The Little League

Take me back to a time 35 or so years ago.. Take me back to a dry and dusty field with too much dirt and not enough grass. Take me to the neighborhood sand lot, the field where the zoning ordanance sign stood for what seems like forever in my child like mind. Take me back to a hot summer day and 6 or 7 kids, mitts and bats and only 2 tattered baseballs. Take me back to the time before little league became whatever the hell it is today. Before baseball became tainted with Steriods and HGH and liars.. Take me back to the glory days when our childhood heros dove in the dirt to make an impossible catch and magically arose to make a double play. My childhood hero was Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer, Boog Powell, Mark Belanger, Al Bumbry, Elrod Hendricks, Frank Robinson. The boys of summer, the hungry guys who worked hard and made it look easy. The salaries were small and so were the egos. We saw amazing plays based on drive and passion and skill, Not hormones and steroids. Personally ( and this deserves a whole other page) I don't feel any player today who breaks a record and is on any performance enhancing drug should get the record.. Plain and simple, Cheatng is cheating, we never learned to put up with it , Pete Rose gambled on Baseball and one of the legends of the games was thrown out! But today a loser like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens can easily lie and be handed the keys to a city.. No, they don't deserve it, and neither do we. We deserve a better caliper of player. When I take my boys to a ball game.. I expect to see some real players. .heart and soul players.. No we don't deserve to have to pay their salaries and stroke their egos by building them bigger and fancier stadiums.. I would be completely content to have spent the rest of my days sitting in Memorial Stadium or the old Yankee Stadium..
So back to the point of my story. We get much we don't deserve today and alot of wrong is going on in our world, but it needs to stop when it comes to baseball. As a child who loves baseball, you hit 13 or 14 and become disillusioned by the local little league in your community when you find out and realize that you were not picked for the select team. .The select team is basically hand picked ball players all of whom are excellent and they get to have the best coaching the best equiptment, Sure sounds great and It is for a few of them. But what about the rest of the boys in the town? What about the boy who just wants a good honest game of baseball, what about the boy whos fire burns inside to play the all american game? He is not good enough for the "Select Team" so his evaluation really does not matter, he is sent into the hat of kids to be picked from. the kids who are not good enough according to 5 people.. So these boys who need good decent coaching and are deserving of it because although they don't play as well as the "Select" boys, they have just as much passion if not more. See the "Select" boys often only have a few guys on the team that really want to be on the high stress team. Most of them just want to play a decent fair game of baseball and it is not all about winning until some power hungry men decide to live their crushed dreams vicariously through the unsuspecting victims whom they are now coaching. The boys of summer who fall through the cracks and are stuck on a team with a coach who is only coaching because no one else would step up and do it. .and of course you gotta give the man credit for stepping up where there is a need. He sacrifices dinners at home at a reasonable hour, his family picks up the slack at home for his hours on the field babysitting someone elses kids. But he is not coaching, he is taking up space like a bad day care provider, Instilling nothing but silence on the boys who just want to play ball. He is not coaching them. .He is tired and in his mind they should know the basics by now, but the reality is , even in the big leagues there is coaching going on. There is someone shouting direction for the field. there is someone keeping a watchful eye on pitching and stealing etc..
When all the good players get picked for the select team, they also tend to have the good coaches, the involved baseball loving dads .. so not only are all the good players on one team, all the good coaches are now sitting watching games instead of passingon their knowledge and wisdom to young men who deserve to have that opportunity just as much if not more. How do we stop this.? Baseball the game is such a metaphor for life. Valuable lessons in teamwork and good sportsmanship as well as integrity are taught in the dirt of that field. but not anymore.. lets just show up, throw together a roster, who cares where each boy plays, they are on their own out there in the field.. No coaching, no positive role models, No more heros...
Only heads hung low as they lose another by 20 runs.. where is the decency..Who is protecting this American pastime from the selfish American future?
I care! I miss the days when teams were divided somewhat equally. You never knew from year to year who would switch around, but you played your position and you learned it and got good at it. Your coach yelled at you when you screwed up a play or bobbled a ball, but he also patted your butt when you were up to bat and he encouraged you to be your best, to go down swinging. Don't just stand there..
Heads hung in shame have no place on a little league ball field. Young boys all have an equal place on a team to play .. sometimes you sit, you win some, you lose some.. You should never lose them all.. I would not want to put that uniform on again for another spanking.
What ever happened to equally divided teams, and then at the end of the year the best of the best were invited to play on the All Star team. if they wanted too? the season ended for most of us then, but the all stars enjoyed a bit more glory.
Nowadays, it is who has the biggest payrole can buy the bestt players.. and the 5 small town men who feel it is their job to glorify 12 and ignore 30 others should be ashamed of themselves. .What gives them the right, how do they justify this in their minds.. What kind of power have they instilled upon themselves?
I am sick and I am tired.. I feel the pain of the 10 or 11 boys who still show up to finish out the season thankfully because a parent is making them finish what they started. Baseball is a team sport it takes all the pieces to fit together and work as a team. Not seperatly.
I am disenchanted.. I want this to change. Ask a kid on the "Select" team if he really cares. He won't , he cares more about a good and fair game, a fun night laughing and bonding with the other guys..
When you put the leftovers on a team and then don't coach them, what on earth did you expect would happen?