Baseball is a Kid's Game
Until the adults bring the radar guns
Norman Rockwell didn’t need a radar gun
It’s that time of year. Spring is in the air, as are the joyous whelps of babe-innocent children, discovering baseball: The thrill of a well-struck ball off the bat, the pride in a cleanly fielded grounder, the wonder of the game’s perfect geometry. . . and some coach on the bench, setting up a radar gun for 7th-graders.
Came this note Wednesday, from Mobster Paul:
On this beautiful spring evening, I ventured up to Haubner Field in White Oak to watch a 5th grade baseball game. Dads had the field in pristine shape.
So far, so pure. . .
The visiting team comes in with the latest in team bat bags, equipment, etc. I see a coach setting up what I think is a speaker for walk up music, but wait….. It’s a portable radar gun to chart pitches, both their pitchers and opposing teams! It’s 5th freaking grade. I’ve coached football, basketball and baseball at St James and our parents can be a little much sometimes, but seriously???? A radar gun for 5th grade ball?
Paul later amended his missive, but only slightly. The kids were 7th-graders, not 5th. Oh, he also added this:
I forgot to mention their pregame warmups. This guy had a Juggs machine that launched 5 fly balls in the air at the same time. And a machine that shoots small wiffle balls for batting practice. It costs each player $1,700 to play.
What, no college coaches in the bleachers behind home plate? No pro scouts, no agents lurking in the weeds? This is 7th-grade, after all.
Mobster Paul didn’t say whether any parents got tossed for screaming at a kid umpire or lambasting a coach for not starting little Billy who, after all, did spend a month in Florida grooving his swing at a sports academy.
This is a WTF moment, yeah?
Many lifetimes ago, I wrote a column about a girls softball game between two teams of 10-year-olds. Before the game was to start, several young ladies from one of the teams got too close to an underground yellowjacket nest. They were stung.
Their coach asked the other team’s skipper if the game could be canceled or at least postponed. Skip said no, tell your players to rub some dirt on it and play. Otherwise, you gotta forfeit.
Let sportsmanship ring.
My wife coached high school soccer. Every so often during the season, she’d get a call at home, from a parent of a would-be Mia Hamm, demanding to know why her little Mia wasn’t playing much.
“She was on a Select team. We sent her to camp last summer. This is going to hurt her chances to get a scholarship.’’ Youse know the sort of parent I’m talking about.
What my wife left unsaid, in the name of grace, was, “Your little Mia couldn’t make a decent cross if she had Pele’s feet. She spends most of a practice on the sideline talking to her boyfriend and, oh yeah, she’s a freshman. Maybe she’ll improve dramatically. I hope she does. Right now, the only scholarship she’d get is for speed-texting.’’
Why do parents do this? Insist on injecting Serious into what should be a fun time in a kid’s life, I mean. No 7th-grader needs their playtime invaded by a parent’s radar gun. I couldn’t verify Paul’s statement that the parents of these poor phee-noms actually did pay $1,700 for the chance to ruin their kids’ fun. If they did, here’s hoping a personal market crash is in their near future.
It’s insidious. Shrinks would suggest it’s a parent’s attempt to live vicariously through their child. No 7th-grader wants that sort of pressure. Even if he/she did, it’s up to the parents to say, “Not yet, Babe. Have fun first. Learn to love the game for the game, not for what you think it might do for you.’’
Have a catch. Without a radar gun.
“Play hard and have fun.’’ That’s what my son’s Knothole coach said. Mike Parrott was a great coach. He taught a bunch of totally impressionable 5th-graders that baseball could be rewarding and joyous and, no matter what, there would always be ice cream later. He didn’t have a pitching machine or whatever launching flyballs. I’d like to think Kelly’s current love for baseball owes in some small measure to Mr. Parrott.
Several seasons ago, I wrote a book with Johnny Bench. His dad Ted was his Little League coach. After every game, win or lose, Ted Bench told his charges, “Let’s go get a cheeseburger.’’ Nothing was so bad that it couldn’t be fixed with a burger. Existential brilliance.
We spend five or six decades Real World-ing it, if we’re lucky. Let’s not speed up that process any more than necessary, OK?
Now, then. . .
SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME why the Reds game was not played Wednesday afternoon. I’m not Steve Raleigh, but I’m pretty sure zero rain fell in downtown Cincinnati from 12:35 until after 4 o’clock. That’s ample time to get in a ballgame, especially with the zippy new rules.
It’s bad enough we close schools now when somebody decides at 5 on a Tuesday night that it might snow on Wednesday morning. Now, we’re postponing major-league baseball games because rain clouds appear in St. Louis, on the radar. Why? Riddle me that, DopplerMan.
The Cubs and the Club will make it up as part of a doubleheader in September. Unless of course there’s a hurricane forming in the southern Caribbean or a twister spotted in Oklahoma City.
Just an outstanding OG rant, big fella.
Thank you.
(USA Today)
IF YOU READ JUST ONE STORY TODAY, make it this one, from Yahoo!. It’s ostensibly about the fate of the yellow polo shirt Jack Nicklaus wore on that magical Sunday at Augusta in ‘86, but it’s actually about a lot more than that. Just one more reason the Eternal Jack remains my favorite pro athlete, ever.
