Winning is not the point of the league. Sure, each kid is encouraged to do his best to win at any point in the game—batting, pitching, catching, throwing, running—but this is a league that exists to foster participation. The coach “strategy” was the winning element here, not the kids themselves.
Actually, no. I’m well aware that the purpose of that league and countless others around the country is not to produce “baseball stars.” As for “championships,” if you mean a championship for that league, well yes, I would say that’s exactly what the championship game of that league should produce. Remember, the league expected it to be competitive – they relaxed the non-competitive rules for this game. Why?
I was part of a little league for quite a few years when I was younger. I have been around baseball since, in varying levels and capacities. I am aware that the intention of these leagues is to produce interest in the game, encourage children to learn its rules and to develop skills related to the game, as well as to encourage camaraderie, friendship and fun for all involved.
However, I’m also aware that in a game with runs, walks, hits, errors, strikeouts, and most importantly – a winner and a loser – one of the objectives is to win. If winning is not an objective, why keep score? This is not sarcasm: Why keep track of all that other stuff if all you want is to have fun? I’d say it would be a lot more fun for the kids to let them all bat until they hit it somewhere and to not keep track of scores or outs to get rid of those tense situations. If the ONLY object is to participate and have fun, that really seems like the better way to go: Who at that age wouldn’t have been upset to strike out like that with the championship game on the line?
[QUOTE=Garfield226]
Actually, no. I’m well aware that the purpose of that league and countless others around the country is not to produce “baseball stars.” As for “championships,” if you mean a championship for that league, well yes, I would say that’s exactly what the championship game of that league should produce. Remember, the league expected it to be competitive – they relaxed the non-competitive rules for this game. Why?
They increased the competitive aspect of the championship game in relation to what is was during the season. If you look at the rules, it’s still not designed to be what you would call competitive baseball. Why? To make it a little more exciting for the kids. Kinda obvious if you ask me. Do you have another answer?
Here is where we disagree. Of course, it’s one of the objectives. But you imply that determing a winner and loser is “most important”. I’d say it’s a very minor objective. The major one is to allow kids to simulate a real baseball game in a way that they all can participate. And to teach good sportsmanship. We are aware of the kids’ limitations and adjust the game accordingly. You know, it could very well have been the case that they pitch to the slugger and he gets walked. Bases loaded, up comes Romney. If this happened I’d say whatever the outcome, fine. But the shithead coach took it out of the kids hands and used coaching strategy to effect the game. And in the process he made the kid’s illness the focus of the whole game and of everyone watching. Fuck him.
Well no, that IS my answer. Upping the competitveness makes it more exciting for the kids. Adding in more of that strategy makes it more exciting for the kids (IMO). It actually depends on what rules were relaxed…I don’t think it’s been made clear.
I apologize for my poor phrasing. I did NOT mean to imply that determining a winner or a loser is the most important objective of the league, I meant that those were the most important items in that list: In determining whether or not competition is a factor in the league, whether there is a winner or loser is probably the most important in making that determination. Again, I’m sorry for not being clear there.
However, unless he had a bullhorn and said “Hey everyone, I’m pitching to the cancer kid who has a shunt in his brain because he SUCKS!!!” the coach did NOT make the kid’s illness the focus. If the coach made anything the focus, it’s that he thought the kid wasn’t as good a hitter as the slugger. The parents made the illness the focus. I’ll direct you again to the mother’s comments: “…when Romney’s cancer was in the paper…” Not “When Romney was in the paper talking about his cancer,” not “When Romney got to meet the President and it was in the paper.” That says a lot to me about the parents.
Get back to me when the coach gets liver cancer, and the transplant board passes him up for transplant for a more viable candidate.
That’d be a fucking life lesson, huh?
Well yeah, isn’t that what transplant boards are supposed to do? Fuckin’ douche.
Romney’s coach just needed to tell him to lean into a pitch. Maybe he gets away with it, maybe he doesn’t (although I can’t imagine the umpire would be crazy about enforcing the “you don’t get to take first base if you didn’t try to get out of the way of the pitch” rule). If he does, then the bases are loaded and a normal kid is up to bat, plus the opposing pitcher is a wreck for plunking the kid who had cancer, so he’s going to be serving up mushballs.
