BASEBALL

BASEBALL
Scrappers family disappointed
Fanfare:
Please understand I am excited and grateful that our Mahoning Valley Scrappers won the New York-Penn League championship for the very first time.
I use the word "our" because our house has been a host family for a Scrapper player for the past four years. However, this will be our last year in doing so.
Maybe I should explain what a host family is all about. The host family opens up their homes with lodging, transportation when needed, and giving your vehicle and keys to your home to a complete stranger, trusting them completely. We have been fortunate to have housed very polite and courteous players, and not to forget appreciative.
We support a positive family lifestyle, which we trust will support the players, as they are away from their families for an extended period of time.
Our experience of being a host family has been both rewarding and very heart-breaking rolled into one. As a host family, we attend the games, night after night, and we suffer with their defeats as well as their successes.
I say all this to tell you that we were robbed by the Scrapper front office as host families, season ticket holders and most of all the fans of a celebration.
Kids stood along the fence with their gloves to get a signature. The front office told the players not to go to the mall to attend a party put together by the mall. The front office people stayed in New York to party.
Why were we all shut out of a celebration? This area needs some positive things. I guess the players and front office partying in upstate New York was enough for them.
We are all proud of our Scrapper championship, but it seems as though the Scrapper front office does not care about the fans.
We were robbed of a celebration. I am very upset by the way the championship wasn't a community event. They need to remember who pays to see them play. Shame on them.
Patty Smith
Warren
Umpiring machinesneed to be installed
Fanfare:
Major League Baseball umpires make too many bad, wrong, calls on balls and strikes.
Here's the official strike zone: As wide as home plate, as low as the hollow beneath the knee cap and as high as the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants. This area is determined by the batter's stance as he prepares to swing at a pitched ball. Who could possibly call this correctly 200 times a game? No one! It's just impossible for a human being to tell if many of the borderline pitches are balls or strikes.
We can continue to let the umpires guess and wrongly determine the outcome of games or we can install machines that really get the calls correct. Let's move into the 21st century and start getting every call right.
I watched an Indians-White Sox game recently and, after two outs, the umpires made obviously wrong ball calls on pitches that should have been inning-ending third strikes. The White Sox went on to score four runs that inning and win the game.
In another game -- the Indians and Angels on Sept. 5, the ninth-inning 2-2 pitch looked high, but the umpire called strike three. Game over. Indians lose, 2-1. The umpire's bad call brought the game to an early ending.
The technology is here to correct this; we see it on many televised baseball games. They project a strike zone on the TV screen and show whether a pitch was in or out of the zone. Incorrect calls happen all the time.
You could have lights on the scoreboard connected to the strike zone machine that instantly show if a pitch is a ball or strike. You could also have speakers behind home plate that make different sounds for ball or strikes, so batters and catchers would know what the pitch was called.
This is not rocket science, it's pretty simple technology that is readily available for every major league ballpark. Let's make the game fair, not subject to umpires' guesses. You could even let the home plate umpire stay in the game, but they would only call "ball" or "strike" after being notified by the "machine."
Don't let home plate umpires ruin any more games. One bad call can determine a whole game, a whole series or even a whole season.
Butch Birkholtz
Liberty Twp.
YSU
Coaching staff deserves boot
Fanfare:
I see that YSU's battle plan of getting the stands to empty early is working. By the last game, probably no one will show up.
It's time to get off that horse that carries the banner "four-time national champs." It's ancient history.
It is time for a coaching staff that cannot manage a game, the clock or on-field personnel to step aside.
It's true the coaching staff does not go on the field and play. But it is their responsibility to prepare the team to do so and inspire them to win.
Case in point, Florida International. YSU was in position to win the game with the leg of the man who holds the team record for longest field goal. This kick was considerably closer with no wind, and he was not even asked if he wanted to try.
So it's time for the coaching staff to go -- either by their own decision or the university's. The decision should be done Now!
To the players on the team remember this -- when you hear the boos and jeers from the stands it is the coaching staff they are booing, not the team!!!!!!
P.S. Don't worry -- we probably will still buy our season tickets.
Chuck Savage
Streetsboro
FOOTBALL
Fitch's Kenney earns praise
Fanfare:
On Saturday morning, August 28, I was watching the rescheduled Chaney at Fitch football game. Early on in the game, there was that unpleasant sight of an injured player.
Within some 30 seconds, more or less, there were four medical people bent over the kid, probing here and there for the problem.
In a short time, the injured was in a sitting-up position and taken by cart to the ambulance.
The impressive aspect was the swiftness to attend to the injured (no offense to other schools in the valley, for they all have excellent preparations for any mishap).
The athletic director and his staff have the responsibility to have everything in place for the games -- schedules, assigning officials, the medics, etc. Almost everything except leading the band.
Northeast Ohio is the industrial center of the USA East. Add to that the national acceptance that this same area is high on the list for its excellence in high school athletics.
In this year of the Olympics, we noticed athletes pushing themselves to their limit in reaching for the gold. And so it is with athletic directors and their staff who try very hard year after year to bring home titles.
Thanks, Mr. Dick Kenney of Fitch High School, for all of your dedication and hard work. Good luck on your retirement in the near future.
Anthony E. Crish
Youngstown