As for the shirt:
The truth is that the shirt has been lost to time and spring cleaning. Neither Jack nor Barbara knows exactly what happened to the shirt. Perhaps it ended up in a landfill, or in a Columbus Goodwill donation bin. Perhaps Jack has it still, jammed deep in a closet or a drawer or a storage locker.
LIV and (DON’T) LET LIVE. LIV mercenary Harold Varner III had this to say to the Washington Post about his fellow PGA Tour defectors Wednesday:
“They’re full of s---; they’re growing their pockets, not growing the game”.
Varner has been honest that money was the reason why he jumped ship but now he has railed against the likes of Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson who have preached the LIV mantra of the circuit “growing the game”.
”I tell them all the time all of them, you didn’t come here to f------ grow the game. If you said I can't play in the majors, I’d be fine. I’ve accepted that. I was cool with it. But some of these motherf------ want their cake and eat it too. Like, dude you knew it was going to be bad. Like going against the US government. Good luck, man.”
Count on yet another non-sports controversy to cloud yet another major sports event. This time, it’s the LIV Factor at the Masters. Why are they there? How will they do? Will the Tour pros cold-shoulder them or challenge them to duels-with-9-irons in the parking lot?
IDGAF.
That’s my response. Not hard to decipher.
Props to Varner for telling it like it is. Phonies like Dustin Johnson saying their LIV membership is anything but a money grab is laughable. That doesn’t change the fact that Johnson is playing the Masters and I’m happy about that. Ditto Cam Smith, Patrick Reed, Bubba Watson et al.
How tall their cash piles rise is of absolutely no consequence to me; watching them go head to head with Tour loyalists such as Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods is.
Seems as if we can’t enjoy anything in this country now without a metaphorical asterisk attached. And now, Angel Reese is mad because Jill Biden invited Iowa’s national runner-up women’s basketball team to the White House. Good grief. Savor the moment, turn down the anger. You have nothing to be angry about. Get over yourself.
TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . After all that bloviating, we need some lovely love-angst. Art Garfunkel was very good at that, BITD. This is my favorite Artie tune. It’s also, IMO, one of the better torch songs I’ve ever heard.
Livin’ here without you.
On Second Avenue.
To quote the Ol' Lefthander, "Get outta here! Get outta here, baseball! It's gone, a home run!"
You knocked it out of the park today. Made me think of my 13-year-old son and his dalliances with organized youth sports (baseball being the next one). He played on his eighth-grade basketball team this past year -- first time playing organized basketball -- and I had to set him straight after the second game of the season. He was pouting because he felt he wasn't getting to play enough, and was riding the bench too much.
After the game, I addressed his moping, telling him bluntly that coach wouldn't play him if he was going to continue to act like a brat, his purpose of being on the team was to learn the game, have fun, support his teammates, and do the best he could when given the opportunity. Last but not least, I enlightened him on the fact that neither he, or his fellow teammates, were going to the NBA, so stop acting like it's the NBA and just have fun.
Much to my surprise, and without any prompting or direction from me, he ended up apologizing to his coach at the next practice, made the most of his time off the bench and on the floor, encouraged his teammates, and by the end of the season was even leading the team chant before the game and during timeouts.
More parents need to be like that. Honest and upfront with their kids. Not enough do, though ... they'd rather keep telling seventh-grader Billy, who can't field a grounder cleanly and is hitting .098, that he'll be playing at Yankee Stadium when he's 21. Unrealistic expectations from parents, unrealistic pressure on a kid -- it'll suck the fun out of the game real quick.
And these select teams, showing up with the latest, most expensive gear, thinking they're the reincarnation of the '75 Reds. It's ridiculous. Growing up playing ball, I can remember two, count 'em two, select youth baseball teams in the Cincinnati area -- Storm Club in White Oak, and Midland out on the east side. That was it. And you made those teams based on talent, not how much money your parents were willing to shell out.
Now, "select" means nothing. It's not based on talent or tryouts ... it's based on which parents want to fork over $2,000 a season just to be able to say their kid plays on a "select" baseball team, and for the kids to think their ?!@$ doesn't stink because they have the in-style cleats, ball bags, uniforms, caps, etc. Madness.
On a lighter note, I'm glad to hear that Haubner Field is still around. Loved playing there once or twice a season back in my youth, especially under the lights if it was a night game. It was, back in the '80s, one of the very few youth fields in the area with lights for night games, with an actual outfield wall with advertisements and all. It made you feel big-league for a couple of hours, at least, even if you knew you weren't.
Coached both my kids in grade school hoops for a total of 7 years between them. Emphasis was on having fun. Learned after one season that they key is to draft kids with fun, likable, and low key parents. I have fond memories of Friday night games that ended up with pizza at our house, wine for the adults, and 8 boys running around the basement.
My son wanted to play select. My belief was that he should play for the school team, which he did, but I promised I would find him a rec team in the Spring. He walked onto a field in Clifton at the age of 14 not knowing a soul on the team but ended up playing indoor and outdoor with those guys for the next four seasons while making some friends. It was a great experience that still makes me smile.