Fastpitch Furor: Woodinville Wins By 64 Runs

Woodinville's fastpitch softball team, which finished 3rd in state last year, was beating Franklin 64-0 on Wednesday when the game was stopped because of the "mercy rule." Some mercy.

It's an ugly thing, humiliating a team like that, but Woodinville's coach claims he felt did everything he could to avoid running up the score, in a long explanation posted on the team's website today.

No one has been more disturbed about the final score of our Franklin game than I. Those of you that were there know that everything was done, short of making a mockery of the game, to end it.

Runners were going 60 feet at a time, Umpires were told to make the strike zone as big as they wanted. They were told our runners would be aggressive in their leads and to call it like they saw it, yet the game was permitted to get where it did. I, along with the Franklin coach, was unaware how bad it actually was until it was finally over.

Things that were done by the Falcon team:

After the first 7 runs were scored, our team stopped all aggressive moves on offense. This included stealing bases, tagging up, bunting, hit and running, advancing on pass balls and wild pitches, stretching singles into doubles and doubles into triples. All substitutions were made in the first inning. All cheering and celebrating was stopped early in the first. We did everything short of disrespecting the game to "shut down".

If what coach says is true, you've gotta sympathize with him. There's severe disparity between schools in sports like baseball, softball and football, which are largely played at summer camps populated by rich kids. Not so much sandlot baseball or softball in the inner city anymore.

Schools without kids who've attended said camps can't compete, and rarely do. Inner-city Franklin clearly can't compete--they lost their first two games 24-0 and 30-0. (The coaches declined to report the 64-0 score to the newspaper).

Still--you'd think there's something Woodinville could've done--maybe not purposefully strike out, but hit the ball on the ground, or swing only at the first pitch, or something, to keep the thing a little less ridiculous.