Mounds of trouble?

Elsewhere, I have noted that my love of baseball does not indicate any great ability to play the game. So in this situation, I would have been one of the kids whiffing on 9-year-old Jericho Scott's pitches. Of course, I would have been whiffing on most everybody else's pitches, too, so perhaps that's besides the point.

To briefly recap, a Little League group in Connecticut tried to disband young Master Scott's team because his coach wouldn't pull him off the mound during a game. The other team walked off the field in protest of facing him. What's his problem? Is he unsportsmanlike? Does he hit batters? Is he greasing the ball with illegal substances? Parents of 9-year-old boys everywhere are well aware that Gaylord Perry had nothing on their sons when it comes to having unknown and potentially illegal substances smeared on their hands at most times. As well as their faces, shirts and in their pockets. Sometimes, during hay fever season, they produce their own spitball material right there on the mound!

Nope, none of these. Jericho's problem is that he throws fast and accurately. Even those uninterested in sports can probably see that this is not a problem, except for the other team, and therein lies the issue. According to the other teams, Jericho is too good so the coach shouldn't pitch him. Their young athletes are discouraged even before they step up to the plate and they psych themselves into believing they'll strike out. Whether or not the other young batters are any good, it's pretty obvious that their coaches leave a lot to be desired. Because, in the words of some great philosopher somewhere sometime, "Good ain't perfect."

And it's been awhile since I was nine (I also never played Little League, but the McKinley Elementary schoolyard was its own stern teacher), but I remember part of the coach's job was to encourage me that I could indeed do what I hadn't managed to do yet -- get a hit, score a goal, make a play or whatever. Because good ain't perfect, and the other team would make a mistake sometime, so why not when I was playing?

I don't know how I'd do coaching Little League, but I know this. If I had to try to inspire a group of young baseball players who were concerned about facing a dominating pitcher, I'd cue up the World Series from 20 years ago. Game 1, up comes Los Angeles Dodger Kirk Gibson to pinch hit. Two bum legs, hurt in the League Championship Series. Stomach flu. He nearly falls down every time he takes a practice swing. He's facing Oakland's Dennis Eckersley, one of the most dominant relief pitchers of the 1980s. That season, Eckersley had 45 saves and a 2.35 earned run average. He gave up only five home runs the whole season.

And of course he gave up one of them that night after getting ahead of the gimpy Gibson 0-2 and then falling back to 3-2. Gibson's homer won the game and the Dodgers won the series. Good ain't perfect.

This whole "don't pitch him, he's too good" claptrap teaches so many wrong things. The coach who walked his team off the field ought to be barred for life from working with young people, because he's taught them that the way to handle someone who's really good is not to try harder or practice or scout for weaknesses or perservere with grit and determination and take your lumps. No, the way you handle someone who's really good is to quit. Then you get together with some other folks and try to re-work the rules and conditions and rig the game so you can win retroactively (any parallels with any political conventions happening currently or within the next couple of weeks are purely unintentional. Honest).

That's a great lesson, New Haven parents. Too bad we won't be able to re-work time and such so that we can retroactively show your kids what character means.