[OT] Really [OT] Kids baseball in US and Canada

Hey, guys, sorry for the OT post. I don't initiate many such threads, hope you can be tolerant, this is the most likely group I contribute to where folks could offer decent advice.

What is the situation like in typical Little League and similar baseball leagues in the US and Canada? Do you have 9-year olds being blackballed by high level people, pressure groups of parents dictating terms to coaches (and that being tolerated by the overall management levels, with the same people on multiple levels?).. and mediocrity being awarded with loyalty and hard work penalized?

Little league is not very strong here in Ontario, but their list of rules and so on looks pretty well thought out. I don't know how well they are implemented. Presumably as America's national sport, all the possible problems have been encountered and dealt with. Or perhaps not. What's your opinion?

Unfortunately, the situation seems a lot murkier (unpleasant, vicious etc.) in C*BA/S*BA. I'm just wondering if this is a function of the level (AAA) of the sport my kid has been playing and the ambitions of parents (and thus widespread, and something I have to deal with or get out), or if it's a specific failure of the organizations in this geographic area-- where hockey and soccer more dominate the landscape.

The organizational structure of these groups is on a par with pre-war Iraq in terms of concentration of powers (and possibly some of the personality types as well).

My knowlege in this area is quite limited- I've avoided both the sports and most dysfunctional organizations.

Any comments, advice etc? Thanks, guys, this is really gnawing at me.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Reply to
Spehro Pefhany
Loading thread data ...

Hey Speff,

Next to religion, you're involved in what I personally believe to be the single enterprise in life that brings out the best in many, but absolutely the WORST in EVERYONE. Children's sports.

Bunch of years back, I did a fair bit of umpiring in the Windsor area. My son had elected to play soccer (about which I know nussing), and I thought I'd do my "bit" and help out with doing the baseball and fastball.

The stories here are legion, as they say. From BOTH those. My son's coach had to be hauled off the field by the local police, all the while screaming that the assistant coach was a "@($&^%@#*()$ TRAITOR and should be hung" because he stayed behind to coach the 10 year-old kids! And the umpiring showed me a whole different side of some people too, of both sexes, I thought were OK before. And with-out a doubt, the older the players got, the less of this crap there was. It is more of a mothering syndrome I think. Everything from the simple stuff of mother/father/other-family-member screaming in your face that their/the-other-guys kid had been called safe/out through some perceived favoritism/discrimination for/against the PARENT!!! to rage against the coach because he had set aside a certain helmet for "Little Joey/Joanie" to wear because "Little Joey/Joanie" had head-lice, and it was centering "Little Joey/Joanie" out to the other kids!!..... to having managers/coaches telling the big kid on their team to get in their and HURT the kid on the other team that was too good...... to constant arguments over kids ages and right to belong on THAT team. Make you puke.

And don't you recall the parent being charged after beating the crap out of a hockey coach a few years ago somewhere in TO?

C'est la guerre! Non, c'est la GUERRE!!

Yep, be ready, go watch some games and get your kid on the team with the nicest coach under pressure, and with the least bullies as his team-mates. One way to do that is to volunteer to help. Then we'll see how Speff does!

The little town I live in now, about 1,000 people, has at least a 20% factor of folks who won't-speak-to/hate/despise one another due to some sports politics and diplomacies (or lack of) over the years as Members of the Optimist Club different sports programs. Nobody, except the kids, recalls who won or lost the games and season, but the adults do remember the wars!!

Take care.

Brian Laws>Hey, guys, sorry for the OT post. I don't initiate many such threads,

Reply to
Brian Lawson

You are walking on dangerous ground here.

"Children's Sports" are an area in America where the psychopathology of our society/culture is most overt. The changes over the last 20 years have been profound and not for the better.

This appears to be a situation best handled with your hat - you grab it and run.

While your child will not appreciate not being allowed to participate in [over] organized sports, these involve "over achiever" parents who expect their children to serve as proxies for them in attaining the "success", they are failing to attain in their jobs. Participation will almost inevitably result in the acquisition of highly undesirable attitudes and perceptions almost guaranteed to cause problems in their adult life, as well as being a major PITA for you while they are at home.

