Rick Reilly raises ethical dillema in youth sports

You don't know the first thing about me, and if you even paid attention to my posts on here, you'd know that I volunteer my time to coach youth sports.

And asshole parents are the number one thing wrong with them, not any of the coaches I work with.

But once again, since you don't seem interested in any of the underlying issues here, move along. I promise, I won't coach any of your kids.

 

I played Little League every year growing up. I was lucky enough most years to have my dad coach my team. More often than not, we sucked absolute ass. But we also had an absolute ball.

Dammit, that's what y'all don't seem to get. It's like it's this black and white issue and there's no in-between. We wanted to win, that's why we played. But we wanted to win those games like we wanted to win wiffle ball games in the backyard. So we could brag to our buddies on the opposing team for 15 minutes. We didn't give a shit about our record. I mean, we knew it wasn't so hot most years, but I'm betting there wasn't a kid on the team that could've given you the right numbers. The worst part, I'm betting there were very few parents in the stands who couldn't give you the right answer. Adults care about shit like that. Kids don't. That's why they have fun at their games. They want to win, but they can let it go and move on.

I'll give you a perfect example of how screwed up parents are. It was a rule in our league that no team other than the winner of the league could hand out trophies to the players. It was the dumbest shit I've ever heard of. And no one paid any attention to it. Every coach at the end of every year handed out some sort of trophies to his kids for participating -- usually some cheap glove that would hold a ball signed by the entire team.

Well, little league mom gets all pissy after the all-star selections are announced one year and her son isn't on the team. (The coaches recommended their players for all-star teams. She believed my dad didn't put her son up, because there's no way the other coaches wouldn't have voted for the future major leaguer. He did, by the way, not that it matters.) This crazy bitch comes to the post-season party and videotapes my dad handing out trophies and turns him in to the league. They boot him out. You get that? A guy who dedicated five and six nights a week of his life to help teach a group of kids the fundamentals and how to get along got BOOTED out of Little League because he handed out trophies to his players.

I'll say this, and maybe it's the reason I feel the way I do about this, my dad wouldn't have walked the star. Wouldn't even have entered his mind -- the same way it never entered his mind to not play the weaker players on our team as much as everyone else (we didn't have a rule requiring every player to get ABs), the same way he never got the idea the game was about him.

 

every dick coach at this level "volunteers" their time and are well-intentioned. doesn't mean some aren't dicks -- that's the beauty of being a dick. few can recognize it in themselves.

p.s. -- many little leagues don't even allow intentional walks. others don't ban them because the mere thought of an intentional walk never even crosses their minds. the boswell column was dead on. adults can only ruin the experience for kids. few enhance it. kids can have fun on their own. too many adults have long forgotten what fun is to a kid.

 

That you motherfuckers should have gotten him out.

But... that's where America is nowadays.

Bunch of pathetic bastards.

 

There should NEVER be an intentional walk in a league where everyone has to play and hit in a game.

 

dog --

I think you and I -- and hondo, if you can believe that -- are actually in agreement here.

I think it would be much better if the league was more kid-centric and less parent-centric. Almost every leauge would. In fact, I don't think many, if any, leagues should have playoffs before HS. Just let the kids play to play. Give the structure of practice and coaching, but don't have playoffs.

But when the league mandates a championship, and has strict rules regarding play, I don't think you can excoriate one coach for doing what he though was best for his team to win. And to be clear, he didn't break a rule or even bend a rule or find a loophole. He used a pretty common (although maybe not at that level) strategy.

He's responsible for his kids. If his pitcher gives up a homerun in that situation, he's going to feel terrible. He will feel like he, and he alone, lost the game for his team. A coach's job is to teach, to try and let the kids have fun, to instill sportsmanship and a love for the game, and to put his team in a position to win. A good coach will lay that out at the beginning of the year -- whether any emphasis will be placed on winning, or whether we're all just here to have fun. And it's perfectly fine for different teams to have different goals in the same league.

Stories like what happened to your dad are WAY more common than anyone realizes. And they are almost always the doing of overzealous parents.

I am just trying to place the blame where it belongs: On the parents who run the leagues and create situations like this, rather than on a coach who only tried to win the game. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this guy is one of the true screaming lunatics who plays all out to win at this level. But I didn't get that vibe from the story.

The bulk of the problem remains the way we set up youth sports in this country, and not whether a coach issues a free pass to the best hitter on the opposing team.

 

The question a coach needs to ask himself in those situations is if that was their son or daughter what would they want to happen.  

When I coach its my guiding principle.

 

bnc...

Your choir is right here if you need it.

Every point, right on.

 

I just thought of something (dangerous, I know) regarding this.

Forget, for a moment, that the kid was trying to fight cancer and had a shunt in his brain.

Since this 9 & 10 league has rules in place like mandatory play that suggest that this is about more than just wins and losses, there was an opportunity here to teach a life lesson that goes beyond the ones of compassion and not picking on weaklings that have already been discussed.

In life, as we all know, we often don't have the luxury of having a base open and being able to intentionally walk the proverbial slugger to face the proverbial weakling. When trouble strikes, we more often will have to confront the trouble head on. Maybe we conquer it and move on, maybe we don't. But rarely in life do we have the luxury of having an easy way out. And even if we do, that seemingly "easy" route may turn out to be harder in the long run.

 

Pube --

Just to play devil's advocate on that one (because I think you have a valid point): If they have all those other rules, why not a rule against intentional walks?

To make that judgement, we'd need to know if this was the first time one had ever occurred in that league, or whether they happened sometiems but rarely.

Frankly, seems to be a missing piece of Reilly's column.

 

We had a team from our general area traveling from Pennsylvania to Texas last week to play in the national finals. This was a team of 9- and 10-year-olds. I'm betting they didn't play in a fashion as to not bruise any feelings.