Coach Drops Son to Second in Batting Order After 0-37 Stretch

MUNCIE, Ind.--The manager of the Muncie Mashers, a 12U travel baseball team, took the unprecedented step of dropping his son in the batting order before the team’s next game on Saturday.

The player, Jackson Gottfried, is hitless in his last 37 at-bats, a nine game stretch of futility that includes 24 strikeouts, 17 of them looking. The team has lost six of those games.

His father, Phil, 47 years old, said he sought to relieve some of the pressure on the sixth-grade shortstop by dropping him one place in the batting order, to second from leadoff.

“I’m hoping this will make him feel less anxious, and maybe he’ll get more good pitches to hit,” said Gottfried. An ancillary benefit, he said, is that it could help the team win, but that wasn’t his primary concern.

Parents of other players had starkly different ideas about the batting order.

"How about he doesn’t hit at all?” suggested Tom Gilmead.

Parent Steve Conrad was even more forthright: “He couldn’t play on a 7U team,” he said, adding that Gottfried’s defense has been shaky as well. “He’s a human unearned run.”

A group of parents approached Gottfried after the team’s last game, an 11-2 loss to the Carmel Crushers on Wednesday, and expressed concerns about his son’s performance and his prominent role on the team. Gottfried wasn’t interested in their opinions.

“If you guys want your kids higher in the batting order, coach your own team,” he said.

They declined.

Said Tony Lang: “Please just kill me.”