You, My Friend, Are A Huge Jackass

If you’re looking for names for the villains in your next book, let me suggest Shaun Farr or Bob Farley.

Heard about Farr or Farley in the last couple of weeks? If you haven’t, these two geniuses were the coaches responsible for managing their nine and ten year old Little League team to a championship in Utah.

Congratulations, dickheads. You deserve it.

Because you see, in order to get their team the championship, they had to crush a child on the opposing team to do it. And nothing screams DOUCHEBAG like CRUSHING A CHILD.

Here’s the deal: the aforementioned buffoons’ team needed one more out to win this oh-so-important-we-rule-the-world game. The tying run was on third and they had two out. Except the opposing team’s best hitter was up. Horrors. So they looked at the on-deck circle to see who was up next. Turns out it was this tiny little nine year old kid who’d been battling brain cancer for a while. The child has a shunt in his head. Enough said. In order to be cleared to play, he had to wear a helmet not just at bat but in the field as well. Any blow to the head could have devastating consequences.

And as you might guess, the boy, well, he’s not the greatest player in the world. All the chemo, surgery and treatment he’s received have weakened him to the point that just being able to participate was a pretty cool thing. By all accounts, swinging the bat is a tough thing for him to do. And his coaches – because they GET IT – had him in the lineup because everybody on the team plays, regardless of ability. In fact, this league stresses non-competitiveness – everyone plays, stealing is allowed only after the ball has crossed the plate and the runs per inning are limited. In short, this is a league where kids get some healthy exposure to playing on a team and learning about the sport and hey, maybe have a little fun.

But our baseball gurus Farr and Farley decided to intentionally walk the good hitter in order to get to this boy.

In the movies, the boy gets a hit and drives in the winning run.

In real life, however, the kid can barely lift the bat off his shoulder as three strikes blow by him, ending the game and placing the burden of the loss on his shoulders, leaving the boy in tears.

Farr and Farley claim it was just good baseball strategy. Farr, in fact, claims he didn’t even know the kid had cancer, but even if he had, he would’ve done the same thing because he had a responsibility to his team.

That’s pretty funny, because as it turns out Farr coached the kid in basketball not too long ago. So he’s apparently a dickhead AND a liar. If you are a Little League coach and are concerned about any strategy other than how quickly you can get the kids to the snack shack after the game, you are big-ass loser. And just so we’re clear – cancer or no cancer – it wasn’t okay to walk the big hitter to get to this kid. In a league with competitive restrictions, you do NOT purposely set up a child to fail. In any way. Ever.

I grew up as one of those kids who was good at sports. Never got cut from a team, almost always started and played more than most other kids. So I get competition and wanting to win and all that.

But all of my adult life has been dedicated to working in youth sports and high school athletics to weed out these self-important pricks who forget that they are there for the kids rather than themselves. I did almost a decade of it before I decided I’d had enough and needed to move onto other things because the things I was dealing with just became insane. You can only throw out so many f-bombing moms and fist throwing dads from elementary school gymnasiums before it starts to take a toll. (Wanna hear stories? I’ve got stories. Buy me a drink the next time you see me.)

Yeah, Farr and Farley did have a responsibility to their team. To act as role models. To be decent human beings. To remind their players that winning or losing a baseball game played by nine and ten year olds wouldn’t dictate the rest of their lives. To just use common sense.

So let's congratulate these guys on their “championship.” Won’t you help me salute them by raising your middle finger in their direction?
Jeff

Comments

[Jake]

Jeff, I heard about this on Olbermann's show. What kind of people are these? Win at all costs (there's a lot of that going around these days). Where is integrity? Where is doing the right thing? In so many walks of life, there is no honor anymore. It's all about results. From the top of this country down, it's all about winning, and to hell with decency, foresight, or a little thing called "class".

[Bill Cameron]

I'll join you in your salute. Sadly, this sort of thing is WAY too common. And, in my experience, Little League is the absolute worst.

Bleh.

[Jake]

I detest Little League for another reason. Their games always go long on ESPN, and then they cut important horse races, like The Travers.

All politics is local!

[Jeff]

Little League is the worst - but soccer and basketball are catching up very fast...

[Charles Edward]

As someone who only got to play when our team was up by a dozen runs, and then relegated to deep roving right field, I have to agree with you, Jeff. This isn't just bad coaching behavior, it's bad adult treatment of a child.

[JDRhoades]

My kids played in a youth soccer league in the apst few years. At least twice a season, the cops had to be called to the field to arrest a parent and, in one case, a coach for assault and communicating threats.
WTF is wrong with people?

[Jeff]

Charles - the most frustrating thing about this story is that this league is designed so that the kids wouldn't have to feel like you did - that their play was irrelevant - and yet these guys still found a way around that.

Dusty - more and more leagues are hiring off-duty law enforcement types as staff members for game days. Pretty much says it all.

[David Terrenoire]

When my daughter was in middle school we moved to a place that positively worshipped soccer. Not a good sign.

Molly had never played before, but she wanted to try. She lasted maybe half a dozen games. Seems the better players on the team kicked the ball AT her during practice. When my wife complained, another mother called our daughter a loser and a drag on the team. And she did this in front of the team.

It's a good thing I wasn't there.

I let Molly quit without the standard Dad lecture on quitters never win, winners never blah blah blah. I did, however, give her advice on how to identify assholes. One way? They obsess about things like fucking soccer.

Jumping Christ.

There seems to be a trend toward new levels of dickheadedness.

I join you, Jeff, in your one-finger salute.

