Mar 12, 2012

Little League Baseball

There are just some things that most people think a young man should do as he is growing up. Well I thought the same thing for a long time but then realized that I was actually wrong and had known it for a long time as well. I speak about Little League Baseball. I think I learned this by participating as a boy myself (for one whole summer), by coaching it for a couple of years and by watching other fathers who believed it a lot more than I did. So now I must explain myself I guess. Here are the lessons that I learned from each of those three things. I played baseball for one summer because I think mom and dad finally gave in to my desire to play. We had played as a family some with other families and I did enjoy it. So as a young man I joined for one summer only to find out that since I hadn’t been involved at an even younger age that I really wasn’t very good at it. So the coach ended up making me an outfielder since I could at least stop the ball and had a pretty good throwing arm. I wasn’t a hitter however and so I seldom got on base. I had enough in just one summer and left it to the other boys after that who had dad’s that had to win through their boy he games that they had not won when they were that age. Well as a coach I did OK because it was for T-ball and the need for winning wasn’t the main objective for the boys that age. We could just have fu and the boys always got on base. I liked the game for that age group. However when they got older and the dad’s suddenly had to win the game or it was the end of life for them and their boys I realized that it really wasn’t for every boy. I still remember however one father who really got it right. He wasn’t actually the father of this one particular boy but he was the coach who wanted him on the team and then did everything to make it fun for that boy, and consequently for the rest of the team, as well as far as the boys were concerned anyway. This was Dave Nemelka who asked Lindsey Ashton (a dow syndrome boy) to play on his team. I don’t think the team won a lot of games but as far as I was concerned as a father of another one of the team  players they didn’t have a losing season at all. Everytime I saw Lindsey hit the ball and all of his team cheering him on as he rounded the bases I knew that they won that game that day for Lindsey despite the score not reflecting it so much. I will always respect Dave because of his understanding of the real need for baseball in the life of some young men. It was quite the opposite for some of the other father’s who would swear at the team players if the struck out or got tagged out on base. I lost respect for mother’s who would swear at the coach for not letting their little boy play every inning or be the only pitcher. Thank you Dave for your understanding the needs of every boy not just the future major leaguer.