Baseball Team Kicked Out

Off Topic
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People complain that kids these days have no drive, don’t want to excel. Then you have a group that does, and what happens, the adults say they’re too good.

I’ve seen some ridichulous behavior by parents in youth sports. This beats it all, except for attacking the coach with a bat maybe.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,160543,00.html

Too Good to Play

A team of 11- and 12-year-old baseball players has been kicked out of its league — for being too good.

Earlier this month, the Stars of Columbus, Ohio, were taken off the Canal Winchester Joint Recreation District’s (search) schedule, and their $150 entry fee was refunded, reports The Columbus Dispatch.

The 14 boys only joined the suburban league in early May, but since then had creamed every other team that faced them — 18-0, 13-0, 24-0, 10-2 and 17-6.

“I called up the league office and said, ‘No way are we going to play them,’” Terry Morris, who coaches another team in the division, told The Dispatch. “I wasn’t going to subject my players to that.”

Pretty soon, all scheduled games were canceled, and the Stars found themselves orphaned.

“I don’t think it’s fair,” said Stars catcher and pitcher Michael Allston, who at 12 stands 5-foot-8. “We always played our best, and we were just winning games.”

“[Another] team told us they didn’t want their boys’ self-esteem battered,” said Trina Cochran, mother of 11-year-old Stars player Mario Cochran

“Our boys went into this with a good attitude,” said Darla Perry, whose son R.J., 11, weighs 155 pounds. “It’s turned into a disaster.”

Opponents’ parents charged that the Stars’ players were older than they claimed to be and that they were actually an “all-star” team culled from across Columbus.

In return, the Stars’ parents began bringing birth certificates to games, as well as documents showing that all but one of the boys lived in the same ZIP code.

League officials and other teams’ coaches are unrepentant.

“They were just beating the rec kids up,” said Michael Mirones, the league’s board chairman. “It’s no fun for the kids that are losing.”

“We didn’t want one of our kids to get hit in the face with a ball,” said rival coach Kris Hutchins, who said all his players’ parents agreed that their boys not face the Stars.

Stars second baseman Matthew “Boomer” Hufferd, 12, thinks other teams are getting the wrong message.

“If they learn at their age that they can forfeit on things they don’t want to do,” Hufferd said, “it’s quitting.”

The comment I really love is where the coach whines that they’re afraid the kid might get hit by a ball in the face. It’s baseball. The chances of getting hit by a pitch or a batted ball are prety good any time you take the field. Pitchers that are 11-12 can easily throw 40 to 50 miles an hour or better. Thats why you wear helmets with a facecage.

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eh, i can see the parents concern, at 10 and 11 years old, its good that it starts getting competitive, but being creamed 18-0 just isnt fun, doesnt teach you anything, pretty much embarasses you. I feel bad for the team who doesnt get to play though.

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My gf in high school was such a good softball pitcher that the other coaches in her Senior league would not allow her to pitch. She could play but not pitch at all. Pretty sad.

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The league I grew up playing in had a draft so that you didn’t get teams that were as stacked as this one appears to be.

And personally, I hate equally people that quit because another team is really good and people that will only play on a stacked team that goes undefeated without any real competition.

That’s why I loved the two hockey leagues that I played in the 2nd half of last year. Pretty much every game I played in was close.

My one team only lost 2 or 3 games, but we weren’t blowing teams out, so it was fun.

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[quote]frisbee wrote:
eh, i can see the parents concern, at 10 and 11 years old, its good that it starts getting competitive, but being creamed 18-0 just isnt fun, doesnt teach you anything, pretty much embarasses you. I feel bad for the team who doesnt get to play though.[/quote]

Losing is part of life. Sports can teach so many great lessons. Giving up when things are hard shouldn’t be one of the lessons.

And it’s not like each other team was getting creamed by the Stars everynight. Maybe two or three times a season they’d get their ass whooped. That’s the way it goes.

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[quote]frisbee wrote:
eh, i can see the parents concern, at 10 and 11 years old, its good that it starts getting competitive, but being creamed 18-0 just isnt fun, doesnt teach you anything, pretty much embarasses you. I feel bad for the team who doesnt get to play though.[/quote]

The problem is usually not the kids getting upset so much about losing but how the coach reacts and treats them after a loss like that. Have been around baseball for years and have seen good coaches that would take a loss like that and use it to motivate a team, use it to teach them to play better. Also seen coaches rant, scream and act like fools because the team loss. My son was fortunate to have a coach like that this year, and yes they had some games where they got slaughtered and they slaughtered some teams also.

Typically in a youth baseball setup like that you will have one or two dominant teams, the rest beat on each other equally and then one team that jsut sucks it up big tinme. Thats life. The idea that gettign beaten too bad is bad for thir self esteem is teh biggest bunch of bullshit, and a common bad idea you see in all youth sports. Yes, it sucks to be on the losing team, yes its sad at times. But it teaches you about life and how to handle things. The problesm is not the kids playing at the level they are. The problem is parents acting like they are.

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“Our boys went into this with a good attitude,” said Darla Perry, whose son R.J., 11, weighs 155 pounds. “It’s turned into a disaster.”

I think he weighs more than Al Shades.

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Teaching kids at this age to quit when the going gets tough is an absoulte error and disregard ofr the building of solid character within each kid. Building character is one supposed to be one of the benefits of youth participaing in sports. You can’t win them all all the time. losing does teach lessons and these losing experiences have to be turned into those lessons by the coaching staff nad the parents. What these parernts have done is tell their kids that it is ok to just quit when the odds seem insurmountable. So, if that math problem is too hard, hell, just don’t both even trying to solve it. If that bully is picking on you , hell just go ahead and give in to him. Come on, it should be that when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

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In this case the going got tough, so the not so tough took their balls and went home, showing an absolute lack of aforementioned balls.

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Wow, this is pathetic. Imagine if they did this with professional sports. All this coddling of kids is what causes the low self-esteem, not the losing. And it’s obvious the parents and the coaches are very immature and insecure. How are kids supposed to get better unless they play someone better. Granted, the winning team was really winning, but there are far more solutions than removing the team.

“If they learn at their age that they can forfeit on things they don’t want to do,” Hufferd said, “it’s quitting.”

At least he has it right. I mean, really, what sort of lesson is this for the children. I have to take a quote from batman since I just saw it.
“Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.”

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Besides, “There’s no crying in Baseball”!