Rick Reilly raises ethical dillema in youth sports

Yeah, walking a batter intentionally in a game of 9 and 10 year olds shows the coach is the next Joe Torre. Bet the guy thought he was reaaaaaaaaaaal smart.

Sorry, they should have pitched to the kid and who knows, maybe the kid grounds out and Cancer Boy gets a hit.

Having coached kids baseball at that age group for a number of years, I think walking that kid is completely classless.

 

Sorry if this is a db, but I don't have time to read all eight pages. </footballtab>

If you can't walk the stud to get to the cancer patient, every coach is going to sign up a cancer patient to hit behind his stud. That is all.

 

Thanks for the tip, but I think I'll keep the perspective I've got.

Was the coach a punk for issuing an intentional walk? Yeah, that seems to be the consensus. That's not what this is all about, though, and you know it. If the next hitter hadn't been a cancer survivor, Rick Reilly wouldn't have beat a path to his door, and we wouldn't be eight pages into a thread about the horrors of strategy in little league baseball.

The fact is, the youth sports culture is completely out of whack in this country, and it goes both ways. On the one hand, parents and coaches have completely lost perspective when they start treating this stuff like Game 7 of the World Series. On the other, I think many folks on the other side, though well intentioned, have got it completely wrong when they start treating any sort of organized activity like recess. If that's what you want, forget about the uniforms, the practices and everything else. Just send your kids off to a sandlot, tell them to have fun and be done with it.

When you sign your kid up for a league, you're doing so with the assumption that winning and losing, success and failure, are all part of the equation. In this boy's case, you want him to feel like any other little boy, which means he gets the same opportunities as his teammates. It sounds like that's exactly what happened.

Many of the people posting here seem to have come to the foregone conclusion that this little boy was destined for failure the second he stepped up to the plate. All I can say is thank God none of you were sitting next to him during a chemo treatment. This little man is one tough cookie (as evidenced by that final quote), and I for one will be praying that he lives to fight, and swing away, another day.

 

I'm not gonna read all 9 pages of this because I'm pretty sure the point was made in the first 2.

- If the kid is gonna play, he has to take what comes with it, regardless of whether he once had cancer or HIV or Hepatitis or gout. You're in the game, you're in the game.

Therefore, this entire argument is actually about whether there should be intentional walks in kids' baseball. I'd lean toward no, but is this question really worth 9 pages of back-and-forths, debates and rebuttals? Eh, I guess an argument will take as long as it takes, but we do realize what we're actually talking about here, right?

"We're talkin' 'bout Little League!"

 

Not that this would have affected the decision itself or anything, but I wonder if those victorious "coaches" would be having any regrets about this had the cancer kid had a complication that night and had to have been put in the ICU, or worse yet died? Would they all of a sudden be feeling a pang of guilt about having such a big failure on the biggest of stages being his last memory?

 

I coached kids at that age level and similar rules for three years. We never walked anyone intentionally because when it's two out in the bottom of the last inning with a runner on third and the best hitter up, you're trying to teach your kids how to play defense if the ball is hit to them in those situations. The only way they really learn is to do it under fire. Intentional walks don't do anything to teach anyone what to do, which is our job at the 8-9-10 year old level.

We never intentionally walked anyone, never ordered our kids to bunt, and never, never ordered a kid to take a pitch unless it was 3-0 -- and even then, most of the time we let them hit away. As has been pointed out numerous times in this thread, there's plenty of time later, in high school or Legion ball, to learn strategy. At the age of 8 or 9, you're trying to teach them to hit, run, field and throw.

 

I'm pretty sure he's seen bigger stages -- and faced greater challenges -- in his young life.

 

Dog --

I'll be the one to say it.

In sports, you try to take advantage of an opponent's weaknesses. That's what strategy is all about.

If it were just about the kid being on the team, his coach should have put him in right for the first inning, hit him third, let him get his AB, and then taken him out and let him cheer on his teammates.

He's the real numbnuts here, in my opinion. Why is that kid up in this situation to begin with?

 

Are you reading what you're saying here?

They're kids. They're playing a game. They're playing a meaningless, supposed-to-be-fun, kids game.

Get him in early and let him get his AB? Are you kidding?

Let me ask you this: What do you think the kids would've done had the adults not been involved?

I bet they pitch to the star.

 

in sports high school and above, i say go for the jugular.

but high-level strategizing for 9 or 10 year olds is just mean-spirited. there's a line between telling the kids to play their hearts out and the alleged adults managing their hearts out. we've experienced both kinds of coaches, and it's an easy call.

an intentional walk in thise case is utterly deplorable bullshit and no son of mine would EVER play for thar coach again. winning is the most important thing is NOT the lesson i'm trying to teach my kids.

 

Once again, somebody gets it wrong. The main priority for a youth coach is not to win, it's to make sure the kids -- all the kids -- have fun, and to teach. If you can win in the process, that's great. This idea that we ought to apply a major-league philosophy to little league games is what has youth sports in the screwed up state that it's in today.

 

Pitch to the kid.

Here's the biggest problem with walking the kid - you are letting coaches try to win the game instead of letting kids win the game. Ask yourself this question - if the pitcher and the defensive team on the field had to make the decision, would 9 to 10 year-old kids intentionally walk him, or would the pitcher say - "I can get this guy out"

There are also flaws in strategy. What's to say the pitcher won't unintentionally walk the weaker batter? What's to say the good hitter won't

To walk the strong hitter you not only have to be an idiot, you have to be an ego maniac idiot jerk who doesn't want the kids to have fun.