When I was growing up, whenever I talked to my cousins Vinny about sports he would always tell me that he found it weird that guys would huddle up together and then hand-off a ball between their legs only to get tackled down to the ground by a bunch of other men. In my eye's sports was the ultimate test of man's will and a true man was good at sports. In his eyes sports was a cover for men to do highly questionable manly things. Although he never won me over to his way of thinking, I did find other problems facing youth sports.
The Coaches
When I played competitive youth baseball, my coach told me that I would never have another coach as good as him and I laughed; I thought that for certain that I would have a fantastic high school coach, travel coach, and college coach. Not only did he turn out to be right but every coach after him was progressively worse. The common theme between all of these terrible coaches was that they had their son on the team and their son was ALWAYS the worst player on the team. Not only was the coach's son the worst player on team but all of his friends were just as bad, so there would always be three or four players on the field that never belonged there. And somehow they would always be the ones who would get in up in crucial situations and strike out or make an error in the field. I will not name the college but I went on a recruiting visit to a college and asked the coach if he was recruiting anybody else that I might know. He told me that he was recruiting my coach's son on my travel team because his dad was donating money to the baseball program. After I heard that I crossed that school off of my list.
The Practices
I had one travel coach in high school that would make us run 10 poles after a game that we won because we didn't "play good." For those who don't know what a pole is, it is when you start at one foul pole and run to the other foul pole. Surprisingly I was always the first person to finish on my team and I was always in the best shape. However, I realized that running poles did very little to make me a better baseball player or any more recruitable to college coaches. The reason why is because to get recruited, especially in the outfield, you have to be an exceptional athlete. To reach this level you have to work on explosive movements and sharpen your fast-twitch muscle fibers. This can be sharpened by short sprints or any quick explosive movements. Instead of focusing on this technique, I had great stamina. If baseball recruiters measured who can win a 5K, then I would have been playing at LSU. However, they look at my 60 yard dash, which did not impress anybody.
The Parents
I haven't played baseball in four years and yet still the parent's annoy me. From time to time I go on Facebook and I will see one of my baseball friend's mom boasting about her son's accomplishments. She'll post a picture of her son with some obscure award like the "Johnny Wentzell" award winner. Nobody knows who this guy is and nobody cares about this award. The worst part is that there are like 50 "Johnny Wentzell" awards that her son won. I want to comment on her one of her posts saying "Your son graduated three years ago lady give it up." Then there are your parents who are even worse than friend's parents. My Dad would scream from the stands during the games when I made an error, tease my teammates for their weaknesses, and make playing baseball unpleasant for everyone. For example, if someone ran the bases in an unconventional way, he would mimic the way this kid ran in front of the whole team and then ask "Who runs like this?" While some people found this funny, you could imagine how some people didn't. And the funny thing is that people would think less of me because of his behavior. The problem with my Dad is that he was always too involved and never just sat back and watched me play.
Conclusion
There are way too many lessons about life in sports- teamwork, work ethic, and competitiveness- that people like my cousin Vinny will never understand. However, as they say ignorance is bliss. My cousin Vinny also doesn't know about unbearable coaches who are their to make sure their children succeed and care little about everyone else. He doesn't know about coaches who claim to be the greatest thing the Earth has seen since sliced bread, and aren't even worth what the high school is paying them. He doesn't know about the parents who can't stop talking about your immature Dad who made fun of their son or how you are so quiet when he is so obnoxious. When sports become too competitive, people tend to forget that the game was made to have fun.