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Little League is a NIGHTMARE!!!!
We have a boy on our team with ADHD. He is clearly strugglling to control himself. He has clear anger issues. He chides players on his team. He sometimes gets frustrated by called strikes by doing fun things like yelling "FUCK!"
Our boys are very good at accepting him for who he is, trying to help calm him down and keep him within the lines and boundaries of what is acceptable, and most importantly shaking it off when he says something hurtful. Our coaches, including the head coach (his dad), are more than patient and doing everythign they can to help him learn and stay in control. He clearly has a loving father. The mother is absent (I don't know the circumstances, I'm not close enough to the family for that to be any of my business) and the extended family is always there to support him, too.
All of this is background to explain why Little League is a nightmare. I have a "friend" who has a kid on one of the other teams we have played. We played them for the first time last weekend. Our boys won 16-13 because both teams were really bad in the field, but our boys made a few extra outs in the form of actual good plays. But while the two teams were playing, our difficult boy was called for looking at strike two. He yelled, "FUCK", the other team's parents audibly gasped in horror (we are all used to it by now) and Coach, the kid's dad called him out on strike two for being out of bounds with his language. He went to the bench, tried to grumble complaints, dad would hear none of it and with 2 outs we moved on to the next batter. So I ran in to my "friend" in the parking lot yesterday when our boys teams were about to play again and while I tried to exchange pleasantries and wish her little guy good luck in the game, she actually had the nerve to tell me how upset she is that we have such a "mouthy boy" on our team. "We complained to the league. I couldn't believe he wasn't forced to leave the field entirely when this happened. And the Commissioner of the league was there. He tried to talk to him and he plugged his ears and said 'la la la'. That kid is terrible!" - spoken not at all like the school teacher, Christian woman, she is.
"Well, the head coach is his dad and he was called out for that. And I have to say I know he is tough to deal with, believe me I know, but he has serious issues that make it very hard for him." - my attempt to try to convince her to not be so judgy - no such luck.
So great, she and her husband (one of the other team's coaches) clearly has it out for this poor kid because he is an evil seed who defiled their kid's fair ears with the f word. I had to leave a few minutes before the game ended. My daughter had a place to be. But while I was there, our boys were really outplaying this team and sadly we don't have an umpire at this stage in the leagues play (I don't know why not seems like a no brainer that we shoudl have one). Because of this you have to rely on the fairness of good coaches to make fair calls. Our coach M is as fair as they come (he's not our head coach) but he clearly knows the rules inside and out and he will always error on the side of trying to make our boys and his girl real baseball players. You better swing that bat if it is close to a strike because he will call you out looking every time, even if the ball drops on the plate. When you hit the ball you better run hard because while the tie goes to the runner, if he sees a tie and you weren't running as hard as you could he'll call you out anyway to teach you to run hard every time. If the other team makes a fantastic play and we are beating them by a ton, he's going to call our kid who beats the play by two steps out just to give the other team's players the satisfaction of knowing that their good play will be rewarded with an "out". These kids are little 2-4th graders. It's about learning to play, learning the rules, and progressing in your play and sportsmanship. It is NOT about winning.
Funny thing is, when you teach your kids all of these things and coach them like The Husband, Coach B and Coach M do, a funny thing happens - the kids truly do progress quickly and win games.
Yesterday, our kids who are learning how to play had to learn a very sad lesson - some teams are learning just one lesson WIN! This other team is very poorly coached. They are not called for watching strikes. In this league, the kids cannot walk. When the kids pitch, after four balls the coach takes over to pitch. If the kid watches a strike (no matter who is pitching) it is a strike. If a kid watches a ball, no penalty. But with this team, if a kid watches a perfect strike the other coach calls it a ball. I counted 8 strikes pitched to ONE batter, as he just watched them go by and a total of more than 16 pitches before he finally got a hit. The only way their kids get out is by swinging and missing or when the fielders make a play. Still, our boys and girl are fantasticly coached and they worked hard on fielding in practice this week and they were beating them anyway. While our kids struck out or got real hits and triples, their boys were essentially playing T-ball! It was horrible to watch. Then they came up down by two in the bottom of the last inning. Our kids got 2 outs that couldn't be disputed. Then a perfect fielding play was begun for out 3, the boy who fielded it turned to tag the runner, so the runner starts running outside of the baseline to avoid being tagged. Any ump in America would call him out, our coach DID call him out. The opposing coach argued he was safe. Then the league commissioner and friend of the other team yells from in the bleachers behind home plate and nowhere near in plain view of the play, "He's SAFE!"
Good on you - you got the kid you hate back, and hurt the feelings of very confused kids who played hard.
Our coaches chewed some serious little league ears off at the end of the game. While they don't care about the outcome of this game, (truly winning or losing doesn't matter at this age - not to sane adults) they just felt bad for our kids being unfairly treated, and they realize this means clearly one team has coaches who cannot be trusted to serve as their own team's umpires. Coach B was issued a clear written apology for the commissioner's inappropriate call to decide the game from an unclear vantage point. But seriously, why don't we have umps? We have refs in basketball - in a league where the kids still aren't allowed to know or keep score!
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Andromeda on -
man, that sucks. our little league isn't much better (as i commented on one of your status updates). as a mother of a kid with ADHD, i struggle with how much information to give other parents when my kid is behaving badly, as he does a LOT at t-ball (he doesn't like it at all-not fast paced enough for him). i worry about other parents judging him or my parenting abilities. (my parenting abilities less though because i know i'm doing the best i can with what i have to work with) i hate to see my son penalized for something he struggles with.
our league also struggles with the rules of the game. even our t-ball coaches don't agree on some of them. the worst part is, instead of acting like adults and talking about it, the coaches resort to yelling across the field and getting angry at the other team. i just don't get it. our coach is really upbeat and positive. it's all about the kids having fun, but last saturday the other team's coach was bitching and moaning about having to stand in the outfield while we went through our batting line-up. i just wanted to yell "GROW UP!" the game is an hour long. you're standing in the outfield for about 15 minutes 2x's. get the hell over it!
