Youth sports RUTS wussification, chapter 197

All in the name of avoiding embarassment during water cooler chat.

 

Yeah, you mix parents and youth sports, and common sense gets tossed in the trash ...

 

I had this once in a T-ball league I supervised while I was in college. This role also included being the field umpire, although why the coaches just can't do it themselves in T-ball is beyond me.

The first few games, they wanted me to let the kids run the bases if they were out or not so they could learn how to run the bases.

Then they wanted me to call them out for real. And I got to tell confused little kids that they had to leave the basepath for two weeks.

Another year, I got a pitching-machine league where the coaches didn't want the infield fly rule to be enforced. Amazingly, there were not that many situations where that came up to bite them in the ass. I can only remember one situation which led to me reminding the coach, "You guys didn't want that called."

Teach them the right way in the first place. It's not that hard to do, is it?

 

Mercy rules should have no discretionary aspect whatsoever -- it shouldn't come down, as it does in some high school state associations, to both coaches having to agree, and it shoudn't depend on the winning-team coach devising an elaborate point-shaving/final margin-fixing scheme.

The mercy rule should work like this: When the score reaches a given margin, the GAME IS OVER at that point and the scoreboard is shut off. No decision or discretion by anybody.

If there is substantial time left in the game (say, more than a quarter in FB or hoops, 3 or more innings in the diamond sports) the two teams may, at the discretion of the coaches, play an additional period of untimed, unscored scrimmage activity (which gets all the bench people some PT).

If the coaches (on either side) elect not to participate in the scrimmage activity, they need to quit bitching about getting their players PT.