Those of you decrying the loss of positive chatter are mistaken. It is still allowed. Y’all are getting your panties in a bunch just because they can’t taunt the opposing team. They can still chatter all they want. God forbid the chatter should be positive, like oh, I don’t know - “All right! Let’s get a hit!” or “Nice throw”, or “Way to hustle!” Yeah, we wouldn’t want that. We’ve got to tear down kids’ self-esteem for their own good - toughen 'em up. It’s dog eat dog out there, blah, blah, blah… :rolleyes:
Seeing where we’re starting from, you’re making a leap that doesn’t exist.
Baseball is a team game, a game that involves some give-and-take between teams. Chatter is a part of baseball. “Hey, batta batta” is as much a part of the game as curveballs or the hidden ball trick.
What, do you next suggest that we ban the hidden ball trick because little Johnny Wetpants deserves to know where the ball is at all times, and what if he can’t trust the pitcher to be honest when the pitcher ACTS like he has the ball? Just THINK of his poor self-esteem when he’s humiliated byt the second baseman coming over and tagging him out! The horror!
Trickery, misdirection, and distraction are PART of baseball.
And that’s cool. And some people look at Little League as a fun sort of rec league kind of thing, where kids can be kids, and participate in a team sport without having it sanitized and bubble-wrapped.
Waaah. The kids who are “developing” toward a career are on traveling teams. Those are the kids getting up at 5AM to get practice in, to get to the next game, etc. And the parents of THOSE kids are a lot more well-behaved, because those leagues are run pretty damn tightly. The kids who are left are in Little League, and the issues there are on the parents.
And fuck this ridiculous “crucible” argument. The argument isn’t about ability to play the game. Why should a kid who’s not good enough to make a traveling team but good enough to be a ringer in LL have to ratchet it down because another kid is of lesser ability than he is? The key is to let ALL the kids play, not coddle the slowest. It’s not a JUNGLE, but your “crucible” argument is not only inapplicable, but just plain ol’ damn WRONG.
This is so passive-aggressive it’s not even funny. Baseball is a game. Score is kept. Some teams win. Some teams lose. Sometimes a kid contributes to a win. Sometimes a kid is responsible for a loss. Sometimes one of these situations is more disproportionately attributable to one kid or another kid. That’s the way it is.
You know, I am so glad you brought this up. Glad beyond words. I cannot describe my glee at one of the bubble-wrap crowd bringing up Romney Oaks.
First off, if you’re going to use a kid as your poster boy, maybe you should learn his fucking name before you exploit him.
Second off, maybe you should read a little about him. He wasn’t a “cripple.” Nice sensitive portrayal, by the way. Romney Oaks had cancer, from which he’s recovering.
Third off, Romney Oaks makes my point for me so much better than he does for you. Afterward, when asked his thoughts, he said, “I’m going to work on my batting… maybe then I’ll be the one they walk.” Romney Oaks gets it. He didn’t want to be treated differently.
I am willing to bet that Romney Oaks would call YOU a pussy. And he’d have a pretty good case.
People in this thread that support taunting are now being put in the position of defending something that has already been taken out. As such, we can look at it from a zero-baseline perspective.
If baseball already were as quiet a game as golf, would you support introducing a rule that specifically allows distracting taunts? That makes no sense to me, yet that is equivalent to what you are doing in complaining about this decision.
It’s one thing to not be arsed enough about chatter to support the changing of a rule, it’s another to support reinstating the right to be a jerk.
That’s because it isn’t integral to the game. I’ve been to several professional baseball games and watched many more on TV and I have NEVER heard the infielders start up a chorus of that “Hey, battah!” shit. Sure, there may have been the quieter, more personal, out of the earshot of the umps, insults, as tossed around by Ty Cobb, but claiming that the sort of chatter from opposing players that happens at a LL game has anything to do with high school ball, much less the pros, is untrue.
Well it’s a tad disingenuous to define only negative comments as chatter, and then decry the loss of positive chatter.
I’m curious as to how, from my comment that it’s not necessary to “toughen up” kids to prepare them for adult life, that you came away with the idea that I was saying kids who hear “batter, batter” would end up in psych wards.
