baseball blues ... ranting just a little

It is that time of year again ... the yard needs cutting and the flowers are blooming and ...

    the baseballs are flying. 

Baseball is the only sport my boys play and I dearly love to watch them play, but I have a terrible tendency to get a little too involved in the game and if I am not careful, my boys just might get a little embarrassed by my ... ahem, enthusiasm.

Don't get me wrong, I really don't care if their teams win or lose.  I want them to play their best and I want them to learn good sportsmanship and I want them to give 100 percent all the time.  Most of all, I really want them to enjoy playing the game.

There are a few things that really, really bother me, though.  Some about the boys themselves, but more about the adults involved in the game.

The one thing that bothers me about the boys is when they don't seem to be paying attention to the game.  Case in point, my littlest one was playing in the grass instead of paying attention to what was going on around him last night.  Yes, I know he is only six years old and I had to keep reminding myself of that fact while trying to resist the urge to remind him of what he's supposed to be doing. 

Anything the boys might do to get my feathers ruffled would be mild compared to my two biggest complaints about playing rec league ball.  One is coaches who get way too uptight about the game and the other is umpires who can't or won't be consistent in their calls.

Twice in the last two weeks, JW's team has played teams from other cities that aren't regular league teams ... these teams are select tournament teams that are just using these unsuspecting league teams for practice.  That in itself wouldn't be so bad except that the coaches for these teams are incredibly intense and they are quite adept at intimidating and frustrating our players by questioning calls and trash talking to their players while ours are listening.  The point is, that I don't mind losing to a superior team, if they would just let the boys play ball, but when a grown man makes it his aim to get young boys upset just so his team can win, it hacks me off.

I have to hand it to JW's coach, though.  Last night, when our pitcher was about to fall apart because the other coach kept yelling balk, our coach told him that he didn't care how many times they called balk or how many runs scored, his only desire was for the kid to have fun.  Despite the fact that we were losing, and that we have other pitchers who might have been able to do better, he just let the boy finish out the game and then congratulated him on how he played.  That little boy's feelings were more important to him than the outcome of the game. Then, after the game, they were able to talk to the umpire and get a lesson on how to pick off a runner on third without getting called for a balk.

I want my kids to be able to walk away from every game and say that they gave it their all, and that they played with integrity, even if they are still learning what that means.  In the end, it really isn't whether you win or lose and it really is about how you play the game ... now if all the coaches could just learn that truth, it would be much easier to teach it to the kids!

A small rant

When I told my friend that I was going to start a blog, she commented that she thought it would be interesting because of my opinionated nature. Well, so far I haven't really had any reason to be opinionated about anything ... until now.

Tonight, I am going to share with you one of my pet peeves. It involves sports and priorities.

My son, JW, plays coach-pitch baseball. Tonight, as we huddled under the shed while the rain ended the play for the night, our coach announced that the team has an opportunity to play in a tournament in a couple of weeks. The tournament would begin on Friday night and end sometime Sunday.

How do you explain to the coach that as much as we want JW to enjoy his experience playing baseball, Sundays are off limits.

In our very small church (we average about 60 in worship on Sundays) I know of 4 families that have had to deal with this issue. For one family it meant that the Dad had to miss at least one service on most Sundays during the summer because his job required him to work the tournaments, but for the other three, it was simply a matter of choice. It is so sad to me that families have to choose between their children participating in sports and worshiping together on Sunday. And it is even more sad that Christian families head out in droves on Sunday mornings to "support" their children/grandchildren rather than teaching them that the day set aside to worship God is more important than whatever sport they happen to be playing at the moment.

I realize that I am treading on thin ice here, but I can't help but wonder what would happen to the current situation if even half of the Christian families just said no, we will not participate in any way on Sundays because that day belongs to God. Something tells me that things would change. Sports are too big of a business to lose the money contributed by Christian families.

So, how did we handle it? Well, for this time it was easy. We will be out of town on the weekend in question so that is all that Ronnie told the coach. If it comes up again, I am sure that it won't be so easy. We want our children to be able to participate in (limited and carefully selected)secular activities and we want them to excel at the things that they do, but I am not sure that these goals can co-exist with our responsibility to teach them that some things cannot be compromised.