I just want to put my opinion out there. To me personally, being benched is the worst thing that can happen to me in softball. I would rather be run ruled than to sit the bench in a game and the team wins and I don't contribute. While i do understand that people struggle and the batting lineup should be shuffled around to where people are stringing hits together and those with bad averages for the day should be sitting or hitting at the bottom of the order, that doesn't even tell the whole story. someone could be fouling out or smoking the ball but just hitting it to people. I think that if people have to pay to be in a tournament, everyone should get equal playing time, period. It's all bs anyway, the more I play competitive tournaments, the more it pushes me away. Maybe other people feel that way hence the decline of the game.
I say its bs because of what I've observed. I have never seen a coach sit themselves no matter how bad they've sucked. I've even seen one mediocre coach/player stoop so low that at every tournament, he would award himself an all tournament award while hitting like .400. Maybe I've played at too low a level but I rarely see players with multiple tools such as a bat, arm, speed, catching, tracking, and softball IQ. It's just ****ing softball and i feel that anyone with a pulse can play as long as they are getting in the games and going through situational plays. When they don't play is when their skills decline and when you need guys to come out and play in the qualifier tournaments, your "good" guys are too good to come out, so guess what, you try to reach out to the guys you've been benching all this time and by that time, you've already run them off. I've even seen guys who either place the ball really well and hit about .800 or guys who will hit a homerun each game but can't even run bases. They hit and get on and need a base runner? If I just decide to say **** it and sell all my **** and never return to a softball field again, it will be because of that crap. It's just fricken softball, most tournaments, you don't win much of nothing anyway, you're mostly playing just to get more games in and when you do get more games in, you have some guys complaining about being at the field for too long