Coaching Little League: Does Baseball Have The Most Obnoxious Coaches/Parents?

Anyone who has umpired has dealt with these vermin in their natural habitat.

They're not to be tolerated or reasoned with, at any level of competition.

 

I'm with Hondo. It doesn't matter which sport you're coaching, you have to establish early on--with the kids (particularly the young ones) and the parents--that you're in charge.

In my opinion the worst parents aren't necessarily the screamers but Joe Blow who coaches his kid from the stands during a game. Even if he/she knows what they're talking about, it sends mixed messages to not just the son/daughter but the whole team.

When I coached hockey and baseball I had a short parents meeting after the first practice and laid out the ground rules. No coaching from the stands was near the top of the list.

On the other hand, it's your responsibility as a coach to make sure that you're running practices where kids actually learn something.

True story. When my eldest started playing goal in Novice (eight years old), during the first game I was down at his end, yelling out instructions. "Keep your stick on the ice", "Watch the angle", "Smother the puck"

About halfways through the second period, just before a faceoff, Little JR, who I guess had heard enough, yelled at me from the crease, "Dad, go down to the other end of the rink".

Never shouted an instruction at him again.

 

Among baseball parents, I've noticed a HUGE difference between the crowd of parents around for league play, and the crowd of parents around for All-Star tourney play.

The latter has a far, far higher percentage of assholes.

 

Exactly.

Like Bob Cook, I have a parents meeting before the soccer season where everything is laid out in a four-page handout: rules, philosophy, things to bring to practices/games, phone numbers, etc.

At the top of the first page, right after my contact information is the following statement:

I Coach
They Play
You Cheer

Typically, this tends to get the message across and for the two years I've been a head coach, I've had a great group of parents who have been the picture of support. The lone exception was this year, when I had a dad who was upset I wouldn't play his "goal scoring machine" of a daughter at forward -- because she was slow and a better defenseman (which is the most important position on my team).

This was the same guy who asked me when I was going to teach my group of 8-9 year old girls slide tackling, then seemed bewildered when I told him I wasn't going to teach them that because at that age, they'll either get themselves taken out of the play or get themselves hurt.

Toward the end of the third quarter one game, my goalkeeper got surprised and beat on a 20-yard shot. This guy came on the field and began lecturing her about her mistake. She came off the field at the quarter in tears.

I told him that can't happen again, that NO parents are allowed on the field and ALL coaching goes through me or my assistant and that if he wants to coach, well, there's room for that next year and we'd be happy to make that happen. Then, I walked away.

This prompted a 20-minute argument after the game in which we went back and forth about his daughter and how I'm stunting her development and making the sport "not fun" anymore. He spent the rest of the season -- which ended in a regional championship -- glaring at me and keeping his distance from the rest of the parents.

Asshole.

 

You gotta find a way to get that asshole banned from the field. I'd suggest baiting him, but it doesn't seem like he needs it. Get your league director to give the guy an official warning so you can run his ass the next time.

 

Forgot one thing ... when you have that preseason meeting with the parents and tell them that you're the coach and they spectate, remind them when it came time for the league to find a coach for their kids' team, they didn't step up ... you did.

 

Really, there's no need to go asshole until someone else does it. Otherwise, the asshole is you.

 

Already did, and I didn't have to go through the league director.

I went through the division coordinator, who I happen to be sleeping with ;D. She heard our conversation and interrupted our 20-minute tete-a-tete to rip him a new one. Then, she told other members of the board about him. For the few games he attended; his wife went to most of them, he was on a short leash.

And Hondo, point taken. That's more or less brought up in those meetings.

 

Hondo, I agree with a lot of what you say, but I don't think being so confrontive works -- especially the I-stepped-up, neener-neener stuff. There are people who don't do it because they don't have the luxury of time to spare, because of work or some other situation. Or maybe they're new to the league and didn't know where and when to sign up. Just because someone decided not to coach doesn't mean you're better because you did. However, the flip side of that is the parents do need to respect that you're taking the time, just like the coach respects the parents for taking the time to get their kids out there.

At least in my experience, I've found that even the worst asshole parents are coming from a good place -- trying to do the best for their kids. So I respect that. Not that I don't think they're "helping" in the same way I "help" my wife do laundry by throwing all her delicates in the dryer. But I break the "assholes" down into these categories:

1. Parents who are new to youth sports. They'll yell instructions from time to time, but they're basically harmless. I don't confront anybody about this kind of stuff, because eventually they'll back off when their kids get older. Plus, this is usually at an age I'm so busy paying traffic cop that I don't have time to notice.

2. Parents who have a hard time letting go of controlling their kid. Often this overlaps with No. 1. Again, if they aren't being disruptive, I'm not going to say anything, even if they talk through the dugout to their kid. Hey, I'm just coaching youth sports here, not running the Lakers. As long as they aren't yelling at me or other kids, this is an issue I leave to the parents and kids to work out.

3. Parents who really feel like their kid has a chance to be a star. Many times you do find these parents coaching, usually to the detriment of your kid, whom they're ignoring to promote Freddie Futuremajorleaguer. But if they're not coaching, they're paying people plenty of money to do so, and they're yelling at you for failing their child. I look at this like George being run off the floor by Coach Dale in Hoosiers: "Look, mister, there's... two kinds of dumb, uh... guy that gets naked and runs out in the snow and barks at the moon, and, uh, guy who does the same thing in my living room. First one don't matter, the second one you're kinda forced to deal with." Except in this case I get to run off the parent. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, if a parent really thinks I'm a problem and wants to pull their kids off the team, I say, have at it. It's just better for everyone involved. This is also why (except for rec league basketball) I don't coach past about age 10. At least in basketball I know a little bit what I'm doing. I just don't know enough in other sports, and don't have the time commitment to make, to help anyone, future star or not.

4. Parents who feel like you're picking on their kid. In the rare times I've dealt with this, I've felt the looming background of twisted family dynamics that I don't want to get into. That's kinda why with the other categories I don't get any more confrontive than I have to -- I don't know, and I don't want to know, what's going on behind closed doors. They can see a therapist to work that out.

5. Parents who gossip about you, or organize against you behind your back. I'm going to guess this happens more with travel teams. Anyway, whatever the reason, if this has happened to me (and I've tried to remain as blissfully unaware as possible), I've just stayed out of it. I'm done at season's end, and we'll all go our separate ways. Life's too short. Unless it someone gets taken out on my kid. But I've never seen anything like that.

6. Finally, parents who are just plain assholes. They're loud, they're drunk, they're stupid. Fortunately, the other parents help you with these folks, because they're just as sick of them as you are.

 

"Now get back to the stands before I shave off half your mustache and shove it up your left nostril."

 

We've had these threads before, and they are always amusing.
http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/69108/

Here's another for my two cents.

My son played 13 year old park league flag football last fall - lets face it, park league flag football is about as far away from competitive athletics as you can get for 13 year olds.. yet there was a dad on the other team, who would spend the whole game moving up and down the sidelines with the line of scrimmage, barking out orders to his son. He was close to three bills of beer gut, and wasn't a coach. The kid had to be embarrassed.

As a side note, the assistant coach on our team went out of his way to compliment my kid after every game, telling him and me that he really played great out there and really had potential to be something. The coach couldn't have been further from reality - my kid was a bench player on a go-nowhere park league - but the overall positiveness from this coach was maybe best thing I've ever seen in youth sports.