It’s a recipe for victory.
Someone always has to make the last out in the championship game. He should not have been singled out as the only person who would never be allowed to be in that situation.
Whether you admit it now or not, even a cancer patient can learn something from being really down and getting back up.
Did you not read all of the story? The kid has become more determined than ever to play good baseball. Now he wants to become the good hitter that they were afraid to hit to. He’s practicing his batting. (He hit the ground walking!)
This is just a wee reminder that some of us rather enjoy spending our lives having cunts and pussies and don’t find them disgusting at all. I find it startling that you think calling someone a cunt is worse than calling them a shithead. And you work with chldren? Aren’t you a shrink?
By the way, I don’t think that honor and honesty is reserved for people with dicks. Do you think it makes women more manly? :dubious:
I don’t often disagree with you, Hentor. But in my opinion as an educator, children at this age deserve the integrity of a game well-played. Members of both teams have a right to have their feelings and needs considered. Each child is special and has a story.
Please read post #93 if you have a moment. And I haven’t kept up with the whole thread, so if you could point me to your posts where you explain situations where it wouldn’t be sound strategy to walk the slugger, I’d appreciate it. In my experience, FWIW, there were absolutely kids on every team where it was always the best strategy to walk them (with the possible exception of walking in the winning run). They would be walked about 99% of the time, if “strategy” and “teaching the rules” were the coach’s objective.
But whatever your position, do you agree that the fact that he didn’t do this a single time the rest of the season at least weakens the argument that he did this for these reasons? Weren’t they the same rules and same strategic advantage the rest of the season as well? Why weren’t those opportunities to provide the lessons then?
Hentor, is it your contention that Romney is an automatic out, that he had no chance of connecting?
If so, you’re more of a hate-filled prick than the winning coach and all your opponents in this thread combined.
It seems to me the single most significant variable in this story is that the coach who employed this tactic did not do so at any other time that season. Not once. Lots of people seem to be dancing around this.
If this tactic was such a fundamental strategy, such an opportunity to teach the kids about rules, why didn’t he employ it at any other point in the season? Why did he do so at the one point in the season where he could ignore the unwritten rule without fear of the other coach responding in kind (assuming his strategy worked)? I’ll bet you a cup of coffee that that wasn’t the first time his team faced a situation of two outs with a man on third with a strong batter at the plate and a weaker one behind him. Why didn’t he employ that strategy at any other point? Anyone?
No, the most significant variable in this story is that some parents and media guys decided to make it into a big story.
Because at this particular game at this particular moment, the stakes were particularly high?
I have no clue about baseball, therefore I do not fully understand the outrage.
What it comes down to, correct me if I am wrong, is that the boy with cancer would have had to hit the ball at some point during the game. The other coach, decided to make the boy who was up to hit, walk to the next base, and so the boy with cancer had to hit the win-or-lose ball.
He lost.
Now, if the boy is such a terrible player that he is a liability to his team just by being there, he shouldn’t be on the team. No-one would be this torn-up if the boy was just a terrible player, rather than a sick boy who is a terrible player because of his illness.
If you’re on a team, and the other team thinks they have an advantage by playing against you, and they’re allowed to take that advantage, well, they’re going to take it- your job is to do your best and try to win for your team, their job is the same.
This is life- if the boy’s parents didn’t want him to be in a position where the fate of his team rested on his shoulders, and didn’t feel he could handle that kind of pressure, or was up to the job, he shouldn’t be on that, or any other, team.
I hear cycling and jogging are good, non-competitive activities.
Apparantly some feel the choice of strategy wasn’t, heh, cricket.
I think the whole idea of coaching your pitcher to value the intentional walk, instead of the strikeout, at the age of 10 is pretty ordinary psychology so I think the coach’s actions are pretty weak.
However we should keep an eye on this kid Jordan because as far as I read no-one has conceded any prospect that without the intentional walk Romney would have been the last out anyway. So obviously Jordan bats 1.000 and would have infallibly driven in the run.
