Rick Reilly raises ethical dillema in youth sports

Maybe my group of friends growing up were a touch different than the rest of you. The hell did you people grow up? South Central LA?

We had fights, we had bullies. But they were few and far between. For the most part, we were decent kids. I've been around kids this age today and they still seem to be about the same. Maybe a touch more mature than we were, but still, most of them are decent kids.

And no way would we have walked the star to get to the cancer kid. Not because we had made some great moral decision, but because we just wouldn't have thought to do it. You pitch to the guy and you try to beat him. At least, that's the way we did it. Don't know about the rest of you growing up with all the bullies on every corner and kids who were out for blood instead of a good time.

 

When you won did you wave the rebel flag dog ?

 

In everybody-bats games, when the lineup may go 12-15 kids deep, coaches spread the weak hitters throughout the lineup. That way they don't have 6-7 sure outs in a row, eating up a couple innings with nothing happening. Good strategy, then, to put the worst hitter after the best, maybe in front of another good one. Wait. Strategy? By the "good guys" in this fight? Say it ain't so.

 

I'm not shifting through 14 pages of this thread, so if these questions have been answered already, I apologize.

1. Had the "star" player been intentionally walked before?

2. Were intentional walks a common sight in this league?

3. Would the coaches have intentionally walked the "star" had the average Johnny Doe been on deck rather than a scrawny cancer survivor?

If all the answers are "No", then walking the kid was chickenshit crap. I know, I know, you play to win the game like Herm Edwards says. But this is 10-year-old baseball. I mean, so many of us here rip youth coaches/parents and their win-at-all-cost attitudes. What exactly do you call this?

I think a couple things are obvious here:

1. The winning team's coaches are liars. They knew damn well the scrawny cancer survivor was just that.

2. The scrawny cancer survivor is a bigger/better person than the winning coaches. He'll get his one day, and I can only hope it's against those same asses.

 

"Hey meat walk slugger and then pitch to chemo head - put the first one high and tight, then throw some low smoke and lets get the eff outta of here"

 

Again I say this utopian "protect the kids" crap is simply bullshit.

Like it or not, it's not a safe world. Kids get run over by cars, mauled by dogs, eaten by alligators.

No, coaches and players shouldn't be part of the "run over the weak" bullshit. But you know what? That's sports.

I've been both the windshield and the bug in those situations. When you're the windshield, you don't let up. When you're the bug, you just hope not to get splattered.

But hoping for mercy is futile.

 

Really?

You think those morons would do the same thing again, playing the result?

That's not sports.

 

Even if the specific behavior is not repeated, the mentality is still there.

 

I'll answer this one Zeke. I played little league ball for a competitive team. I wasn't the best player and I wasn't the worst. Until seventh grade, everyone had to play in the field three innings and if you showed up to the game, you were in the batting order at all times.

I had a couple good coaches. Some games, I was batting leadoff. Some games, I hit last. Some games, I batted third, others 11th. The only part of the order I recall never hitting was cleanup. There was a time in fourth grade (9 and 10 year olds) when one game, Billy batted leadoff and Mike last. The next game, they switched. I never pitched, caught or played first base, but until seventh grade, I played the other six positions regularly. Second base was my favorite, and I played it with more regularity, but I spent quite a bit of time at third base and the outfield.

I remember the worst kid on that team. He batted toward the bottom of the order almost every game, but it was never exclusively last. Some games he'd bat eighth, some 13th.

Again, this was a top division my team played in. And of all the games I played in, and of all the games I saw with other teams playing each other, I saw one intentional walk. One. And it was by a team whose coach was the biggest asshole in the league, so much of an asshole that by fifth grade, this team didnt' exist because nobody wanted to play for him.

So flame away at the league I played in. We were not going to Williamsport, but quite a few guys I played with became college baseball players, and almost all of us became at least collegiate athletes. It was a damn good team and league to play in.

 

I'm sure it was. But in the same vein, don't flame at the competitive leagues that try to send their teams to Williamsport, either. It's not necessarily a bad deal for the kids.

 

Sorry if some of you asked or answered questions similar to this, but skipped a few pages and am curious:

1) How many of you who think it was OK to walk to good kid to get to the other kid have your own kids?
2) Wouldn't the team that won gained more satisfaction by pitching to the good kid and getting him out?

This whole deal makes me ill. The only lessons the kids in the field learned that day, if they learned anything, were that it's OK to win at any cost and that it's better to take the easy way out than to face the challenges in front of you.

I just spent a summer helping coach a T-ball team. No score was kept in the games. No standings. Innings were over after the team at-bat scored six runs or made three outs. Yet there were still opposing coaches stacking their fielders around second base because that's where the majority of balls are hit in T-ball and teaching the pitcher to field the ball and sprint home for the force out. What's the point of that? To win when no score is being kept? It's a joke.

 

Bravo Sierra. How many people in life choose the toughest path, then stroll down it merrily?

Not too damn many.