Op Ed of the Week The State of Youth Sports

I had heard about this event and then read this commentary. Let me know what you think??

When youth baseball goes bad . . . really bad
PONY league coaches did unthinkable — setting up a cancer victim to fail
COMMENTARY
By Bob Cook
MSNBC contributor



Aug 11, 2006
My oldest son recently finished his first year of 9- and 10-year-old PONY league baseball, and let me tell you, some of the coaches could be real jackasses from time to time. There were guys who dropped f-bombs, guys who tried to game the rules and umpires to their advantage, and, worst of all, guys who smoked in the public parks hosting the fields even though that was expressly forbidden.

But none of these guys would ever consider pulling the stunt Bob Farley and Shaun Farr pulled in the 9- and 10-year-old Mueller Park PONY baseball league in Bountiful, Utah — ordering an intentional walk.

If the story were just about ordering an intentional walk, Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated and others outside of Bountiful wouldn’t have bothered this week to dissect Farley and Farr’s action, which took place in late June. But it so happens the weak hitter they wanted to set up for the last out of the championship game against, naturally, the Red Sox, was a 9-year-old brain cancer survivor.

Reports from the game have the fans booing, the pitcher — one of the league’s best — visibly shaken, and the child himself, Romney Oaks — who has a shunt in his head, and who, unlike major leaguers, requires human growth hormone to keep up his strength — crying almost before he got to the plate.

There was no joy in Mudville — as Oaks’ father Marlo told Keith Olbermann on his MSNBC "Countdown" program, not much joy even among the Yankees — as the not-so-mighty Romney struck out. One spectator, who happens to also be the Democratic nominee for the Utah state house seat representing the Mueller Park area, was so stunned, he took to a state party operative’s blog to thump that the free pass was a symbol of "society’s incivility."


"In the world of politics, we . . . see an increase in ‘meanness’ with an attitude of ‘winning at all costs.’ But incivility has now gone beyond politics, and it constantly surrounds us," wrote Richard Watson, who probably should not count on Farley's and Farr’s votes in November.

Presumably, Farley and Farr were trying to give a lesson on baseball strategy, not jackassery, when they ordered the intentional walk.

Instead, they imparted to these impressionable young children that there are people in the world who value winning over everything else, no matter what the cost to their souls. That adults can and will use children for the adults’ own glory, no matter how it affects the kids.

That there are reasons, beyond a lack of ability, that so many kids quit playing organized sports.

Of course, many adults who fondly remember the days before no-score-kept leagues or, like the Mueller Park league, a four-runs-per-bats limit and the requirement that every kid who suits up is part of the gamelong batting order, would side with Farley and Farr in wondering what the fuss was about. Didn’t these kids also get a valuable lesson that life isn’t fair? That argument assumes a kid diagnosed with cancer at age 4 needs more lessons on how life isn’t fair.

But say Romney Oaks didn’t have a cancer, and was just a kid who was still figuring out how to hit. Is what the coaches did so wrong? Why, yes.

Before I explain why, let me say that Farley and Farr, I’m sure, are not inherently bad people. Like some coaches I’ve seen as a youth sports parent, when it comes playoff time, even the nicest of people can choke on their whistles, thus gagging their ideals of teaching young children, and instinctively go for the win, even though at ages 9 and 10, player development is the point, not winning. I haven’t seen 9- or 10-year-olds who worry as much as any adult about winning and losing, but I do see them worry more than any adult if they feel like they’re struggling personally with their game.

Also, I’ve looked at the Mueller Park PONY league rules, and there’s nothing that bans intentional walks.


However, Farley and Farr violated two major unwritten rules of youth baseball, particularly among kids this young still discovering the sport — rules that even the f-bomb dropping, umpire-gaming, smoking-in-the-park coaches I saw seemed to follow.

First, you never intentionally set up a situation for a kid on either team to fail.

You can have players run to second or third base when the ball gets by a catcher (which happens about every seven or eight pitches). You can wave a runner home if the left fielder is slow to pick up the ball. You can strike out anyone and everyone. You can even shift fielders depending on the batter.

But these are strategies that fit in the normal flow of the game, and are expected by players, coaches and parents alike. Plus, PONY league rules require you to accept kids with disabilities (my son had a teammate with one working hand, a kid who already had the Jim Abbott-style glove switch mastered), but it doesn’t require you to give them special treatment — either to help them or hurt them.

Had the top batter just walked unintentionally, and then Romney struck out, it would have been unfortunate for him and his team, but it also would have been accepted as just part of the game. But in ordering the walk, it’s clear Farley and Farr weren’t doing things in the normal course of the game. Especially with this free pass being the first issued by any team, in the whole league, during that whole season.

Perhaps if the intentional walk were in use, their move wouldn’t have been quite so shocking, though it still would have looked very, very bad.

That’s because the second rule is you don’t intentionally walk anyone, unless you enjoy being seen as less of a man.

I don’t know about other Mustang leagues — the 9- and 10-year-old division, in PONY parlance. But the coaches in my son’s league would choose death before the dishonor of a freebie. The strike zone is, by rule, absurdly huge, in part so pitchers might hit it once a while. But the stated reason for the huge strike zone is so, much to Billy Beane’s chagrin, players will swing at the ball, rather than work for a walk.

"Be a hitter!" was the general coaching advice shouted at my serial count-working son, aspiring to be his generation’s Kevin Youkilis.

The unstated lesson being imparted is that, when the going gets tough, you don’t weasel your way out of it — you face it down. Or as Watson wrote in his blog, "In other words, pitch to the best hitter and challenge the hitter, a great sports lesson for little leaguers to learn."

Some might recall that the climax of the 1976 sports movie classic "The Bad News Bears" hinges on the coach of the Yankees telling his pitcher — to the chagrin of the pitcher, the opposing team and the fans — to intentionally walk the Bears’ best hitter to get the weaker hitter behind him. (Though even the writers of a script featuring much cruelty to children didn’t conceive of making that kid a cancer survivor.) Those Yankees, like the Mueller Park Yankees, did win the title, though that was because Kelly Leak decided to swing at ball four and got thrown out trying to stretch a gapper.

Some also might recall that when the Yankees coach came to congratulate the Bears on their finish, one player indelicately told the coach where he could stick his first-place trophy.

The Red Sox coaches did, shall we say, let the Yankees know their displeasure after the game, although there are no reports one of Romney’s teammates told Farley or Farr to put their trophy where the sun doesn’t shine. But given how Farley and Farr violated the true unwritten rules of youth baseball — and picked on the most vulnerable kid, to boot — I would suspect any coach, in any league, wouldn’t have blamed their players if they had.