It isn’t like he just happened to be in that position. The other coach strategized his way to that point in order to win. Do you understand this or not? I’ll say it again: If you can defend the coach’s actions, do so. What you are doing is leaving out the key issue of contention.
My supposition is that Romney probably had a great capacity for resilience prior to encountering this lowlife coach. He sounds like a great kid. I don’t believe his positive qualities experienced a just noticable difference as a result of this experience. And what did his teammates learn from it?
Nor do I. They are one of my favorite things.
That’s the thing about words. If I used ones that I made up or that carried only the meaning I attached to them, nobody would understand me. So, you may notice that I didn’t accuse him of having a cunt, I suggested that he was one. If you think hard, it doesn’t make much sense to think that I literally meant he had labia and a clitoris, and maybe some short curly hair.
Why so? Look at your reaction to it. Clearly the word conveys more ire.
Yes, but I rarely call them cunts.
No, typically a shrink refers to a psychiatrist. I’m a psychologist. Why do you ask? Do I have to put a tag line in front of all my posts that says “I am not presently acting in a professional capacity, rather I am expressing my personal opinion.” Or maybe it’s because I’m being kind of mean or driven by emotions?
No, that wouldn’t make any sense. Are you always so literal? Do you understand the phrase “Be a man about it” to mean “Have a penis and testicles”? How on earth do you comprehend it when a woman talks about doing something “ballsy”?
But, in point of fact, I wouldn’t suggest to a woman that her behavior is “unmanly” because it probably in that context wouldn’t connote “have honor, don’t pick on little people, don’t act weasely.” It has nothing to do with a belief that a woman can’t have the same qualities and everything to do with the meaning I want to convey. Talking to a woman, I would have to say the specific components of meaning that I had in mind rather than using the shorthand of an existing label.
Part of what these leagues are about is supposed to be teaching sportsmanship. I like to think that the purpose of learning to be a good sportsman is because those qualities are valuable to being a good man. And by damn it’s okay to suggest to a man that they be a good man without worrying if you are offending women.
Nor I with you. Nor do I often agree with magellan01. But here we are, and it’s kind of nice to be finding common ground with other people.
And what makes this game “well played” for a coach to employ a never used strategy of preventing one child from batting so as to improve his chances of winning? I’m as outraged for Romney’s sake as I am for his whole team. They encountered a dishonorable adult who did something nobody else did all year, or by all accounts so far, does in all of little league, to prevent them their shot at winning the game. There’s no integrity or honor in subverting the accepted practice just because it isn’t written down that you cannot.
You understood it quite well. Next: the infield fly rule!
Despite this being the pit, you doing seem to be irrational over this particular little story. You are insulting many posters in ways, you would probably never do in real life and seem strangely belligerent to anyone that disagrees with you.
So as long as you ask, why are you so passionate about this that you would call people whom merely disagree with Cunts, assholes or shitheads?
Jim
Exactly, given that “cricket” connotes doing something that was in poor form, or dickish, perhaps?. I’ve come up with many examples of things that a coach or player might do that would not necessarily be expressly forbidden in the rules, because most people are able to understand that the first rule is “Don’t be a dick.”
(Oh my god, I just realized that the SDMB hates men because they clearly detest penises! Whatever shall we men do?)
- A coach shouting things to distract the other team: dickish.
- A coach teaching his players to slide into other players: dickish.
- A guy in co-ed softball intentionally hitting to the girl in right: dickish.
People just don’t feel they have to write down everything that you shouldn’t do because it would be poor form. It’s rules lawyers and dicks and cunts who fuck things up for everyone else. Even though it be not written down, don’t be a dick.
Oftentimes we see coaches and parents behaving like complete dicks in youth sport. Most decent coaches will have a ton of anecdotes about it. Most of the time, we adults have to shake our heads and feel sad or angry about it. In this case someone wrote a story about it, and it was probably the fact that the boy has had serious medical complications that made it so. His team won’t be the first or last to have their goals subverted by a complete meanie (gosh it’s hard to convey the proper tone with “meanie” or “jerk”).
Here’s a Demotivator that is relevant to the matter.