Kid Sports Gone Bad

My sons freshman baseball team now wears T shirts with magic marker numbers on the back. They are no longer worthy of wearing their jerseys. You might think this punishment was done because the players fought with other teams and showed bad sportsmanship. Maybe they were just sore losers. But the truth is actually stranger, they had their jerseys taken away because they could not get along with each other. The competition among players on the team became so nasty the coaches took away their jerseys and their hats and now they play in white T shirts with their names scrawled in magic marker. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so pathetic.

My son is a freshman and he plays on the B Team. Here is the kicker, it is the A Team that had their jerseys taken away. The "best" players are the ones who threw tantrums, swore, called each other names, argued on and off the field and demonstrated such bad qualities the coaches deemed them not worthy of wearing the school letters. And you wonder where this comes from. What would possess kids to act so badly that coaches basically take away their right to represent their highschool?  It comes from us.

Everyone has to be a star. Everyone has to be an MLB player. We have deemed it so and our sports programs and ethos reflect this now. There is  no longer playing for the love of the game. High powered and expensive Travel Leagues starting around age ten obliterated any sense of perspective. Teams are expected to win at a very early age. How early? My daughter is nine and plays softball. The game was tied. Everyone was freezing from spring in Chicago. It was getting dark. We had played our allotted two hours. The opposing coach came up and said we had to keep playing. He whipped out a rule book showing that a new inning had to be started if we had not reached eight o'clock. Why? Because he wanted to win.

You may think that is over the top, that a man in his fifties wants frozen nine year old girls to keep playing so he can have the satisfaction of winning a girls softball game. Pathetic is a word that comes to mind. But sadly it is standard now. It is the way kid sports is played now and the kids pick up on the adults mania. To win at all costs is the mantra handed down to kids wearing expensive uniforms that make them resemble mini MLB players. And so we have moms fighting in the stands. Dads fighting in the parking lots. Kids fighting each other to the point they have their jerseys taken away.

It is our win at any cost any way culture. Better to sleep with a porn star and publish a book than toil away and provide for your family now. Better to raise hell and try and look good on your baseball team so some mythical scout will see you than to play in the spirit of teamwork. In our revved up competive American culture we have become the man who wants to win a nine year old girls softball game at any cost. Maybe we all should wear T shirts now with magic marker numbers to get back our sense of perspective.  Or maybe just a big L on the back.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man Blasts off July 26th

Straight Pride in my Son's School and Free Speech

The response from my first essay on the Straight Pride T Shirts http://open.salon.com/blog/william_elliott/2010/11/15/straight_pride_at_my_sons_high_school with the death threatening Bible quote on the back at a my son's high school brought so many interesting responses that I thought I would take it on one more time. Of course the whole issue boils down to our concept of Free Speech. The lawyers who responded make the case that these students with thier death threat T shirts are covered under the right of Free Speech and should be allowed to wear their shirts regardless of how offensive. Others did not agree and this is the jumping off point.

Fag is a word used when I was in school and it was uttered  mightily and in secret. No one would have dared to put the word on a T shirt and they would have gotten about as far as the entrance and then it would have been a short hop skip and a jump to the Principals office sans T Shirt. Now there would have been no open outcry over the T shirt wearers right of Free Speech. No one would have bought it then and frankly no one considered students had any rights at all. They were students in high school and expected to operate under the social mores and rules that govern the school.

Not so much today. We hear more and more of Free Speech rights with the individual trumping the common good. The common good. There is no law book delineating this point but we operate most of our lives under the mores and restraints of the common good. We would  not tolerate Klans Men in our schools going to classes in their sheets and hoods.We would not tolerate White Pride T shirts with a Death to All Blacks on the back. These would be quickly deemed unacceptable for the school, the community and ultimately the common good. Individual Free Speech rights would take it on the chin.

The sad truth is the White Pride T shirts complete with biblical death threat are nothing different that picking out the effeminate boy and calling him a fag. Both actions are coercive, intimidating, and trample on Free Speech Rights of the individual being targeted. As others have pointed out such threats are downright dangerous and if sanctioned by the school give the student permission to take his T shirt mantra a little further. Certainly the school saw the Death Threat component of the T Shirt with a zero tolerance view in mind and had the students black out the quote with a marker.

Again the lawyers will object. There is all sorts of legal precedence giving these students the right to wear their T shirts under the protection of Free Speech. But this should not be the last word. The community does have rights and if we don't operate under a common sense if not decency umbrella then we would all be in court twenty four seven. To say nothing that this school has thirteen and fourteen year olds, children, and I would ask who protects their rights against the threatening incantations of the wearers of Leviticus? Ultimately, we have to decide what type of world we want to live in and what type of world we will accept. Hate in any form should be cast out and made the pariah. So far the school has spoken for the will of the people and maybe the common good.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in January
http://www.williamhazelgrove.blogspot.com/