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It’s the bottom of the last inning. The Yankees are leading the Red Sox by one run, two outs, and a runner on third base.
Strolling to the plate is the best hitter on the Red Sox’s 9- and 10-year-old, PONY League team.
The Yankees coaches huddle and decide to intentionally walk the best hitter to get to the next player.
Sounds strategic enough so far, right?
Well, the next player just so happens to be a cancer survivor who has a shunt in his brain and has to take human growth hormone to keep his energy up.
Needless to say, he’s probably the weakest player on the Red Sox, and promptly he strikes out, and the Yankees win the title.
Parents boo. The coaches nearly come to fisticuffs. And it doesn’t end there.
The furor has now reached a national level. The Yankees coaches are being dragged through the mud, labeled as insensitive jerks who only cared about their own egos, and not about the children they coach.
How dare they intentionally walk a child to get to a player with limited physical abilities? Especially in a league where everyone on the team bats and no more than four runs are allowed to be scored per team, per inning.
The local newspaper, the Davis Clipper, had a column ripping the Yankees coaches, saying they should put their trophy on a mantel right next to their dunce caps.
Letters to the editor poured into the paper, some defending the coaches, others calling them "pathetic human beings" and suggesting they "should be tarred and feathered."
Hold the phone. You want to know where the problem with youth sports lies? It’s at this line right here. It’s with the parents and holier than thou watchdogs who take it too seriously -- some who try to live their lives vicariously through their children.
Look, I know there are some Little League coaches that think they’re the reincarnation of Connie Mack -- believe me, I’ve coached against them. But, to go to such extreme lengths as to want to hang them from a yardarm because they intentionally walked the best hitter on the other team in an effort to win the game is going too far.
Let’s imagine for a minute, that the cancer survivor -- his name is Romney Oaks -- was not on deck, but one of the other Red Sox was. Would the Yankees coaches have still walked the best hitter in that instance? Yes.
And would it have become a national news story if they did? No.
Or, what if little Romney came up, hit the ball, and the tying run scored? What would happen then?
He’d win an ESPY award next year for play of the year in sports, that’s what. It’d be the feel-good sports story of the millennium. No one would be criticizing the Yankees coaches then.
But, Romney struck out, sending the oversensitive public into an uproar.
Take these two things into consideration if you will. Do you think little Romney -- or any of the thousands of children who are trying to overcome some sort of physical or emotional adversity and want to be looked at as a normal youngster, just like anyone else -- wants special treatment?
And secondly, at what age is it OK for our children to learn the difference between winning and losing and that winning is great, but losing is OK, too?
When I was playing Little League, we didn’t have mercy rules. We didn’t have Coach Pitch, or T-ball. We didn’t have limitations on the number of runs you could score. We lost games and lost them badly.
I recall one game when I was 6 years old, losing 35-1. Did it scar me for life? No. Children are curious. They want to know the reasons why things are what they are.
For three years, I was forced to lie to the players I coached and tell them every game ended in a tie, because, heaven forbid, we have a winner and a loser in a contest before fourth grade.
It’s a team sport. And while winning isn’t the most important part of a game at that level, it certainly is a part of it. If you keep devaluing winning because you worry it might hurt someone’s feelings if they don’t win, you’ve reduced the motivation for the children to strive to be the best.
In other words, the message is, don’t worry about it, you can give less than your best and it will still be acceptable.
Bad habits start early, and you don’t want them lingering as your children grow.
As for Romney wanting to be treated as a normal child, the next morning he woke up and said to his dad, "I’m going to work on my batting. Then maybe someday I’ll be the one they walk."
Funny, he gets it. Too bad the self-righteous adults do not.
So, what would I have done if I were the Yankees coach? The same thing.
I owed it to the players on my team who practiced with me twice a week, showed up for all our games -- wins and losses -- and wanted to go into the rest of their summer feeling like a champion.
But, considering there were two bases open, the softer side of me would have won out over the strategic side and I would have decided to walk Romney, too.
To contact Anthony J. SanFilippo, e-mail asanfilippo@delcotimes.com
