"DON'T FORGET, THEY'RE KIDS"

“Don’t forget they’re kids” a father yelled at a recent Little League baseball tournament. He sounded like my father because I remember him saying the same thing to my coach when I was around 11 years old and riding the bench.  Today, I received a picture of a sign that stands proudly on a fence of a Little League ball park.  It makes you think.

It was followed up with a note from my friend Beth that read “Sometimes I feel bad when I think 'drop it' when our kid put the ball in play.”  I get that, but in reality, when we see the humiliation our kids go through brought on by coaches that think the kids are winning the trophy for them… well, I believe that’s worse than "rooting in your head." Rooting in your head isn't nearly as bad. Don’t follow? Here me out…

We have always thought in our heads, “Catch it” when our team is ready to make that big play in the field, be it the Yankees, or your son’s Little League team.  We’ve thought “Drop it” in that same instance, especially if it’s possible to tack on another run.  To me, that’s baseball, and as long as there is no bad sportsmanship going on…. Well, that’s the game, that's what you do...you root.

What’s NOT the game is when a 9 year old rides the pine for 5 innings just to play the outfield in the 6th.  What’s NOT the game is telling a kid in the field that he’s gonna “get yanked out if he doesn’t learn to throw harder!” True story by the way. I heard it with my own ears from a rival town team's coach. The point is there’s a big difference.  The coach who volunteers their time is volunteering because he wants to be a teacher, a mentor. That same volunteer has no more rights to “win at all costs” for a group of 10 year old little leaguers than the parents do.  Why? Because the coach is the vehicle. The kids, the kids make that club, especially in Little League. The kids mold that club and it’s the kids that work. 

Don’t read this and think I’m clueless. I am a coach, I practice what I preach and I’ve witnessed plenty of stupid antics from rival coaches that end up in our favor.  Why you ask? Because we play the game right.  I have observed enough to formulate a perfect technique for coaching… it’s about the kids and it always was. 

My son played for the most dynamic coach he had ever had recently.  It wasn’t great, it was grand. There was good sportsmanship and a team made up of kids that knew the game, yet barely knew each other.  In the end, I had never seen such an outpouring of support, intergrity, courage and sportsmanship in my life.  And guess what, it started with the coach who set the tone. “No Bull. You know your role, you know the game and you know what good sportsmanship is… now go out and win… success is earned. “

Little League is a building block, and as the sign above says… these are kids, not adults. They're sponges.  Let them absorb the good of this great game… don’t take them down the dark road of bad sportsmanship, the pressures of failure and defeat.  Sure, you need to learn to lose before you can ever learn to win. It’s my feeling that if you feel the sting of loss 1 time, you never want to feel it again and you try harder the next time around.  Sure, it’s the hardest thing to do and the easiest thing to say, but it’s true.  We try to enforce that in my house, maybe you do in yours, but with all the posts we've done on Little League here about the disappoint of “Daddy baseball”, it's clear, those coaches have forgetten about what’s really important and who they’re teaching. 

Yeah I know, this is a Yankee fan site, but there’s always room for a life lesson… that’s what BYB does.

Think about it the next time you're at the baseball field with your kid and someone from across the way yells, “That kid sucks, strike him out!”  Remember, he’s not Albert Pujols, he’s Tommy from Orchard Street… have we forgotten?  Sure, we’re human, thinking it might be a different story… but saying it? Keep that to yourself.

Anyway, I’m ranting now, sorry about that.  You can read more about our Little League “Daddy Baseball” series below.  We’re getting some pretty interesting stories and we’ll try and bring them to you as we roll along at Bleeding Yankee Blue. Thanks for reading us! 

THERE WAS NO JOY IN MUDVILLE... BUT THERE IS NOW

TURNING "DADDY BASEBALL" UPSIDE DOWN 

RISING TO THE OCCASION

DOWN TO THE WIRE... AND DONE

YOU CAN ALWAYS DEPEND ON ICHIRO TO GIVE YOU A CHANCE

THE POWER OF A NUMBER

RUNNING DOWN A DREAM

ONE GAME AT A TIME

 

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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