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.
Get out the tissues for that one by Art! He doesn't tour much anymore, but we were lucky to see him at the Ryman just a couple years ago. One of the prettiest voices ever!
Speaking from a lot (too much) experience on the club ball thing….
-folks, it is just a totally different landscape- no different than the way 99% of us now post pics of our vacation on the net versus sending a hand-written postcard from said vacation. It's just a different time.
The elite clubs like the Midland Redskins back in the day had the Griffey’s, Larkin’s, Bell's and Hyzdu’s and those clubs were truly for the guys that had a future in the game. Can’t speak for the other sports but something happened around 2008-2011 where youth baseball morphed from the kids who wanted to excel at it into just a glorified little league.
The modern day “club ball” thing mostly resembles a more expensive but well-dressed and well-equipped little league team, which a lot of the time it turns into “daddy ball”. Today’s landscape has rendered the local rec leagues as a true basic league to get your feet wet with the sport. So it’s just not the same.
-regarding the cost, it boils down to simple value. If my son’s club gave him quality professional instruction at practice and played in enough tournaments and also got enough gear you can easily rack up a $2000 per season tab. But anyone paying $250-300/month for glorified little league needs to shop around.
-last point I will make on chasing the scholarship is everyone is blinded and fixated on going D1 baseball. Didya know that there are 11.7 baseball scholarships at the D1 level so you can do that math on a roster of 35-40 players not everyone is going “full ride” through athletics. Yes, these shortages are made up through academic or need-based grants/ scholarships. But I’m always shocked at how many parents piss away all this money on youth sports without funding a basic 529 account or their own 401k along the way.