Parents Ruin Everything

A quick h/t to longtime friend of the blog CMJ Dad for this one... a story of Jericho Scott. That's him to the right. He's nine years old and throws too hard for Little League, so the league is going to fold his team, rather than let him pitch. No, seriously.

You see, facing some other kid's 40 mph heat when you are a beginning player is too scary for beginners. And yes, there's conspiracy theories afloat that he's being blackballed for not joining the league champions. This is a libertarian wet dream of a movie deal right here.

So the other teams, rather than, um, play and try to hit the kid, just quit. It's the safe thing to do, and much more accommodating to the long-term goal of having the kids enjoy themselves while playing ball.

The obvious knee-jerk response to this is to commence the face and head slapping (yours, then with more luck, theirs), but I'm going the other way on this. I played one year of Little League, stunk on ice, and was afraid that some kid was going to kill me pretty routinely.

The lessons that I learned from that experience were priceless, and those were that I sucked at baseball, and that it would be better for all concerned if I found something better to do with my time. (Namely, hockey, the sport for people who have no vertical leap, depth perception, or fondness for one's shins.)

Look, as a parent, I can understand the desire to shield your kids from crushing failure, but the parents for this place need to embrace the opportunity. By getting shamed and stoned at age nine, they stand to save years of Little League fees, and help to break little Chase and Aston of their unrealistic dreams early. Goodbye, private college. Hello, plumbing school. Scott's parents should farm him out as a service...