Humiliation isn’t such a great spur. I think it’s just as likely to cause despondency, frustration and make a kid give up. If you really want to spur a kid on what you do is force them to play and beat them every time they make an error. Works much better than humiliation. Not that I’d know, but go ask Tiger Woods.
I agree. Kids still play pick-up games around here though. However, the urge of parents to schedule activities for their children is little extreme, generally speaking.
The other team didn’t humilate the boy, they merely struck him out. If he’s humiliated, it’s his own parents and the media putting CANCER BOY FAILS!!! into the headlines across the country.
It does trip me up in my sense of justice, that is very true. However, I don’t think I’ve insulted many posters. I think I insulted posters who particularly attacked me for expressing my opinion that this was unmanly or dishonorable behavior.
In fact, I think I’ve only been antagonistic to (other than the elements of the story) Garfield226, and then only because I thought these responses:
were particularly antagonistic towards me and my opinion of the behavior of the coach in the story. In fact, if you can find examples of me being directly abrasive to anyone else in the thread, I’ll eat my hat.
Frank disagreed, Ivan-Osokin disagreed, and I was courteous and calm in responding to them. Even you suggested that you wouldn’t want me to coach your child, which I find to be particularly insulting, and I wasn’t inappropriate in my response to you.
Garfield226 has just wanted to be a sniveling little jerk in his responses about a matter that catches me up in a sense of justice, fair play, honor and not being a dick when it comes to children’s team sports.
Read the article I linked to and see if it is an “outrage” piece.
It has already been noted many times over that this behavior went against the standard practice. The umpire thought it was a dick move.
a) It links to my own experiences and beliefs, and b) it is common for us to discuss events and stories that have nothing to do with us.
Here’s a case where this guy just called me insane and/or stupid. I feel somehow that were I to respond in kind, I would be called out for being overly mean.
I read the article. Are you really so filled with your own righteousness that you just can’t conceive of another person disagreeing with you unless he simply doesn’t “understand” or have the facts?
I did not say you were personally insane or stupid, I said the behavior was, and I did not single you out. I do consider it insane for people to get so involved with the lives of strangers, to lack the emotional distance required by their actual distance, and to understand and own up to what is none of their goddamned business. It is a national insanity, though, where we feel entitled to weigh in on the custody of a child, the life or death of a severely brain damaged woman, and other deeply personal decisions of complete strangers. It’s become a kind of national pasttime, meddling in the affairs of others, preferably with a lot of indignation and moral outrage and not a lot of listening or reflection or gee, that’s none of my business. I would need a pretty persuasive argument that this behavior is intelligent and sane for me to change my position.
We should treat others as we’d want to be treated. I would mind less if someone walked a slugger to get to me, than if I were suddenly the Scapegoat of the Week for a national magazine, second-guessing some in-game decision I made coaching a youth baseball game, offering me up in sacrifice to these hordes of self-righteous new-era puritans.
The Global Village is looking more and more like Salem Village, isn’t it?
Well, I finally have an opinion on the matter.
First off, given that the coaches strategy is quite common and effective and no doubt employed often enough without criticism by the unbiased fan, it is therefore legitimate.
The very nature of competitive sports demands as close to 100% effort as a participant or a team can muster. A coach who deliberately fails to give 100% within the rules for his team will just confuse the entire objective of the kids on the team, especially those kids savvy enough to realize that their coach threw away an opportunity to help the team win. We don’t want our kids to accept the fact that throwing the game is acceptable either.
The more appropriate object for pitting would be the parents and coaches of Romney’s team. They alone have the opportunity to foster an attitude within Romney to deal with his situation. That is for his coach (and team) and parents to show respect for Romney and show acceptance for his limitations, all the while encouraging his best effort, and not blame others for his “failures”.
I’ve been where Romney was though not handicapped to his degree. But I still remember how I felt when the opposing team showed their hand by walking the batter in front of me. I was secretly elated. I didn’t care that much that I was going to be put into a position to lose an inning or game for the team. Most of all, I wanted one more chance at bat. If Romney didn’t feel the same way, I would wonder why he would want to be on the team.
:smack:
:smack:
:smack:
The glowing feeling one gets from self-righteous indignation: priceless.
Well, the first two are poor sportsmanship (the second one is arguably assault) but if you think the third is “dickish”, i.e. trying to deliberately hit the ball in a direction other than the positions of the better fielders, then you’re an idiot. If right field was occupied by a heptathlete hopeful named Sue and left had a 300lb nearsighted guy named Dave who’d taken his glove off briefly to jam more Pringles down his throat and I cared in the least about actually winning the game, you better believe I’m gonna lean right. Their team chose the positions, just as Romney’s team chose the batting order.
The trouble with your position is you’re basing it on the belief that the weaker players have to be protected, not treated equally. Your approach would protect Romney to the point of infantilzing him. Good work, asshole. Clearly cancer patients should stay out of sight, lest they be injured by the big bad world. Romney should be alowed to bat off a tee, rather than face a pitcher. If he hits the ball, the fielder who first retrieves it must count to ten before throwing to first, which he must do with his off hand and with eyes closed. Would that be fair? There’s no reason the league can’t change their rules to make this sequence mandatory, just as they could change the rules regarding intentional walks. Unless they do, all this bullshit of yours about “fair play” and “honor” is meaningless puffery. Can you give us a list of the standard baseball rules you’d like to see modified to make the game more “fair” to children, because I don’t trust your stance on “unwritten” rules that apparantly means anything that upsets you is bad. The reason I’m asking for you to actually get off your mental ass and define some rules instead of hiding behind vagueness is because I fully anticipate asking “what if” questions based on scenarios that are legal under the rules you suggest and seeing you get indignant all over again. It amuses me.