Reply to
F. George McDuffee

Hey, Speff- how about the recent finals, in which the boys' teams' travel from BC was paid by the association, but the girls' team had to pay their own way? They both paid the same fees all year...

and I tried umping several decades ago, but didn't like the abuse from parents, especially mothers. And that was then - I can't imagine what it would be like now... / mark on Salt Spring Island BC

Reply to
Mark

I don't remember any of this cr*p from my youth (> 20 years ago) ;-)

Yes, a strategic retreat from the front, or a lateral move in search of firmer gound seems to be in order.

Bingo. That fits *exactly*. It's the folks with the dead-end jobs and no hobbies other than sucking down beers while complaining who are the immediate source of the difficulties. Along with weak and dysfunctional organizational structures ill-equipped to deal with the resulting pressures and problems in a positive way.

They're *not* doing their kids any favors, IMHO. It's the opposite of what it should be. They're raising their kids to be the office snitch or to be the guy who goes after his bosses job by discrediting him behind his back, rather than earning a promotion. I really regret helping him to get involved to the degree he is, but maybe it's important to learn some unsavory things about the world too.

Thanks for the thoughtful remarks, George. I think a consensus is emerging here.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

That was the US-based Little League. I have a feeling they're a WAY better run organization than I'm used to.

Not very fair.

Even the 13 year old kids who do it seem to have pretty thick skins. I tried it during an informal game (can't play, so I umped) and have much more respect now for the guys who do it.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

=========================== This is a major problem with the increasingly rapid societal changes. For all practical purposes, it is impossible for a parent to earn a living and stay up-to-date on items of importance to their children such as school curriculum content and "organized sports." This problem is exacerbated when the income of two parents is required, for example to save for college, with work eliminating much of the opportunity for informal information sharing and networking between neighborhood parents.

What was once a great advantage for the grandparent, may have been an equivocal advantage for the parent, and now may be an actual liability for the child.

You are to be commended for cold-bloodily looking at the facts of the current/actual situation and reaching your own conclusion. It is a solution I frequently suggest to my students and clients, but one, which unfortunately, is seldom acted on.

Reply to
F. George McDuffee

What do you think about a man (not me) being told by the top honcho in the organization that if he didn't do xxx immediately his kid would

*never* be able to play AAA ball (would be permanently blacklisted)?

In my case, my kid (who you've met, here and in Detroit, if you recall) *has* been blacklisted.

Helped, did my best to be supportive and a straight arrow, but it didn't help, just the opposite. The culture rewards backstabbing. Isn't that what these "island" reality shows are about (I don't watch much tv)?

Yow. But I can believe it! Sad, isn't it.

Thanks for the perspective, Brian. IMHO, if it's done right, the kids shouldn't remember 95% of the games/seasons but they should remember their teammates and the hotels and the fun times.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

Hey again Speff,

Yes, I do recall meeting your son (Jack??). When you first posed the question, I thought that you were referring to some-one a bit younger, so I slanted my "answer" towards a lower age group.

Of course, when any of these organizations start up, there is always a conflict at some point, and one of the outcomes is usually a second "league" forms, just as in the majors of any sport. Is that not available there in TO? I'd be very surprised if it's not. In Windsor, there were at least two, and one was called "Little Big League" as I recall. Take a tape-recorder to a meeting with the jerk. Send it to a local radio station. Or even get the TV/radio guys to show up for a human interest story. Ink-on-a-page/film-at-11 is amazing stuff!! Get a reporter to do some investigating. Do a documentary. If all else has failed, shake the gates. And of course, you could always run for office against this assh*le that would threaten such things, and have him voted out. I don't know what help you might get from "The Canadian Federation of Amateur Baseball", , but they should be the best way to go, especially if your already "blacklisted". And if you saw the article that Eddie Greenspan wrote about Dick Pound versus Lance Armstrong recently in the newspaper, he sounds heated enough to maybe help you out. Will your son be going to college/university soon? That's also a good way for him to get picked up by an MLB scout, especially if he goes to a US college. Maybe even write to the ML team that "owns" your AAA team, and explain the situation. At this point, it can't hurt.

