I never played in a rec league, but I played several seasons of church league softball. I finally got fed up with it and quit.
Some general gripes:
No umpires provided: Teams had to provide their own umps. I got so freakin’ tired of games where there was no official, league-designated rules arbiter. By “rules”, I mean the rules added on by the league, not the official slow-pitch softball rules. This leads to people making up rules on the spot, usually something they’re pretty sure they read in the rule handout that was given to coaches at the start of the season (the handout that somehow is never brought to an actual game, by anybody).
True story: Our team managed to bat around in one inning, and in the process opened up a pretty good lead over the other team. As our first batter of the inning was stepping to the plate for the second time, somebody on the other team piped up about a “rule” that says if a team bats around before making three outs, their half of the inning ends and they have to take the field and give the other team a turn at bat.
There was some argument, as nobody on our team had ever heard of this “rule”. However, it was pretty clear that the woman who quoted the “rule” was going to argue all night if she had to. Our coach decided that a) we had a pretty good lead, and b) it’s more fun to play ball than to stand around arguing, so he told our players to grab their gloves and take the field, and let the other team have their way. Okay, cool. No biggie.
It would have been no biggie had it ended there.
A couple innings later the other team came up to bat, and thanks to the strong wind that had come up our pitcher suddenly couldn’t throw a strike. As a result, between walks and hits, the other team batted all the way through their order. Their final batter is at the plate. Our pitcher, still fighting the wind, threw four consecutive balls, walking the batter.
At this point, the same woman who had brought up the “rule” earlier started sputtering. “Wait, you can’t walk him!” Say what? “Since he’s the last batter, all you have to do is walk him and the inning is over! You have to let him hit!”
Ohfortheloveofgod! Pretty obvious, huh? Maybe that’s why there was no such rule in the first place?
But instead of arguing, our coach told the pitcher to keep pitching. Of course, the wind hadn’t died down, so he still couldn’t throw a strike. Twenty-eight pitches later, the batter is still standing at the plate, without ever taking the bat off his shoulder. Most of our team had at some point decided to sit down on the field, because we were getting tired of standing around and it was clear this guy wasn’t going to swing at anything less than a perfect pitch, which he wasn’t going to see because of the freakin’ wind.
Finally, our coach had had enough and told the other team that “The object of the game is to put the ball into play. If he doesn’t swing the bat, we’re going home.” I think he may have also pointed out that, according to the bogus “rule”, the inning was going to be over anyway regardless of whether the batter got on base via hit or walk, so the guy might as well swing because it was going to get dark pretty soon.
Sigh.
Stupid Rules that Really Did Exist:
There was one really stupid rule that was instituted because it was a Jack & Jill league: If an adult male hitter was walked, and the hitter following him in the order was female or under 14 years old, the female or under-14 hitter had the option of taking first base without facing the pitcher.
The rule was implemented with good intentions: it was designed to prevent a pitcher from intentionally walking a good (read: big and male) hitter in order to pitch to a much weaker hitter who is almost guaranteed to hit into a double play. Good intentions, but poorly thought out.
Some teams quickly figured out how to exploit this rule. These teams would show up for games with a ridiculous number of players (all of whom could bat, as there was no limit on the number of people in the lineup). They would stack their batting orders like so:
1 - Weak adult male hitter (often wearing very thick glasses, or disabled in some way, or otherwise obviously un-athletic) who would step to the plate with no intention of swinging the bat. He would stand there until he drew a walk.
2 - Female or under-14 hitter would elect to take first base, resulting in runners on 1st and 2nd.
3 - Big, athletic, male hitter clubs home run.
4 - Repeat.
As I understand it, the league did finally do away with this rule once enough teams complained about the way it was being exploited.
Got tired of my coach:
Our coach was very athletic, and a very good ballplayer, and yet he still made boneheaded decisions. The one we complained most about was the way he would put all of our power hitters at the top of the order. His premise was that we could psych the other team out by hitting back-to-back-to-back-to-back home runs in the first inning. Of course, these were all solo home runs. These guys would be followed in the order by the speedy get-on-base types, who would then never score because they were followed by the can’t-hit-to-save-their-life players. Then it would be back to the top of the order, and back-to-back-to-back-to-back home runs.
Our coach believed (correctly) that church league ball was primarily “for fun”. It wasn’t to be taken too seriously. Although he was naturally very competitive, he kept himself from getting out of hand by ceding every dispute to the other team. “Let 'em have their way. It’s all for fun, anyway.” This meant that, if there was a close call and the other team argued about it, he’d let them have it, rather than argue about it himself.
Because it was “all for fun”, he had a policy of allowing everybody who showed up to play in the game. This actually worked fairly well. We had a good solid core of players(enough to field a complete team) that showed up for every game, and a handful of people who showed up maybe half the time. The part-timers still got to play when they showed up, but they knew the regulars had priority and didn’t complain about how much they got to play. This worked well enough that one season we managed to go undefeated during the regular season.
Our pastor announced that we had finished the season undefeated, and encouraged the congregation to show up and cheer us on in the postseason tournament.
On the first night of the tournament, all of the regular players and part-time players showed up. Also, everybody who showed up at the first practice at the beginning of the season, but who never showed up for a single game during the season, showed up with their gloves and bats. And our stupid coach allowed them to play. Did I mention that the tournament was single-elimination? And that we suffered our first loss of the season in the first round of the tournament, because our lineup was so long that none of our good hitters got more than two at-bats. The leadoff hitter shouldn’t be getting his second at-bat in the 6th inning.
After that, I gave up.