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Permalink Reply by SweetJudyB on -
They're just going to turn them into spoiled brats who can't handle losing. Guess what, that's not going to help them at all in school and beyond.
I had a great experience with little league/softball growing up. My dad used to umpire for little league, but gave it up because he couldn't handle how the parents and coaches acted. So sad.
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Permalink Reply by Diggy on -
Wow, that pretty much sucks. I'm coaching T-ball and pre T-ball (Blastball - look it up) and we have none of that. It's been great. But, maybe as kids get older the mind set changes and winning becomes more important? But I just wanted to say that it's not everywhere. I'm sure it just depends on the people who coach. And as we've all probably come to realize, people suck. No matter where you go. Sorry about this and I hope it gets better.
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Permalink Reply by wookie on -
Can't we just send kids out in the field with sticks and rocks like we used too?
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Permalink Reply by StitchyWench on -
Digggy, I totally agree that this isn't the norm. We've played against 3 other teams and none of them were like this. The other coaches all seemed to be very fair. Last year was the same story but with a different team. We had all great volunteer coaches and great players in the league but there was this one team where the parents were so insanely serious about winning that it just was not fun to play them! Here our kids were learning how to play, it was Ro's first year and these crazy parents were making kids cry with their inappropriate shouting!
We had this one cute little guy try so hard to make a play and at the very last second he dropped the ball so the other kid was safe - mind you the other team was winning something crazy like 18 to 2 - and the parents on that team cheered the safe call as if it were a grand slam. Our first base man started to cry and had to be taken out of the game because he couldn't get his head back in the game. Like seriously people - isn't it hard enough for the kid to miss the play he tried so hard to make, does he really need your ridiculous cheers? I JUST don't get it. I find myself cheering for the other team's good plays and great hits all of the time. And when a kid is visibly distraught from making a mistake (even kids not on my kid's team) I cheer them on with things like, "It's OK buddy you made a good effort!"
I mean maybe if your kid is in high school and it is a championship game - maybe then you'd be justified in inappropriate loud screams, hoots and shouts. MAYBE.
Digggy said:
Wow, that pretty much sucks. I'm coaching T-ball and pre T-ball (Blastball - look it up) and we have none of that. It's been great. But, maybe as kids get older the mind set changes and winning becomes more important? But I just wanted to say that it's not everywhere. I'm sure it just depends on the people who coach. And as we've all probably come to realize, people suck. No matter where you go. Sorry about this and I hope it gets better.
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Permalink Reply by StitchyWench on
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totally!
wookie said:
Can't we just send kids out in the field with sticks and rocks like we used too?
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Permalink Reply by Joe Mama on -
I regularly give a shout out when a player on the other team does well - I get the occasional odd look, but oh well. I really don't care if the kids win or lose as long as its not a blow-out either way. I HATE when we win by a huge margin - it doesn't teach our kids anything and just makes the other kids feel bad.
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Permalink Reply by Boring User Name on -
This makes me glad that we have individual sport genes in our family--swim and track--both of which don't have that crazy "strike zone" nonsense. But, it will be interesting to see how things have changed since we were kids.
On the other hand, I do regret that I don't know how to play a team sport. Being able to track a play around a field is a pretty cool skill that I doubt I can learn how.
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Permalink Reply by mcglory13 on -
I don't know, in my experience swim teams are full of snotty bitches. No matter how many times I told them I just wanted to practice with the team and not compete, they'd be short one person for a relay and the coaches would just sign me up. Then I would swim too slowly for the people in my relay, who would be complete asses to me (who never wanted to swim to begin with and essentially viewed it as a favor). Awful.
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Permalink Reply by Boring User Name on
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I wasn't the swimmer :-) Or the track athlete--I just passed on track genes. Generally, swim meets sound worse to me than track meets. At least in track meets, you can sit in the sun and watch the field events while waiting for the next track event. In swim meets, you are stuck breathing chlorine while waiting for the next event. Oh wait, can we tell that I have a bias?
We didn't even have a swim team--schools have to money to have an indoor pool, or access to one. (You needed an indoor pool where I lived.)
mcglory13 said:I don't know, in my experience swim teams are full of snotty bitches. No matter how many times I told them I just wanted to practice with the team and not compete, they'd be short one person for a relay and the coaches would just sign me up. Then I would swim too slowly for the people in my relay, who would be complete asses to me (who never wanted to swim to begin with and essentially viewed it as a favor). Awful.
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Permalink Reply by StitchyWench on
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Yeah, I thought genes mattered and then I had Ri. She hates all things sports, is gracefull and an amazing dancer who's wanted to do nothing but since she was 3 (she doesn't get this from anybody I know). I tried so hard to make her like basketball, because that and softball were my things growing up - she'd have none of it. I finally gave up and just supported her love of dance. Just a warning, one day, you may be taking a crash course in all things team sporty.
Daria said:This makes me glad that we have individual sport genes in our family--swim and track--both of which don't have that crazy "strike zone" nonsense. But, it will be interesting to see how things have changed since we were kids.
On the other hand, I do regret that I don't know how to play a team sport. Being able to track a play around a field is a pretty cool skill that I doubt I can learn how.
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