Three strikes. You’re out !
Hentor, Hentor, settle down! At this point I think it’s reached more of a discussion about whether or not intentional walking *should * be a part of league play for that age, ok?
I do have to say, though, that if the rules were quite specifically relaxed for the league championship, that indicated that in this case, a higher level of competitiveness was both expected and appropriate. So I’m sorry, I’m still having trouble seeing the opposing coach as the Great Satan here. It doesn’t matter what the ump said. The ump is used to working with the normal rules. But the normal rules are specifically relaxed for this championship game. If you have a problem with this, then that’s where the biggest problem lies - they sholdn’t relax the rules for the championship in your opinion.
In short, if the adults who decide this stuff didn’t think it was appropriate for an intentional walk to be used in this game (it’s painful, regardless of the medical state of the kid who’s then up at bat - if anything, the cancer kid can at least recognize that his cancer might have prevented his best play), they shouldn’t have relaxed that rule. It’s a little disingenuous for those same people to go back after it’s been done and say “Oh, but they weren’t expected to actually DO it!” Then why did they relax that rule?
Personally, I think that it’s legit to use intentional walks at that age, but then I have no kids and no involvement in team sports, so I do not claim any expertise here (I DO have a degree in psychology, though). I just think we’ve gone a bit overboard in trying to protect kids from things that we’ve decided might interfere with their self-esteem. Kids by the age of 9 or 10 know whether they’re good athletes or not. No false achievements engineered for them by well-meaning adults are going to change that.
That’s not fair - give him another swing.
Guys, you wanna back off a little? Hentor, iirc, is the father of a tween-aged daughter with diabetes. This hits really close to home for him. So stop making fun of him, ok? I don’t entirely agree with him, but I understand where he’s coming from.
The third one really embarrasses you. You have dismissed all girls from being good fielders in one statement.
I was not a very good player at all. I had good bat control but little power. I use to chop the ball hard at the weakest infielder on every play and always hoped for a weak armed third baseman. Of course if the right fielder happened to be a poor fielding girl, you should try to hit the ball towards her. I am a lefty and if I didn’t chop down on the ball I would hit the ball to right field. The opposing team almost always moved their good fielding left fielder to right when any lefty got up and especially me. I never complained, I learned how to hit my choppers and when allowed I perfected bunting. I took an extra base at any opportunity, as I was not a good player.
I do agree that teaching little kids to slide into other players is not correct, but I would expect High School kids to do so.
Yelling things at opposing players, I guess it depends on what is yelled. I do not know if it is automatically dickish. Generic, age-old stuff, like “we want a pitcher, not a belly itcher” would be silly but not dickish.
Jim {BTW, I played a lot of right field}
Actually, he’s an 11 year old with diabetes. But that really is beside the point. On that note, I agree with some of the criticism of the parents. I wouldn’t have made a lot of noise about my son’s condition in the context of this situation. It really is about fair play and integrity and honor for me. It reminds me of the coaches who have yelled misleading instructions to the other team, or the coaches who had the kids take extra bases when that wasn’t done, or the coaches who, in a game when kids hit off the tee if they missed four coach pitches and there weren’t usually catchers, put a kid back by the backstop to jump out and try to throw kids out at first base.
It’s just a matter of playing, in a participatory league where winning is secondary, in a way that subverts the game because you want an advantage.
At this point, I’ll have to say, like we used to say, “Let the babies have their way.” You can’t compel someone to be honorable.
My previous post was mostly about the arrogance of anybody who thinks that a cancer survivor needs to be “taught a life lesson” about how to overcome adversity.
But I’ve come to identify the problem that I really have with the situation:
You don’t change the rules of the game for the championship.
If your team gets to the championship with a certain mix of children and strategies, you deserve to be there. The league made an idiotic decision to change up the rules for the championship to encourage more competetiveness.
If the league wasn’t a competetive league, it shouldn’t be a competetive championship. Same rules as in regular-season play. Period. If you want to have a no-holds barred championship, play in a no-holds barred league.
And no, I don’t like the DH/no DH mix we get for the World Series — same thing.
Oh, come on now. I’ve played in many co-ed leagues and the best team was almost the one that had the best girls. They’re usually the weakest link. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t amazing woman players. Two girls on my team in Manhattan were kick-ass. And I have a cousin that played on some national team. But the fact remains, most girls are not as good as most guys.
Well that’s just silly. As much as the DH sucks it sounds like you are proposing have two seperate baseball champions, one from the National League and one from the American League. That’s just wrong.
To the topic at hand… eh, fuck it. Its’ all been said. The “Cancer Kid” (and his sidekick Lymphona Boy!) has a great attitude about it and I can live with that.
That’s fair, but would it keep you from trying to hit the ball to weak player?
Jim
Nope, I’m not proposing any change. I’m just saying I don’t like it.
The only redeeming factor is that the World Series is… uh… a series and the entire championship isn’t riding on a new set of rules for one team or the other. In order to win the championship, you must play the game under both sets of rules.
This game, this winner-take-all-and-let’s-change-the-rules, that’s asinine.