[Jeff]

I once had a mom jump at me, hands extended in an attempt to choke me, her eyes wide with rage. Several other parents got in front of her before she got close enough.

I had just stopped her game with two minutes left and told her she'd never coach another basketball game in any league I ever ran.

The reason?

In the previous two minutes of the game before I stopped it, she - The Head Coach - dropped over a dozen F-bombs on the two high school officials working her daughter's game. "YOU FUCKING MORONS!!!", "YOU ARE FUCKING KIDDING ME!!!", etc...

7th and 8th Grade Girls Basketball.

And why was she upset?

"THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND FUCKING TRAVELING!!!"

Funny, I don't miss it at all...

[Bill Cameron]

My experience with Little League, and by that I mean Little League®, is that the insanity is top down. Sure, there are plenty of lunatic parents, but the real problem is with the authoritarian league and district boards that do everything they can to suck the joy of baseball out of the game and kill the spirits of the players. Grrr.

[Lori G. Armstrong]

Huh. Not missing much by not having my girls compete in organized sports, am I? This whole thing made me sick. But I'm glad it's being brought to national attention ~ maybe something good will come of it.

And I'm glad there are good coaches out there (like Jeff) who remember what its supposed to be about.

[Sandra Ruttan]

Jeff, you're my hero.

So well said. And so sad that it needs to be said. Some people are pathetic.

[Bill Cameron]

There are good coaches. My son's All Star coach this summer was great. He got crapped on by the Washington State District 5 Little League board, but I loved the way he handled the team and the kids. Even though they were ostensibly "All Stars", he knew they were still kids. He kept the practices fun and focused of building their skills and confidence, and didn't get all psycho about winning.

My son's regular season coach was also a great guy, great with the kids, but he let his passions get the better of him in actual games and it was really uncomfortable.

I don't really understand what gets into people about youth sports, but I have to say that for all the people we've ranted about here today, there are plenty of folks like Jeff too who put the kids first. I know, for myself, I just need to try and remember that going into each new season.

[Jeff]

That's an excellent point - there ARE really, really good coaches who do it right and volunteer a ton of time and make the right kind of impression on kids. But we forget about them because they put the kids first rather than themselves so they rarely find themselves in the spotlight.

[bekbek]

This is such a heart-breaking story. It really interests me because I am usually frustrated and angry about exactly the opposite problem --that adults spend so much energy on "letting kids be kids" that they won't challenge children, won't allow them to compete or even to try, won't give them the structure of rules and regulations, and won't in short recognize that kids are supposed to be developing into adults.

Here we have what is supposed to be a big opportunity, a game that is challenging and is competitive, no matter what the rules --or there wouldn't be a championship. In a perfect world, these kids gain a lot of maturity, challenge themselves and each other, fall down often and get up more often in order to succeed. Only in order to maximize that value, they've set standards that are intended to ensure that the positive learning experience is shared by ALL participants.

So as frustrated as I am by what these two jerks did, I find I have a lot of sympathy for the organization. This is a difficult balance to strike. Challenge children to excellence, but in order to share the joy, require an experience that is in essence more mature and responsible and noble... than the game played by adults.

It's a tall order.

[Jeff]

I have zero sympathy for the organization because they could've done one thing that would've eliminated the whole scenario.

There shouldn't have been a championship game.

It makes no sense to hold a grand finale when the league has been played with competitive limits the entire season. The championship game probably came about more because adults wanted it rather than the kids.

I have absolutely no problem with challenging kids and letting them learn to be adults - if that's what the promised experience is. Competitive leagues absolutely have their place and should be governed as such. It's where I would've played as a kid if there'd been a distinction at the time. And when I was a high school coach, I made that distinction very clear on the first day of practice to my players. Our goal was to win, not make everybody happy. If you don't like the role I give you, then this probably isn't the place for you. No player would be treated any differently, but the best players would play and the others would be a support system. That's what high school sports at the varsity level are intended for. That's the promised experience.

But this league in Utah was created so that kids who wanted to try the sport, to see what it was like to be a part of a team and to see if they wanted to move to the competitive level could do so in an environment that would support that.

With one out left in the season, the organization failed to do that for every kid that played.

[Bill Cameron]

My wife had an interesting point. She said, "All those coaches had to to was say, 'You're right. We got caught up in the moment and didn't stop to think that no victory was worth humiliating a sick child in front of his friends and family. We made a terrible mistake and we're very sorry.'"

I do agree with bekbek that it doesn't serve the child to denude the competitive spirit from sports, but as you say, Jeff, it needs to be done in an appropriate setting. And fair play needs to be at the heart of what we're teaching kids in athletics, I believe.

I can't help wonder at the connection between the win-at-all-costs attitude that leads to this kind of incident and the explosion of performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports. I mean, what do kids learn from an event like this one above? It's not how you play the game, but whether you win or lose?

[Andrea Maloney]

That is just so sad. People are warped. This is why whenever the flyers come home from my daughter's schools about joining soccer, little league etc. I just toss them. They never have expressed an interest and I don't encourage them just because of parents and coaches like that. It's such a shame. Sports should be fun. It's a game for goodness sake. People should be teaching their children compassion, sportsmanship, team playing, manners instead they are being taught that winning is the only thing, how to swear and how to be jerks in general. It just a sad world.

[Rob Gregory Browne]

Bill, it would have been nice if these coaches had said what you suggest, but these types of people -- the do-anything-for-a-win crowd -- aren't capable of such thinking. It just isn't in their make-up.

If it was, the whole thing wouldn't have happened in the first place.