TURNING "DADDY BASEBALL" UPSIDE DOWN

I wrote THERE WAS NO JOY IN MUDVILLE... BUT THERE IS NOW because admittedly, I had an axe to grind when it comes to Little League, again, NOT the organization as a whole, but "Daddy baseball." Coaches who don't care about the kids. Little League in towns across the country is not being run for the kids... it's being run for the coaches' kids, also known as "Daddy Baseball".  It's bologna and I vowed to make an example of them.  I asked for your help and your stories and it starts today.  This one comes from a guy named Robert Larson from Texas.  He has a story that will shock you. Read it, share it and again, to all you parents that read Bleeding Yankee Blue, if you have story that disappointed you watching your kids in Little League, I want to hear from you!  Be honest, be thorough and expose these coaches who want to run their team their own way with disregard for the kids, or for Little Leagues motto, "Character. Courage. Loyalty." This story comes from Robert...

After we moved to the "greater Arlington area" several years ago, I became very active in the local Little League by serving on its Board of Directors as well as the Director of Coaches, and also coached a team. I presented to the Board my plan to begin annual background checks for all coaches. They were thrilled and approved my plan unanimously. The plan included a provision to remove a coach if a background check came back positive for a felony conviction of any kind.  

Sure enough, the very first set of checks came back with one positive result. It was on a longtime coach who had been convicted on a drug charge and had served time in the pen.  I presented the findings to the Board and was flabbergasted when they voted to retain the guy!  Evidently, he was part of "Daddy baseball", also known as the Good Ol' Boy Network and I could not convince them to remove him, regardless of the consequences.  They put each and every player in the league at risk and I couldn't stand for that!  I resigned my position on the Board. After that, I began recruiting select players, 13 and 14 year olds and I took them to another nearby city and select league. I wanted players who would be playing at our local high school a year or two later. One of the players was the son of our high school coach and another was my youngest son.  After I formed a complete team, it didn't take long for word to get out in our small community of why I chose to take a group of our most talented kids to another city to play baseball. The high school coach was well aware of my reasons and he and I took a lot of heat for my decision, in the beginning. But when the word got out of the real reasons I had for doing such a thing, other players started leaving that league too! The league finally folded after three or four years and a new select league was formed, which still exists today. Not only that, it has entirely different Board members. And guess what?! They are using my original plan for the background checks, the way it should be.

Again, thanks Robert Larson. And if you have a story about "Daddy baseball" corruption in Little League, we want to know about it.

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