 6 hours after the players’ meals. During the last few innings, their “tanks run on empty”. No sugar recharges their muscles. That’s why they let down. That’s unhealthy for the kids, and makes them play baseball so poorly that it’s un-fun, poor baseball, and downright unsafe.

When I figured this out, I also realized that I’d have little chance of persuading baseball traditionalists with a scientific discourse on serum-glucose levels. So I reduced it to a slogan: “Sugar in the Third”.

I’ve urged my kids’ coaches to push something sugary in the third inning (cookies, brownies, candy bars, etc.). This boosts blood sugar. The only player who ever refused the sweets had a medical reason. Kids who already wear too much fat should avoid more.

In the first inning, see if the parent who’s supposed to provide the goodies actually did. If not, send them to the nearest store. If they won’t go, enlist any volunteer you can find. When your team comes to bat in the third inning, make sure the leadoff hitter gets at least a little sugar, and a full share when he comes back off the diamond. Make sure every player gets a dose. If there were benchwarmers the previous half-inning, give them theirs early: a little plus to compensate for having to sit out, and to reduce the number of players to mind.

Sharper, happier players mean a better ballgame for everyone. We’ve tested this in scores of Little League games, and suffered Late-Inning Letdown in none of them. By contrast, Late-Inning Letdown haunts my other son’s team, whose coach ignores what I tell him.

Our league has an awful rule that bans all food in the dugout during games, permitting only water. For the good of the kids, and for better baseball, I spoke out to eliminate the “No Food” rule. One coach guessed that the rule might be meant to protect against choking; another said they didn’t want a bucket of fried chicken in the dugout; and a third thought it was really about leaving the dugout clean. Make the rule say what they really mean: nothing chokable, no greasy hands, and leave the whole area clean. Almost all coaches ignore the “No Food” rule. Rightly so, even though that constitutes a disrespect for authority. Rules and laws that don’t say what they mean, ought to. Any time they don’t, they foster disrespect for law.

The food/mood connection demands a good sense of proportion. A group I’m in always schedules decision-making meetings for just after lunch, because that’s when everyone is most agreeable. One place I worked, in the boom days of Silicon Valley, supplied lots of good food, which lured us to work all the more. The weight I put on there still haunts me years later; shedding that in team exercise is my least-met goal this season.

Both the nutrients in the food, and the emotional reaction people have to the particular dish, make big differences. You can influence many situations by skillfully planning appropriate food.