This is our readership...*sigh*

Everyone gets ice cream!!!!!

Yay!!!!!!

 

It was also written by someone who has, apparently, forgotten all those grammar lessons they learned while in school.

I'm certainly far from perfect, but I absolutely hate poor grammar.

 

My buddy suggested this as a response:

Dear Proud Parent:

Thank you for your concern. We have decided to implement your idea and allow everyone to play the same amount of time for every game. We agree that children should learn that their lack of talent and hard work should be rewarded just as equally as their friend who puts more time into practicing and getting better. We also feel that it would be a good learning experience for your son to be on the field during an important part of the game. And when your son strikes out, or makes a costly error that ends the season, we hope that embarrassment justifies your property taxes, or travel, and costs for watching him play. And when people remember him for ending their playing careers because he was on the field when he shouldn't have been, we hope it was all worth it. Thanks for your support of our athletic programs.

 

You have a point.

Still, she is an asshat.

 

I played baseball in high school, and was a career backup. My only reaction to that? "If you get better, you'll play." I played with those guys since we were like 7 years old. We knew who the best players were. The hierarchy established itself pretty early.

I was still invested completely, and when we lost in the state tournament, I cried on the way home on the bus just like everyone else. I didn't think, "If only I'd been out there ..."

 

The person has a different idea of how the educational value of sports can be realized than I do.

I'm not going to get hysterical and call her stupid for it.

 

I think her son should play intramurals, brother.

 

Well, she does have a point (even if very poorly and murkily worded):

Any kid who is on a high school sports team who NEVER gets to play, should quit. Sports is indeed a voluntary activity, if you are getting no benefit from it, then quit.

I wrote a column once to that effect: one of the teams in our coverage area had a coach who literally never played anybody off the bench, EVER. The starters played every minute of every game, and everyone else sat. (The team became locally notorious for running out of gas late in games.)

After my column (this was in a town where people did pay attention to local sports columns), several of the kids on the bench did indeed quit, to the point they only had one or two subs left on the team. Come tournament time, sure enough, somebody fouled out, somebody got hurt, and all of a sudden Norman Dale has to put Ollie the Geek in the game. Ollie the Geek did not make the free throw to win the game, so Norman Dale of course blamed the "meddling media" for "running kids off the team."

Tough shit, Norm. Nobody was keeping you from playing those kids earlier in the season. That was your own bright idea.

 

No she doesn't. Her kid doesn't play enough, and it pisses her off, because she feels the world owes her kid playing time. That's it.

 

Well, we don't know how much her kid does play. As cited in my post above, maybe the kid never plays -- ever.

She's got a right to bitch about it, and the kid has the right to quit the team (and probably should).

If the coach has a history of never playing kids off the bench, he shouldn't be surprised if kids start quitting.

 

Of course, the kid probably played on an AAU team that cost the family thousands of dollars each season and the AAU coach, seeing those thousand-dollar checks, was only too happy to tell the mom the kid was going to be enshrined in Cooperstown someday.