I blame parents and over the top coaches for allowing it to come to this. If it wasn’t out of control, I doubt if it would have happened. Where my sister’s kids play there are always fights and arguments between the parents. I’m not sure of the terminology but they’ve hung a huge tarp on the fence behind where the kids bat to prevent parents from standing back there and screaming at their own kids as well as kids on the other team.
My son played little league 10 years ago and the amount of anger and downright hostility that you see from parents is unbelievable. Coaches too. Of course it’s going to rub off on kids. We used to have a good time watching our kids play little league. Sure they said things to each other, but they didn’t curse at them and make racial remarks. They do now. Now parents act like there are scouts in the bleachers. It’s not a fun afternoon, it’s deadly serious with some people. Most of these kids get so sick of it that by high school half of them don’t even try to play.
I don’t think anyone advanced such a notion. I only said I’m not opposed to the rule. I’m not contending that all little leagues must adopt such a rule.
I applaud you as well for standing up for what the real concern is here. None of this mamby pamby teaching life lessons bullshit for you either. I’m sure you also feel as strongly about the mercy rule, and rules against taking out the second baseman on a DP or knocking the ball loose from the catcher! Think about the generations of children being turned into simpering pussies because they weren’t able to win by 30 runs! Or the kids who never got to see the shortstop fighting back tears and holding his ribs because of a perfectly executed disruption of a double play. Why, I’m sure they’ll grow up to be interior decorators and move to San Francisco because they didn’t get to play baseball the way it was supposed to be played when you’re just not good enough for travel ball but better than the rejects you are forced to play with! I mean, if you can’t prove you are better than the cripples and retards just because a bunch of wetnurses took away your ability to yell stuff at them when they are batting, what chance do you have in the real world?
Well, I’m glad he has men around like you so he knows how to act.
You prefer aggressive agressive do you? Okay, you’re a cunt.
Dude, you’re taking that allusion waaaaaaay farther than I intended. Look, it’s not a bad thing that kids learn how to focus and deal with both cheers and jeers being slung at them when they need to. It’s not a bad thing for kids to learn how to shrug off general harassment instead of throwing a tantrum or allowing it to rattle them. It’s all part of learning basic conflict management and resolution skills: learning when to just shrug off the insults, how not to sweat the small stuff, and if someone pisses you off to just let it go and get on with the things you’ve got to do.
Like learning how to throw a decent pitch while the other team and half of your own makes farting noises to try to get you to laugh? That’s not a bad thing.
One reason the pros probably don’t engage in too much of that is that they’re too busy thinking about the game, in many instances. It’s easy to assume that fielding in baseball is about little more than standing in your position and fielding any ball that gets hit to you, but a good player will be constantly thinking about where he should be, what the next play might bring, whether the runner on first is going to steal, etc., etc.
Anyone who’s read George Will’s Men at Work knows how much intensive thought goes into playing the game well. With all the things that Cal Ripken had to think about, as described in the book, it’s not surprising that taunting the opposition was not on his to-do list.
Of course, for pros like Ripken these thought processes become so natural that he probably could, if he wanted, spend some time ranting at the opposing batters. And this is not to downplay the personal animosities and taunts that definitely play a part in pro ball.
But it seems to me that the argument against taunting in Little League is strong, whether you see the game as just kids’ fun, or as a stepping stone to the pros.
If the game is just kids’ fun, why sully it with needless taunting? And if the game is more serious, a stepping stone to bigger and better things, why not focus the kids’ energies on thinking about the game itself, on playing it properly, rather than having them waste energy on stupid insults? Even the players who make it to the Major Leagues need to concentrate every moment they’re on the field; surely this is the lesson the kids should be learning, if they want to be pros.
I’m FOR the mercy rule. You get beat, BAD, life lesson learned. Rubbing it in doesn’t do much to reinforce the lesson
You take out the second basement on a DP. You don’t spike him- that’s bad sportsmanship. But you certainly DO disrupt the play. That’s teamwork. And you DO knock the ball loose from the catcher. The catcher ought to be big- he ought to keep a firm grip on the ball. That’s part of the job description of being a catcher. Shorter kids, Ripken and Rodriguez be damned, play shortstop. Or second base. Or an outfield position.
