Ah....the fun and frivolity of Little League Baseball......

Bottom line, it's better to work things out with a tennis mom than a little league dad.

 

Did anyone ever watch that 20/20 segment about Little League baseball, it was roughly 10 years ago, filmed in Hagerstown, MD?

The dad was in the stands, and called his kid to the fence - telling him how he was going to beat the kid's ass when they got home - over the errors the kid made - in warmups.

It was some of the most amazing footage.


I have a hard time believing that there are sports parents worse than baseball parents.

 

Huggy Jr. has been involved in baseball since he was six. I have coached him for several years and fortunately never had to deal with any asshole parents.

Triple A hockey parents in the Toronto area can give any group a run in the batshit crazy department.

 

Soccer parents can be. Summer swim team parents can be. (Although this year, the summer swim team gave the responsibility of turning in results to a parent who gets it and has been punctual all year.)

 

In our neck of the woods at least, football ones are worse. The whole sport has fallen to the trashy side of the community.

 

I've found water polo parents to be the best by default.

When my oldest started playing little league baseball a decade plus ago, I could not believe I was seeing parents just second guess and bait the refs all game. Same with soccer.

In water polo, very few parents understand the rules, and even if they do, there is no time to argue calls. Ref makes the call, and the ball is going the other way, immediately. There's no time to argue because your team is now playing defense.

If you hate hearing parents bitch about refereeing and second guessing the coach, water polo is the sport for you.

 

You know what's kind of neat about child-rearing? At some point youth sports loses its place as the end all be all of the community and group music programs (along with other endeavors) start to rise up.

I am definitely saddened that last month was my last day "one the field" as a LL coach. I really enjoyed working with the kids, and our group of parents was outstanding. My boy was not an all-star so his season ended.

As my boys now are going through their music development (sax and piano) is amazing how wonderful and beautiful the music programs are. It was so much fun to listen to music recitals and jazz concerts. Probably best thing is that there are no parents second guessing from off stage.

 

Sometimes moments line up perfectly in this life. Read on, and I hope you enjoy:

Three or four years ago, my son's LL team (12- to 13-year-olds, if I recall correctly) was in the bottom of the pack of this modest-sized league here. As is usually the case, the league featured two teams coached by "men" who'd enjoyed a number of years of putting together/coaching the best teams around town. Came time for the final league tournament, which should have been double-elimination, and Successful Coach A (SCA) was pissed because, the way the brackets were set up, his team would face only one of the bottom-feeders, while the team of Successful Coach B (SCB) would likely face two of those. Believe it or not, they came up with one path through the bracket that would actually be triple-elimination, because SCA was such a prick. They'd already had a huge brouhaha at the start of the season when they "drafted" incoming players. Per the rules, advance scouting was prohibited. SCB picked player J, and SCA went apeshit. Per him, the only reason SCB would have picked that player was by scouting him. The question hanging in the air was, "Oh yeah? So how'd you know about him?"

Anyway, my son's team wound up getting on that path in the tournament and, having lost twice, managed to put a scare into SCA's team. As in, trailing by one or two, and with multiple runners on and nobody out late in the game. Suddenly SCA managed to convince the umpires that we were past the deadline so it was time to call the game. Never mind that the umpires had been late to the game because SCA had gotten into some shitfit about some pitch-count rule in a prior game. Suddenly in my son's game the umpires, who had let the inning begin even though it technically was past the deadline, and who had done so with SCA's full agreement, pulled the plug. I didn't care about the result, but I was really pissed about the process and the message.

So, the next day my son's team coach filed a protest with the league board, and a day or two later the thumbs down to the protest went out via a mass e-mail. I'd still have done/said nothing but for a mom (of one of SCA's kids) who popped off in a very nasty reply-to-all regarding my son's coach and my son's team. I could have let that go, but I didn't, and apparently I still have it in me to write some pretty devastating stuff. I didn't hear another peep out of her, but the league's president resigned and lots of parents/coaches from across that league wrote me to thank me. Oh, and SCA's team got bounced the very next round.

By the way, I second qtlaw's observation re: music programs. My son, a cello-playing offensive lineman, went to summer school this year just so he could continue participating both in football and the orchestra.

 

Fixed.

Three Seconds!!!
Traveling!!
Offsides!!
Balk!
Take your pick.

 

Haha - absolutely.

Call 'em both ways!!!
That was a strike!!
Handball! HanndddBALLLLLL!!!!

 

i've coached the oldest heartbreaker's (13) for three years now. being in sports, i think i have the edge on them. they think, right off the bat, that i have the edge on them and know more than them. in three years, i've had trouble with two parents, one woman and one man (drunk).

the man was easier to handle, because i half threatened to kick his ass. the woman, who lived like seven miles out of town, called and started screaming at me because it was pouring rain at her house - it wasn't in town - and i was still going to have practice. i told her to stay at home and that her kid wouldn't get off the bench for four games ... it didn't rain a drop in town that day, but somehow i was the asshole in that debate ... facebook unfriending and all.

 

Actual photo from the fight: