Youth baseball parents put on notice

I think it's about high school, to be honest. At least in my area, which is one of the most competitive parts of the country for baseball. And in that light, all the travel ball and private coaching and such have proved to be pretty effective. Just as you'd start taking the idea of a college scholarship seriously if your 14-year-old were showing signs, you start thinking about high school when your 11-year-old does. And it is an uncomfortable truth that early training and specialization does work. (Thank you, East Germany and China!) Right now, even for our public high school around the corner, it's pretty rare for a kid to crack the lineup if he hasn't been immersed in baseball from age 11 or 12.

I've talked about this with a lot of the parents I've known for years. Maybe they're all just lying, but all of them have said repeatedly that it's about keeping their kids on track to make the high school team.

 

They may not come out and admit it...big when I was in the biz and had the parent promoting an individual kids accomplishments it was nearly always accompanied by the subject discussed in the long term and associating it with "the need for a little pub." On the field, winning and personal excellence tied to living their lives through their kid's success or failure is more obvious. But they don't compete at those higher levels without an eye toward the long term objectives.

 

FTFY

 

Well, I think you're both right. Depending on where you are, the more immediate issue is likely to be whether your kid can make the high school team. Even in those areas where that's in question, I'm sure there are parents thinking scholarship. But if the high school situation seems more assured, then maybe the parents are louder about scholarships.

Either way, what you get are parents who are spending a lot of money because they're feeling anxious about their child's future -- a feeling that can make otherwise sane people react in ways even they would not expect.

 

First off, I have to admit I was once thrown out of a tee-ball game.

Here was what happened...we were playing a team at their place. We had one of those, "you don't keep score" leagues and the other team was keeping score. In fact, at one point a run scored on an inning-ending play and the woman on the other team's book started yelling "That run counted, that run counted!" I told her, fine, that run counted, but since we weren't keeping score, it made no difference. I was trying to make a point.
You see, all game the other team was playing like it was Game Seven of the World Series. Their six-year-olds were barrelling into my five-year-olds on the bases, knocking them to the ground, slapping tags on them harder than necessary, etc. I was getting pissed.
I mentioned to one of the umpires that their kids were being a little rough and asked him to keep an eye on it and mention it to the other coach. He responded by telling me to do my job and let him do his...which was what I was trying to do.
The next inning one of their kids drilled one of mine with his spikes. My kid was pretty small and started to cry. I left the dugout and confronted the umpire, telling him this was exactly what I was talking about. He told me to get back to my bench or he was trowing me out. I walked right over to the other coach and told him if one of his kids hurt one of my kids again I was going to beat his ass...and, of course, got thrown out. Had to pack up and leave the field.
As big of a dick as I felt like for getting tossed from a tee-ball game, I would do the same thing. Actually I probably would have pulled my kids off the field after the second one hit the dirt.
Of course, I had to go to a metting with the league commissioner. I told my side, he listened and nothing further was done. Nothing was ever done about the other coach, however, which pisses me off.

 

The league commissioner was probably the coach's wife. That shit happens a lot. Get your spouse on the board to pave the way to have your way.

 

I wasn't doubting that sports parents have scholarships on their minds absurdly early.

It's just that a "college education" isn't the point. If, instead of scholarships, the best athletes were given super-secret tattoos, then parents would be falling all over themselves to get their kids to that tattoo.

They want their kids to be awesome at sports. Money for a college education is just a way of making it seem more socially palatable to be the sports equivalent of a horrid stage parent.

 

Excellent point.

 

First -- you had an umpire for no-score tee-ball? In my kids' baseball/softball leagues, there aren't umps until the kids are 8 and up. The coaches handle it, otherwise, which goes a lot better than you'd expect.

Maybe you went a bit overboard about threatening to beat someone's ass, but I can't fault you for standing up for players' safety. To me, that's the time to talk to the official -- when things are getting out of control like that, because the coach is instructing that to happen, or merely because the kids just can't control their bodies and need a little instruction. I think the only time I talked to the ref as a coach was in a fifth- and sixth-grade basketball league where refs were instructed, wisely, not to call every ticky-tack foul, except there was one very tall girl who swung her elbows every rebound. She wasn't doing it to hurt anybody. But I asked the ref to watch for that, please, because she had dinged a couple of my players, and I also asked that he tell the coach to tell the player to watch her elbows. That sounds like a game of telephone, but I didn't want to be all confrontational in a case where the player didn't seem to know what she was doing. And for all I knew, the other coach HAD been telling her to watch out.

 

It's made very clear at many schools that if you're not in the 'feeder' club program by the time you're in about sixth grade, you have zero (0) chance to make the varsity team.

I've heard of schools where for various reasons (usually coaching disputes), kids who were STARS in cross country or football (skill positions) came out for soccer as juniors or seniors and were told flat out by the coach, "Take a hike. If you haven't been playing in our club program since sixth grade, we're not interested."

And these kids were GREAT athletes. They show up for one day of practice and they're running free 30 yards from the nearest defender.

The club coaches use this as a hammer all the way down into grade school. "Do what I tell you, or else in five years you'll have no chance to play varsity."

 

I will be the first to admit I could have handled it better...but, yes, I was trying to protect my kids. I should not have threatened the guy, but he was clearly encouraging his kids to "play hard." There is someone like that in every league.

 

Happily I'm not coaching any of my nieces/nephews while they are still in the "cookies for everyone" stage of development, but if I were, in a league where scores are officially not supposed to be kept, if any adults on the other team started making noise about the score, I would tell my kids to intentionally make sure not to get anybody out. If you get a ground ball, throw it to the base behind the runner. I would have the infielders intentionally practice the force play at second even without a runner on base. If a ball goes to the outfield, throw it in an around-the-world relay between all three outfielders. Just play catch while the baserunners keep running round and around and around.

At bat, if you hit the ball, just keep running and runnning and running. If they tag you out at second or third base, who cares.

Before every play, I would tell the team to do something on offense or defense utterly unrelated to the actual game action.

IF the other team wants to start getting huffy about the score, just horse laugh in their faces and say, "woohoo, you scored eight runs this inning!! we don't care if you score 28 runs this inning!! Got that? Score 48 the next inning for all we care!! We. Don't. Care. You 'win' this game 54-2? We. Don't. Care."