My nephew’s Little League team recently faced an ethical quandary that brings up a lot of interesting questions about sportsmanship. Let’s see if I can do a fair job of outlining the situation.

My nephew Kyle was pitching, and doing a pretty good job against a strong-hitting team. The opponents included Mark, one of those early-growing 12-year-olds, who looked more my size than Kyle’s. His first time up, he stroked an impressive home run to left-center.

Mark’s second time at bat, his team had a runner at second, with first base open, so Kyle’s coach called for an intentional walk. Once the count got to 3-0, however, Mark intentionally swung and missed at the next two balls. I was a little mystified, but fortunately my softball pal, Doug, just happened to have a nephew on Mark’s team, and explained to me what was going on. Since Mark was often intentionally walked, they had instructed him to swing for a couple strikes in order to add to his opponent’s pitch count (Little League rules call for a pitcher to throw no more than 85 pitches per game).

Doug and I - baseball geeks both - conducted an email debate over this issue in the days following the game, so I will suspend our play-by-play at that full count and see if I can lay out our main points.

Me: An intentional walk to a dangerous hitter - especially with an open base - is a perfectly normal part of the game.

Kyle’s team was under no obligation to lose a game to a single strong player. Manipulating the pitch-count rule - a rule established solely for the purpose of preventing injury - is a derogation of the spirit of Little League.

Doug: Part of playing Little League is learning to deal with difficult situations - such as pitching to a strong hitter.

It’s really only the parents who get upset over losses and big-kid home runs (kids, in fact, often high-five the guy as he rounds the bases). Working the pitch count is a perfectly legal way of making an oppenent pay a small price for not pitching to their big bopper.
Being reasonable debaters, Doug and I also had some points of agreement.

The intentional walk was somewhat excused by the open base, which made it a good strategic move. (Other teams had walked Mark with the bases empty, and one coach even responded to his intentional misses by ordering a beanball!) The intentional strikes were a fairly moot point in this case, because Kyle is not our team’s ace pitcher. And we agreed that there were other, better options: pitching around the batter (the so-called intentional-unintentional walk), or even a trick play.

I recalled the 1972 World Series, when the Athletics’ Gene Tenace signaled for a full-count intentional walk, only to scoot behind the plate and receive Rollie Fingers’ strike three as the Reds’ Johnny Bench, utterly duped, just stood there.

Doug recalled a similar play against Babe Ruth that’s much too complicated to recount here.

Like many journalists, I really enjoy an irresolvable issue, and this one remained well-balanced as the game played out. With the count full, our coach decided to let Kyle pitch to Mark, instructing him to throw it low and outside. But Kyle’s pitch drifted over the plate, and Mark killed it, putting a dent in a tree overlooking the left-field fence. Later, however, Kyle spotted his pitches beautifully, and got Mark to hit a weak infield fly. So (just as Doug said) he learned a lesson. A couple of interesting postscripts: Mark’s team won by exactly the two runs he drove in on that second home run, and Kyle reached his pitch-count (and had to leave the mound) exactly one out short of a complete game.

And don’t think this kind of stuff doesn’t happen in adult play. Before a recent game, I overheard our opponents grousing about the strength of our team, questioning whether our new teammates should even be playing at such a low level (this despite the fact that three of our seven wins have been by two runs or less).

They also disapproved of the distances of the balls hit by these two, despite the fact that we play on a fenceless field where the outfielders can play as deep as they like.

The first baseman got so upset that he attempted to trip one of our players as he was running out a homer. As usual, kids are often better sports than adults.

Michael J. Vaughn is a 25-year softball veteran and author of nine novels. His most recent, the karaoke novel “Outro,” is avilable at amazon.com. See outronovel.blogspot.com for free samples.