Take care.

Brian. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Reply to
Brian Lawson

"Spehro Pefhany" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com... | Hey, guys, sorry for the OT post. I don't initiate many such threads, | hope you can be tolerant, this is the most likely group I contribute | to where folks could offer decent advice. | | What is the situation like in typical Little League and similar | baseball leagues in the US and Canada? Do you have 9-year olds being | blackballed by high level people, pressure groups of parents dictating | terms to coaches (and that being tolerated by the overall management | levels, with the same people on multiple levels?).. and mediocrity | being awarded with loyalty and hard work penalized?

Behavior that is condoned or tolerated in any way, shape, or form is essentially the same thing as encouraging it, therefore the league and the coaches are the big difference in determining whether that happens or not. I know one fellow who told me that his local league moved the bleachers to the outfield where they wouldn't be so much of an influence on the kids, and I kinda like the places (My kids play soccer, football, volleyball, basketball, and others I can't remember right now) where the parents of opposing teams wind up mixed together, and I make it a point to comment well on good sportsmanship or a good play by even the opposing team. This tends to go over really well, and I've made some good friends this way, plus it leads by example. So, the trick is to talk to the league leadership and ask how they deal with it. I really hate to see kids lose out on account of parents who can't control themselves. When I see opposing players helping each other out when hurt or other sign of great sportsmanship, that tells me that all hope is not lost. One kid, after flattening his opponent on the basketball court, knelt down and starting praying for him. Needless to say, I was impressed. I should add that my kids usually play with religiously affiliated teams, so that tends to help out a lot. Our referees have no problem calling a parent on unnecessary behavior, and are told that it is within their right to expel the parent from the game area if necessary.

Reply to
carl mciver

It ain't (or wasn't) all bad. I ran the Challenger League for three years in Texas because my oldest has cerebral palsy and is moderately retarded. Since we were not competitive, I didn't have to pay any attention to all the politics in the player draft, etc. Basically, if the child was between three and eighteen and handicapped, I made room.

I did have a few idiots that thought their handicapped kid would "do better" if we kept score. I explained as patiently as I could that I didn't care if the kids did better or not, we were there just to have fun, and they'd probably improve as a side benefit.

The league was always supportive, and after they saw us the first couple of times, started vying to get invited as helpers. I would pick one major league team at a time to help, and explain that their job was to make sure the handicapped kids got to do as much as they could, and that the major league team was to help them do it. We'd bat around until the kids were too tired. For most of them, that was two or three innings, depending on how hot it was, and how many showed up. Everybody always scored, and everybody won. We always had packed stands, and the audience had a blast rooting them on.

One mother came up to me several weeks after her son had helped. She said she had an amazing conversation with him a few days after the game. He told her that while he was helping, he began to realize that although all our kids had physical or mental problems of all types, every one of them was having a blast. "Mom, I finally figured out this game is supposed to be fun!" Man, that was a sad commentary on the rest of the program.

My middle son's team was the first to be "helpers" because his coach asked if he could help. That team must have had a similar revelation, because before they helped, they had only won one game, and after they didn't lose. Basically, they started to have fun and play ball.

It's amazing what a little perspective can do.

Pete Keillor

Reply to
Pete Keillor

Too late for your situation, but when my son was younger, we avoided all of this when we got involved in karting and then later in RC car racing. One thing I noticed was that these sports were different from Little League or soccer because there were grownups participating, so kids and grownups were equals.

I was so proud when I first saw my 9 year old telling a grown up Dell engineer why his kart wasn't handling right...

Now he has gone off to college in an automotive engineering program...

Reply to
Emmo

Love it. The kid has not shown much interest in electronic or mechanical stuff yet, but he's a little young for it yet. I think all you can do is provide opportunities and see which ones stick.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

Even in the regular leagues, I notice that an unusually large proportion of the kids have some kind of behavioral issue. In some cases (single mothers), a coach might be the most influential and continuing male presence in some years of a boy's life. If it's not fun, it's time to find something else, unless one is pursuing a BB scholarship or whatever.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.