Chris,<br><br>What's the point of having a championship game, then? Why not just slap all the kids on the back at the end of the season and buy them a pile of ice cream cones? That way, no one's a loser, the coach doesn't have to be perceived as a jerk, and, hey, ice cream cones all around. It's a win-win-win situation, don't you think?
<br><br>Deacon<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 8/11/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Chris Storhok</b> <<a href="mailto:cstorhok@co.fairbanks.ak.us">cstorhok@co.fairbanks.ak.us</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Tom,<br>This is an easy one A) Pitch to the slugger. Period...<br><br>One of the great joys about being a youth sports coach is working with<br>the kids and watching them mature before your eyes. These coaches are<br>playing with kids and there is nothing worse than watching coaches
<br>manipulate the kids or the rules for a simple win. These are 9 and 10<br>year olds for goodness sake, not high school age kids trying for college<br>scholarships. A vast majority of the kids out there will drop out of
<br>organized baseball (and other sports) within the next few years of their<br>lives. PONY league was established nationwide with the goal of putting<br>fun back into the game. This kind of crap happens in Little League all
<br>the time and is why Little League is losing players ever year. We first<br>started playing PONY League the year we moved to Fairbanks. That was<br>also the first year of PONY League here because parents were sick and
<br>tired of Little League and the competitive pressures on each and every<br>team. The PONY League organization does have a competitive league for<br>kids that draw out the better talent and leave the recreation teams<br>
pretty equal. Here in Fairbanks, the PONY League has brought back to<br>the game hundreds of players who had left the game. Last year the<br>Senior League (13-14 year olds) had only 4 teams, this year they were up<br>to 11 teams. Granted most of these players were not good, but they had
<br>a good time and learned a lot about baseball and life. I can clearly<br>see that the Yankees coaches in Utah have forgotten the spirit of<br>recreation PONY League, if he wanted to coach that way he should be in<br>Little League or a competitive team with the PONY organization. What a
<br>jerk, I know I would have been giving him a hard time as well. (At<br>least the poor kid who struck out to end the game sounds like he will be<br>back, good for him)<br><br>Chris<br><br><br><br>-----Original Message-----
<br>From: <a href="mailto:vision2020-bounces@moscow.com">vision2020-bounces@moscow.com</a><br>[mailto:<a href="mailto:vision2020-bounces@moscow.com">vision2020-bounces@moscow.com</a>] On Behalf Of Tom Hansen<br>Sent: Friday, August 11, 2006 10:55 AM
<br>To: Joan Opyr; 'Moscow Vision 2020'<br>Subject: [Vision2020] You Make the Call<br><br>>From this week's "Life of Reilly" column by Rick Reilly of the Sports<br>Illustrated -<br><br>Once you have completed reading the article, please respond to the
<br>one-question survey I have posted at the end.<br><br>---------------------------------------------------------<br><br>You make the call<br>Is it good baseball strategy or a weak attempt to win?<br>By Rick Reilly<br><br>
This actually happened. Your job is to decide whether it should have.<br><br>In a nine- and 10-year-old PONY league championship game in Bountiful,<br>Utah,<br>the Yankees lead the Red Sox by one run. The Sox are up in the bottom of
<br>the<br>last inning, two outs, a runner on third. At the plate is the Sox' best<br>hitter, a kid named Jordan. On deck is the Sox' worst hitter, a kid<br>named<br>Romney. He's a scrawny cancer survivor who has to take human growth
<br>hormone<br>and has a shunt in his brain.<br><br>So, you're the coach: Do you intentionally walk the star hitter so you<br>can<br>face the kid who can barely swing?<br><br>Wait! Before you answer.... This is a league where everybody gets to
<br>bat,<br>there's a four-runs-per-inning max, and no stealing until the ball<br>crosses<br>the plate. On the other hand, the stands are packed and it is the title<br>game.<br><br>So ... do you pitch to the star or do you lay it all on the kid who's
<br>been<br>through hell already?<br><br>Yanks coach Bob Farley decided to walk the star.<br><br>Parents booed. The umpire, Mike Wright, thought to himself, Low-ball<br>move.<br>In the stands, Romney's eight-year-old sister cried. "They're picking on
<br>Romney!" she said. Romney struck out. The Yanks celebrated. The Sox<br>moaned.<br>The two coaching staffs nearly brawled.<br><br>And Romney? He sobbed himself to sleep that night.<br><br>"It made me sick," says Romney's dad, Marlo Oaks. "It's going after the
<br>weakest chick in the flock."<br><br>Farley and his assistant coach, Shaun Farr, who recommended the walk,<br>say<br>they didn't know Romney was a cancer survivor. "And even if I had,"<br>insists<br>Farr, "I'd have done the same thing. It's just good baseball strategy."
