The Madness or what Happened to Kid Sports?

Used to be you just played baseball or soccer of football. There was Little League and Pony League and the Majors but after that you played for a school. If you are a parent then you know what has come to fill in the gap for the passionate sport parent who doesn't get enough time with their child. The Travel Sports. Question. What cost about two thousand dollars, sucks up half the year, and puts you in the same league with every man who did not get his fill of high school or college sports or worse yet believed he was overlooked as a possible major league contender?These overgrown athletes can find succor in the twisted halls of Travel Sports.

I love spending time with my kids and I coached for seven years, but the fun, the joy of a child playing sports was sucked right out when we entered the realm of Travel Baseball. Suddenly there was no joy in Mudville. Win or lose the games had become deadly serious. Parents agonized over defeats and critiqued the wins. Coaches screamed and hollered over calls and boys of twelve were reduced to tears after coaches benched them for an error or a loss where the boys shamed themselves. Its all so overblown and out of line that we have to wonder who started this madness of sham professional athletics for boys and girls.

Only our times could generate the kind of entitlement that would translate to grown men wearing custom made uniforms and traveling thousands of miles to have twelve years old play a game I used to play in the streets. Times change. Yes Yes Yes...everyone plays travel now. But that kind of major league competition does not produce games where kids can learn. It produces neurotic parents juiced on winning at any cost and children who learn less about the game and more about parents funneling every bit of sublimated stress into a game that should be on par with playing catch in the backyard.

But we live in a time when everything is overblown. So it is not surprising that kids sports are the latest casualty of the generation that produced helicopter parents and the self satisfying mantra of hope I die before I get old. So to everyone who thinks I know nothing of the joys of organized travel sports and the excellence that can come from intense competition and the bonding that occurs when groups of parents and their children travel thousands of miles together to arrive at some field in some distant city--I say,as my father told me long ago when I lost in Little League--it is only a game. Lighten up guys.

The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have
www.williamhazelgrove.com

A Night at Wrigley

You get there and of course you need a hotdog and a beer. The best stand has the grilled onions and there is a line but you wait. The Budweiser is cold and tastes like ballpark beer...slightly metallic. A bag of peanuts and now you are on your way. The Cubs have not been doing so well so your thirteen dollar tickets are no longer relevant. There are many places to sit and no need to go into the nosebleed sections. So you plop down along the third base line and watch the Cubs warm up.

The rain has blown off and the sky has cleared and it is blue toward the lake. The honor guard is lining up for the National Anthem and the players have their hats off as some guy belts out the Star Spangled Banner. And he really lets it all fly on the final verse and everyone goes nuts and then you sit down and someone shouts: Play BALL. So you finish your hotdog and drink your beer and start cracking peanuts as the Cubs look like they might actually beat the Brewers.

There are some Brewers fans around you who are mostly quiet in the sea of Cub jerseys. And you pick out the lifers the ones who live in the city around the stadium. And the guys who sell the hotdogs and beers and are probably pushing sixty. Everyone in the park is an amazing testament to the national pastime to the old ladies in their Cub hats and the solitary fan scoring quietly by himself to the young girls in the tight Cub tank tops.

And the rain comes and they stop the game and you watch them roll out the tarp. An amazing orchestrated ballet really. And you sit there with everyone for an hour and watch the rain and lightning but you don't care. You are sitting in the middle of the greatest city in the world in one of the last great old ball parks. And the rain does stop and the players hit the field. Seventh Inning stretch comes and you sing with  thousands of other people Take Me Out to The Ball Park.

And then it is over and you are on the train headed back out. The Cub Fans are rowdy and then asleep and everyone is winding down. The rain has come back as you leave the train and walk toward your car. And you think, sometimes...life does deliver.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have