I don’t feel particularly strongly about this, but it’s hard to get worked up mourning the loss of chatter. Oh my goodness, however will we have team cohesion without group (generic) taunting?
I also think we need to stop this model of thinking: “We should be shitty to kids, at least in mild doses, so that kids will learn that the world is a shitty place.” Perhaps it would be less shitty if we did more to teach kids that being shitty isn’t so great.
I don’t think most kids are troubled by “He kanna he kanna he kanna swing batter,” but I do remember being really bothered when parents of the opposing team would say things like “Okay, Johnny, this kid hasn’t gotten a hit all night” when I was coming up to bat. Now follow that up with a “he kanna swing” and you have a group of kids reinforcing the adults assessment.
It shouldn’t be particularly difficult to get kids to focus other than by taunting the opposition. Wouldn’t it be better for the real world for them to practice marshalling their attention in socially acceptable ways? How about, like focusing on what they will need to do in possible scenarios? “Where you going with the ball?” should do the trick, no?
Let’s imagine the real world benefits of this type of focusing ability: I’m feeling a little distracted in the office. Should I: a) mentally review a list of impending tasks and think about the next step I should take, or b) do something like mildly and generically taunt someone else in the office so that I can focus and feel like part of a group?
So, leave it in or exclude it, I don’t really care. But let’s just knock off the bullshit about this being any sort of a good exercise for the benefits of the kids.
So physically eject them from the game if they verbally or physically abuse someone.
IMO, the problem isn’t the taunts, it’s the few people involved in the game who don’t know the boundaries of fair play and sportsmanship. Let them taunt. Don’t let them hit or verbally abuse anyone. If they break the rules they get banned from the game. They do it again, they’re banned for good. This goes for parents, coaches, and players.
Actually that isn’t such a bad idea. I’m sure a few choruses of “you SUCK!” and “we need a flow chart, not a BLOW FART!” would disrupt anyone’s concentration as he struggled through a boring PowerPoint presentation.
Well said, mhendo. And in the kind of cricket I play, we don’t give each other lip - rather, we’ll compliment the other side on a good shot, catch or whatever. Mind you, it has to be said that sledging has been responsible for the occasional bon mot over the years.
That sounds like a good idea, but we don’t really know the entirety of the situation. If this was an isolated incident, then I agree. But it occurs to me that such a global ban would not have been placed unless the global situation was out of control.
Seriously, I was picked on as a kid too. Did it suck? Sure. Did I get over it? Yup.
I was one of the fat kids who wasn’t that good at sports when I was a kid. It really sucked until I stopped trying to be like everyone else and just did what I was good at. Did other kids make fun of me for that? Yes, sometimes but I got over it. Learning things from experience is part of growing up, even if some of the experiences aren’t pleasant, they are no less effective in teaching you how the world works. Sometimes the least pleasant experience will teach you more than a number of pleasant experiences.
BTW, I’m not picking on you tdn, I just wanted to use your line above.
I’m am pro-chatter, but I won’t say that it helps with future success in business. Kids playing baseball is not means, it’s an end. Maybe the problem is all the parents who come to the games these days. When I was young, parents took slightly more interest in Little Leage games than they did in pickup games. They might watch two or three games, and would never watch a practice. Why would they? It’s not like it’s that exciting a way to spend your weekends, and for Christ’s sake,* plenty of families had three or four little league teams to support. Maybe these parents should be home having a beer with their neighbors.
*See Humana Vitae
I have to agree, your lions comment was way out of left field. Are you suggesting that we throw kids to the lions so that we may enrich their young minds? :dubious:
The thing is, kids are going to taunt each other in any case. By institutionalizing it and adding endorsement from grownups, it makes it all the worse. What you’re then teaching kids is that it’s OK to be abused. That’s not necessarily a message I’d want my kids (if I had any) to learn.
My husband has coached Babe Ruth competive baseball for a couple of decades now; I’ll ask him what he thinks of this decision. I know that at this point his team doesn’t draft kids that are known problems, or kids with parents that are known problems; I don’t know their stand on taunting.
But the traditional “heybattaheybattaheybattaSWINGbatta” chant is not taunting or abusive. It’s about using cadence and rhythm to disrupt the timing of the batter, not about trying to taunt or humiliate him. The other kinds of chants (“pitcher’s got a rubber arm,” etc.) are closer to taunting, but even those are more about encouraging teammates not to be intimidated by a pitcher (and maybe messing with the pitcher’s confidence a little, but I think the effect is pretty negligible in that regard), not trying to bully the pitcher.
For the record, I detest bullying and wouldn’t tolerate it when I worked in public schools and after-school programs. I know it when I see it, and I would strongly advocate, nay mandate coaches stepping in when chatter crosses the line, but the traditional chatter is so generic and rote and impersonal that it’s hard for me to believe many kids really get their feelings hurt by it.
Which is true of many Pit threads. We don’t know the whole story, so we make some assumptions and then put forward an argument based on the known facts plus our assumptions. The result is that a lot of people end up talking past each other.
I agree with DtC 100% on this, but the problem is I suspect a lot of things have changed quite dramatically since when I was in LL. Is the taunting worse–more personal and more offensive? Are coaches much laxer about enforcing standards of behavior among their players? Are parents often more out of control in being poor role models and reinforcing bad sportsmanship? Was the decision made simply because every other traditional means of promoting good behavior had failed?
It would not surprise me one bit if all 4 answers were an unqualified Yes (and from what I read in the news, it sounds like they are). I remember chatter back then, but I’m afraid of what chatter would look like now on a LL field (if behavior in restaurants, stores, public transportation, etc. I witness daily from kids that age is anything to go on), so I’m not about to be sentimental about a tradition that was harmless back in “the day” (the 70s!) that no longer remotely resembles what competitive youth sports is like now.
That does not teach kids to set their own boundaries; it teaches them that boundaries will be imposed on them from an authority. I believe we should teach children self discipline, not “you are free to push the envelope until someone else pushes back”.
How does chatter teach self-discipline? By that, I mean that teaching usually involves the provision of some kind of new skill, technique, or method to accomplish something that the person isn’t already doing.
Do teams practice how to cope properly with chatter? Seems to me that most of the time, the people who cope okay with “hey batter” chatter do so because they already could, and those who don’t (if such exist), couldn’t before and can’t afterwards. If a child can’t cope with the chatter, what is typically done, do you think, to teach the child how to cope with it?
The same is probably true for the increasing levels of taunt “chatter.” Where’s the teaching?
I’ve always said that the world does just fine on its own showing people that it is full of painful shit. There’s no need to pretend that we need to do extra to get people ready for it.
I support the decision to end this kind of chatter. I was one of those shy, awkward kids who got thrown off by the heybatterbatterswing and would strike out. I could barely hit the ball anyway on a good day. Now if this was a Hollywood movie I would have found a Japanese elder who would have secretly taught me the way of baseball and I would come back to win the big game. But instead, I just quit.
As an adult you may be able to say I should have stuck it out, but kid is just a kid. And it’s not like I loved baseball so much I would go through any hardship to play. I just wanted to have some fun.