See, what YOU don’t seem to get, Hentor, is that it isn’t all-or-nothing. You either haven’t played sports or you got taken out hard by another kid’s half-speed. or something. I honestly don’t know what. But you’re equating running over the catcher with stabbing him. You’re equating disrupting the DP with spiking the second baseman. Baseball is a contact sport. Baseball is a competitive sport. And breaking up the DP, dislodging the ball from the catcher, throwing inside- these are fundamentals of the game. On any level. Taking them away from the kids destroys the game.
And before you interpret my last sentence above as endorsing mayhem and violence, you should re-read the sentences preceding it for comprehension. Use a dictionary or perhaps “Baseball for Dummies” as a reference.
Ooooh! Look, kids! Reductio ad absurdum! Ohhh, it’s OK to cry, Johnny! Soon someone will be along to make the bad man stop doing something that was, until now, completely within the rules! But you don’t like it because it hurts your self-esteem, so of COURSE someone will be along to stop it!
I’ve never met the kid. But, it’s as plain that someone with perspective has. It’s also plain, by his attitude and his well-developed sense of competition and sportsmanship, that he’s never met you either. A plus all around.
That’s not really very aggressive either, owing to the distance factor. But it’s a start.
Wait, wait, wait. I’ve never seen the players on the field heckling. Only the spectators (which in little league is mostly comprised of the teammates who are not on the field).
Okay, lemme revised my opinion a bit. As long as it’s kept clean (no swearing, racism, personal attacks etc.) I don’t think it bad for kids to hear the nincompoops in the stands (including the players who are sitting out the inning) jabbering away like a troop of monkeys. But the kids in the field shouldn’t be getting in on the distractions and jeers, that’s just crappy sportsmanship. If you’re on the field, you should be playing ball with your head in the game.
It’s been many years, but I honestly don’t remember hearing jeers coming from the field. So, there are little league short-stops shit-talking the base runners during the inning?
This stuff I did not know. Shows what little I know about baseball.
But those are actions that directly affect the outcome of the game. And I could live with “hecan’thithecan’thithecan’thitsawiiiiing battah!” type of chatter. But if the only way your team can win is to make ad homenim attacks at specific members of the other team, including questioning the player’s race, parentage, or sexuality, well sir, you’ve yourself one dumb-ass game there. No way I’d allow my kid to participate in something like that.
Yes, I know. I did that in order to illustrate the flaw in your position. You said,
“If you can’t cope with general, eeeeeevil chatter designed to exasperate you as a player, how the hell are you going to function as an adult when you have to get your shit together and still perform at your job, when a childish slight is enough to make you want to pick up you toys and go home?”
So I concocted a ridiculous scenario in which an adult would not be able to perform at his job due to not having learned to “cope with” heckling as a child, in order to demonstrate the absurdity of your position (with a dash of hyperbole )
I think it’s a false dilemna to say that the only alternative to heckling batters in little league is to have kids who “throw a tantrum” or become “rattled”. Do you have any evidence that encouraging taunts in little league creates better-adjusted adults? I don’t think it does.
I disagree. Taunting batters has no useful purpose. To encourage it is to encourage bad manners and poor sportsmanship. That is not helpful in teaching kids how to function in adult society.
I don’t buy into the idea that “bad stuff is going to happen in life, so it’s our duty to expose kids to as much bad stuff as possible to get them ready.” That’s absurd.
Well it’s not a good thing. And it’s most certainly not a necessary part of the game of baseball.
I don’t think the heckling is a horrible thing, and I don’t contend that it’s destroying anyone’s life; I’m just opposed to the idea that it’s necessary, that it builds character in any way, or that the game of baseball would be in any way diminished by its absence.
Oh, hells yeah. There’s a long list of what’s acceptable to do and what’s not acceptable to do in the course of a game. Just as coaches ought to be teaching kids to lay down bunts, to back up the primary fielder, and to go for the lead runner, they should also be teaching a kid that it’s proper to slide hard into second BUT to keep your spikes down. Or that you lay your shoulder down into the catcher, but keep your forearms away from his face. That’s solid fundamentals.
Here, you and I have found common ground.
Here, I disagree with you, only because the one thing that I’d like to teach my kid is that nothing shuts up somebody who’s ONLY got mouth than some good old-fashioned on-field performance. BUT, always remember to “act like you done it before.”
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