In the August 14th edition of Sports Illustrated, columnist Rick Reilly chastises a PONY League Coach for his decision, in the bottom of the last inning of a championship game, to walk the best hitter and pitch to the worst hitter instead.
The reason, he suggests, that this is makes the coaches bad people is that the worst hitter is a cancer survivor.
Personally? I’d have done the same thing. Let me tell you why.
First and foremost, this is a league that feels it necessary to keep score and have play-offs and championships. This means, to me, that it is the job of the coaches and players to win at any cost (while still being safe and playing within the rules of the game).
Second, let’s think about the decisions that got us to this point. His parents let him play in the competitive league. The league and coaches let him play, too. Not only that, but the coaches of the opposing team set up a situation that just BEGS for this sort of response. In PONY leagues at that age, every player bats. So why would you put your worst hitter, a kid that Reilly claims can barely swing a bat, behind your best hitter? That, in most situations, is an invitation to put the hitter on base. Unless, of course, you wanted to guilt-trip coaches into pitching to your star slugger. Why else would you put your best batter immediately ahead of your worst?
Third, the team got into the championship game with the kid on the team. They obviously are either good enough that he doesn’t drag them down or he’s not bad enough to create major problems. What’s more… this story is trumped up and still barely showing on the national radar. Would that be the case if the kid made the game-winning hit? Hell, he’d probably be at the Espy’s next year. He’d be a hero. Heroes aren’t made on the back of safety, they’re borne of risk and sacrifice.
Finally, part of playing sports is losing. Even in a loss, having the game on your shoulders is quite a learning experience. Yes, he struck out. His team lost. But in addition to this being a valuable time to teach the lesson that one at-bat does not lose a game, it’s also a normal part of growing up. And let’s not forget that the slugger would’ve felt no better had he struck out… he’d probably feel worse.
As if to demonstrate that what the winning team did wasn’t really all that bad, Reilly closes with the boy’s reaction to it: “‘I’m going to work on my batting,’ he told his dad. ‘Then maybe someday I’ll be the one they walk.’”
The opposing coaches that day taught the little boy a lesson that none of the pandering, everybody’s-a-winner weenies ever would: if you don’t like your spot in life, work hard and change it.
August 11th, 2006 at 9:48 am
I disagree with the coaching decision. Here’s why.
It’s a PONY league with everyone bats rules and run limitations as you say. That makes me think it’s an instructional league (as most 9 and 10 year old leagues are). This isn’t an all-star tournament or playing for the chance to be in the little league world series and play on ESPN2. The point of these games is to teach kids how to play ball. Yes they keep score and yes they give trophies, but that is because the kids are going to keep score themselves, and in life there are winners and losers.
But… there should never be an intentional walk in this league. It does not matter to me that the kid had cancer. He should be put to the same rules as everyone else if he wants to play. What matters is that each kid should be given a chance to make a play in this league. And the kid they walked… was not given that chance.
Tell me… if this is an instructional league… what instruction is being given to a kid by intentionally walking him??
This was low-down, dirty, cheap. The coaches are fully within the rules to do this. But I don’t think a 10 year old instructional baseball league should be a “win at all costs” league.
You don’t teach situational baseball in the 10 year old league. You teach kids how to run the bases, pitch, field, hit.
I don’t feel bad for the little kid at all. He struck out. Shit happens. I’m glad he’s gonna practice to be a better player. But I just don’t agree with making those kinds of coaching decisions in 10 year old baseball instructional leagues. Save that stuff for the high school leagues.
True story: I spent several years umpiring little league games back when I was in colege for extra money. The following really did happen.
When I was umpiring, I had a 10 year old baseball game. There was a time limit involved. The team that was losing was batting with 2 outs and the worst hitter up in the bottom of the inning. If that inning ended in the next two minutes, they could play another inning. He ordered the player to stand on top of the plate. Thus, when the ball crossed the plate and hit him, it would be an out, since there was a rule that if the ball struck part of your body while that body part was in the strike zone, you were out. This way, the team could get another at bat at the bottom of the next inning. I told the coach if he did that, I was going to eject him, for unsportsmanlike conduct. The kid stood there and got hit. I ejected the coach. All hell broke loose. I also called the game over because the time had run out while the coach was being ejected.
Now that’s a little different… because the kid could have gotten hurt. But it’s another example of coaches trying to outcoach each other in 10 year old ball instead of letting the kids play.
August 11th, 2006 at 11:35 am
What you disagree with, Bobby, are the rules of the game, not the coaching decisions.
Why should a Coach purposefully hinder his team? What is it about 10 year olds that make them incapable of learning situational baseball?
In fact, isn’t that just a line you’re drawing arbitrarily? Isn’t deciding whether or not to run when the ball is it “situational”? Do we just tell the kids to run all the time and torpedoes be damned?
No, we coach them that if the ball is hit in the air (and there are less than two outs) you stay put.
Intentional walks are not only something that are very common in baseball, but PONY is so large that this cannot possibly be the first intentional walk in PONY history. If it is something they don’t want the coaches or players doing, it should be against the rules.
