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You Can't Have An All-Star Game If Everybody Is An All-Star

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Armchair_QB, Jun 27, 2008.

  1. Ashy Larry

    Ashy Larry Active Member

    We're raising a generation of whiners that won't know how to deal with any type of rejection, negative feedback, etc. It's maddening.

    Also, let's make sure a helmet is worn at all times!!! Do you ever wonder why so many kids are now jumping off roofs, skateboarding down handrails and just plain doing idiotic stuff? IMO, it's because they've been wearing protective gear their entire lives and when they were younger and fell off their bike it didn't hurt......

    Getting an injury is a good life lesson, it lets you know there are consequences to going too fast or trying to a stupid trick. We now have a kids that show no regard for themselves and are completely reckless.
     
  2. Bubbler

    Bubbler Well-Known Member

    All right. You sort of had me here.

    That's when your rant went off the edge into crazy uncle territory. Entertainingly so, mind you.

    I'm in the middle. I think society has gone too far in some regards in some of the topics mentioned above, but I don't buy into this paranoic, mostly testosterone-fueled "Nation Of Pussies" line of thinking either.
     
  3. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    I feel like such a hypocrite making my kids wear helmets while riding their bikes. I never wore one until I started riding on a bike trail when I was in high school when I was going 20-30 miles at a time.

    Then again, I could also play little league and go to day care without worrying about if the teachers, coaches etc... are registered sex offenders.
     
  4. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    No, it's not that you didn't have to worry whether they were sex offenders. It's that no one ever stopped to think that they might be.
     
  5. Big Buckin' agate_monkey

    Big Buckin' agate_monkey Active Member

    If I ever get into coaching -- and that's possible when there's some little BBAMs running around -- I will NOT the words I heard last fall from a college coach. This guy's soccer team just made the NCAA quarterfinals after a player died in a house fire the day before the season was supposed to start. btw, three of the deceased teammates started the fire by pulling a prank.

    Anyways ... season is done. Best finish in program history. Coach is talking about how you define success. He talked about the counselors who talked with him and said something along the lines of, "You can win every game this season and it be the least successful season you'll ever have; or you can lose every game, and it be the most successful season you ever have if these players heal from this loss."

    After he relays that story, he looks and me and says, "You know, bbam, I have a lot of parents and youth coaches ask me, 'How do you define success?' " He tells these people: "If a baseball team of 10 year olds goes undefeated but only two or three kids return next year, is that a successful year? If that same baseball team goes winless, but every kid comes back to play next year, does that make it a successful year?"
     
  6. a_rosenthal

    a_rosenthal Guest

    You are not a unique and beautiful snowflake.
     
  7. CollegeJournalist

    CollegeJournalist Active Member

    This is bullshit.

    I played competitive baseball for fifteen years, and baseball is a game of inherent failure. And through sports, I learned that I found out a lot more about myself and others through failure than I ever did through success.

    Protecting kids is all well and good. But just as we can't make everything a contest, we can't take the contest out of what is meant to be contested. If we do, we raise a generation that doesn't know how to attain success and, more importantly, has no earthly idea how to rebound from failure.
     
  8. mike311gd

    mike311gd Active Member

    And suddenly, a new contestant has emerged.
     
  9. mike311gd

    mike311gd Active Member

    It's the only sport where you can be successful 30 percent of the time and be a Hall-of-Famer.

    Not being selected for the All-Star team at 12 hurt like heck, but I learned a lot from it. I worked harder every offseason after that and got better than most of the kids I played with down the line. It also taught me a lot about humility and being humble and staying within myself. Had I not had that failure tattooed on that summer, I don't know if I'd have ever learned that.

    And would I have been better off playing 20 more games that summer? I don't know.
     
  10. schiezainc

    schiezainc Well-Known Member

    For what it's worth, the kids probably sucked anyway.
     
  11. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    My big problem is that it seems like the Little League season is designed primarily to be a tryout for All-Star teams. Sure, there's some learning about winning and losing and sportsmanship factor, but I find it strange that kids play 10-12 games in the spring, then only a small percentage can play on an organized team in the summer.
     
  12. Sam Mills 51

    Sam Mills 51 Well-Known Member

    I can't wait to see what's next. All kids end up on base, even when they strike out or ground out?

    But I do agree that sports at this age are about having fun and learning. All-Star teams don't necessarily add much to these principles. I covered youth baseball in an area where I'm convinced All-Star teams didn't help anything and were mainly politics and loads of crap.
     
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