<br><br>Romney's mom, Elaine, thinks Farr knew. "Romney's cancer was in the<br>paper<br>when he met with President Bush," she says. That was thanks to the<br>Make-A-Wish people. "And [Farr] coached Romney in basketball. I tell all
<br>his<br>coaches about his condition."<br><br>She has to. Because of his radiation treatments, Romney's body may not<br>produce enough of a stress-responding hormone if he is seriously<br>injured, so<br>he has to quickly get a cortisone shot or it could be life-threatening.
<br>That's why he wears a helmet even in centerfield. Farr didn't notice?<br><br>The sports editor for the local Davis Clipper, Ben De Voe, ripped the<br>Yankees' decision. "Hopefully these coaches enjoy the trophy on their
<br>mantle," De Voe wrote, "right next to their dunce caps."<br><br>Well, that turned Bountiful into Rancorful. The town was split -- with<br>some<br>people calling for De Voe's firing and describing Farr and Farley as
<br>"great<br>men," while others called the coaches "pathetic human beings." They<br>"should<br>be tarred and feathered," one man wrote to De Voe. Blogs and letters<br>pages<br>howled. A state house candidate called it "shameful."
<br><br>What the Yankees' coaches did was within the rules. But is it right to<br>put<br>winning over compassion? For that matter, does a kid who yearns to be<br>treated like everybody else want compassion?<br><br>"What about the boy who is dyslexic -- should he get special treatment?"
<br>Blaine and Kris Smith wrote to the Clipper. "The boy who wears glasses<br>--<br>should he never be struck out? ... NO! They should all play by the rules<br>of<br>the game."<br><br>The Yankees' coaches insisted that the Sox coach would've done the same
<br>thing. "Not only wouldn't I have," says Sox coach Keith Gulbransen, "I<br>didn't. When their best hitter came up, I pitched to him. I especially<br>wouldn't have done it to Romney."<br><br>Farr thinks the Sox coach is a hypocrite. He points out that all coaches
<br>put<br>their worst fielder in right field and try to steal on the weakest<br>catchers.<br>"Isn't that strategy?" he asks. "Isn't that trying to win? Do we let the<br>kid<br>feel like he's a winner by having the whole league play easy on him?
<br>This<br>isn't the Special Olympics. He's not retarded."<br><br>Me? I think what the Yanks did stinks. Strategy is fine against major<br>leaguers, but not against a little kid with a tube in his head. Just<br>good
<br>baseball strategy? This isn't the pros. This is: Everybody bats,<br>one-hour<br>games. That means it's about fun. Period.<br><br>What the Yankees' coaches did was make it about them, not the kids. It<br>became their medal to pin on their pecs and show off at their barbecues.
<br>And<br>if a fragile kid got stomped on the way, well, that's baseball. We see<br>it<br>all over the country -- the over-caffeinated coach who watches too much<br>SportsCenter and needs to win far more than the kids, who will forget
<br>about<br>it two Dove bars later.<br><br>By the way, the next morning, Romney woke up and decided to do something<br>about what happened to him.<br><br>"I'm going to work on my batting," he told his dad. "Then maybe someday
<br>I'll<br>be the one they walk."<br><br>---------------------------------------------------------<br><br>Simple Survey:<br><br>Would you -<br><br>A) Pitch to the slugger (Jordan)<br><br>B) Walk the slugger<br><br>
Thanks,<br><br>Tom Hansen<br>Moscow, Idaho<br><br>"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of<br>arriving<br>safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in<br>sideways, chocolate in one hand, a drink in the other, body thoroughly
<br>used<br>up, totally worn out and screaming 'WOO HOO. What a ride!'"<br><br><br><br>=======================================================<br> List services made available by First Step Internet,<br> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
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