If it’s not against the rules, especially in an established league, then the only problems I would have would be with the rulesmakers… not the coaches who are following the rules.
August 11th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
I can see both sides of this, but as Pete pointed out well, how awesome was the “victim’s” response to this? The kid beat cancer, and now it appears he fears nothing, least of all hard work. Beautiful.
August 11th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
I definetly think intentional walks should be against the rules at that age level.
Teaching a kid to stay put when the ball is in the air with less than two outs is not what I mean by situational. That is teaching the kid the skill of baserunning.
Perhaps I used the wrong word when I said situational. Deciding to intentionally walk a kid is a coaching decision. A kid not running on a fly ball hit with less than two outs is not a coaching decision… it is a baserunning skill. That is the difference. That is why I disagree with the coaching decision.
Sure… if the rules were different… this would be a moot point.
I’ve seen this situation too often in both umpiring and coaching little league. It stops being about the kids and starts being about the coaches ego. The coaches will stop at nothing to defeat the other coach. They curse at the kids when they lose, and tell them that if they don’t win, they are failures. I just strongly believe that has no place in little league baseball. That’s fine in high school ball… not 10 year old little league where the vast majority of the kids are out there to win, sure, but also to learn the game.
I know that’s a totally unrealistic thought I have… coaches are always going to do whatever it takes to win, the kids be damned. And I don’t know whether these coaches are the type that I’ve described. But it sure sounds like it.
I understand it is totally within the rules, what they did. But I think it’s unethical as hell.
August 11th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
Problem is, though, that you know nothing about this particular coach or team. You’re extrapolating from a very small sample of the nation’s young baseball players and coaches and just assuming that this coach had a “kids be damned” attitude.
Just because he makes a smart play, which is within the rules, and it happens to result in his victory doesn’t make what he did unethical. It doesn’t mean he’s “winning at all costs.”
Hell, maybe that was his first intentional walk of the year but the other teams in the league do it every day. We don’t know anything about this situation except that a) it was within the rules (which you have to agree was thought long and hard about) and b) everyone knew it was within the rules.
I don’t think there’s anything unethical about it so long as the coach stayed within the rules. And, just to cut off the counter-argument at the knees: this was not a “loophole”, declining to prohibit intentional walks was a purposeful omission by the rules makers.
But let’s think of “ethics” from another stand-point: who was harmed by the coach’s decision? Taken in aggregate… nobody. So what’s unethical about making a decision that is both within the rules and doesn’t do any net harm?
August 16th, 2006 at 12:14 am
I’m sorry, Bobby, but I disagree with you on this point. Baseball, and all sports in general, provide a forum for competition that provide chances for all of us to learn something about ourselves. Unfortunately, I believe that the type of thinking employed by you (and many others, for that matter) is responsible for the generations of pussies we are raising.
What we are teaching at these levels too often becomes, “Oh, well as long as everyone tries hard and does his best, we are all winners.” Well, as most of us know, it doesn’t always turn out this way in “real” life. Sure, effort and attitude are important, but at the end of the day the only thing that matters is what you actually accomplished and got done.
I’m sorry to say, however, that this isn’t the message we send to the younger generations. With our movements towards class sports, more divisions, participation trophies, and becoming a soccer nation, we spend more effort trying to make everyone feel “happy” and comfortable rather than alerting them to the drastic realizations that now must be discovered later in life. Wouldn’t it be better, as Pete pointed out, for kids to experience real, genuine competition in which winners and losers alike are forced to evalute themselves each and every day, learning their strengths and weaknesses and in what areas they need improvement?
When this kid chose to play baseball, he accpeted the reality that he just might fail. He might strike out in the last inning with the winning run on base. But he also might get the game winning hit. However, without being put in that situation, he never would have gotten the chance to be the hero. And what are our successes if they are not defined by our failures? How would we appreciate the competition if there were no winners and losers?
Now that this kid has been in this situation, maybe he’ll learn something from it. Like he said, he’ll work on his batting. Or maybe, someday, he’ll figure out that baseball just isn’t his sport, and he’ll pursue another path on which he will inevitably try to excel. But that’s the beauty of competition; with each failure, and with each success, we define ourselves. Not all of us are going to be major league baseball players. Most of us come to grips with that reality and find something at which we do excel, or find something that allows to be a productive member of society.
Each time we keep handicapping these experiences for our kids, we are merely pulling a mask over their eyes, hiding them from the stark realizations that make our world what it is. The sooner we teach our children how to win, how to lose, and, more importantly, how to compete, the sooner we’ll be able to make men and women of them.
Chances are, this kid has already fought with a much more formiddable foe than most of us will hopefully ever combat, and it seems he has defeated it, if only for the time being. Perhaps Rick Reilly should take a lesson from this kid; I mean, really, do you find it strange that the adult here is the one all bent out of shape by the coach’s decision? It appears the kid has already learned more about competition in his 9 or 10 years than Rick Reilly has from his incessant rambling on the last page of SI every week…