Sportsmanship.
I give you Mr. Helpful on the subject of Sportsmanship:
The father who stands up at his eight year old kid’s Little League baseball game and screams at the umpires, screams at the coach and screams at his own kid is not a “bad sport”. He’s an asshole. Which means he isnt just like that at the game…he’s like that no matter where he goes. He’s the guy who cuts into line at the grocery store. He’s the guy that gets into a fistfight over a goddamn pack of cigarettes. He’s the guy who knocks over anyone in his path on his way to grab the last $19 DVD player at Walmart on “Black Friday”. No well intentioned, feel good study is going to change this guy’s behavior. About the only thing that might work is to give the silly bastard a swift kick to the nuts twenty times a day for the next ten years. Then, and only then, he might soften his behavior and treat the rest of the world with even a semblance of respect. (Read the whole thing)
Years ago, my band was playing weekends at a local saloon and, for one reason or another, I had packed up my drums and left them locked up in a storeroom at the place so that I could pick them up later in the week,
When I arrived at the saloon, there was a meeting being held in the large room where the band played on the weekends. It was a meeting of about eight or nine men sitting around a long table. When I arrived (they couldn’t see me by the nearby storeroom), they were in the middle of a huge screaming match. They were pounding on tables, accusing one another of bad faith and downright cheating. There was lots of finger pointing and cursing. It appeared to me that, at any minute, a brawl was about to break out.
My initial assumption was that this was perhaps a union meeting of some kind, or perhaps even a political or business meeting, where tempers can sometimes flare up.
Wrong.
It turned out that these guys were the local Little League Coaches and what they were fighting about in a most unpleasant way was that year’s player draft. Who would get which players for his team was the issue about which they were carrying on like lunatics and appeared to be close to fisticuffs.
Mr. Helpful is right. Assholes.
Wow. I was talking to some Little League Coaches once who said they looked at the pictures of the Moms on the driver’s licenses and picked the kids with the Hot Moms. No joke. It happened. Although he may have been joking… he didn’t seem like it.
Comment by Bou — December 21, 2005 @ 11:44 pm
The time my son spent in Little League was a frightening study in human nature. *shudders* I think the Moms were worse than the coachs.
Let’s not limit it to Little League either. My kids played a variety of sports and I saw the same behavior in each.
Comment by rita — December 22, 2005 @ 5:07 am
My oldest son started T-ball at 5 years old. At the FIRST game a parent became so abusive to the umpire (an employee of the local boys club that hosted the league) that the police had to be called. They could not calm him down and he was hauled away in handcuffs. All because he thought the umpire missed a call at first base. What a proud moment that had to be for his 5 year old son.
Comment by hoosierboy — December 22, 2005 @ 8:39 am
I coached soccer for my then 5 year old and was amazed at the conduct of some of the parents at the game. I even took a timeout once to talk to “my” parents reminding them that the kids were just 5, and that if the adults couldn’t act like adults, they wouldn’t have a coach any longer.
Comment by Sgt Hook — December 22, 2005 @ 8:51 am
We live right next to the soccer fields, and when the windows are open you can hear the rotten things being said by the parents to each other and to the kids. Yep, he’s right- Assholes.
I was lucky in my younger’s first year of “instructional level” (4-5 yr olds) soccer that I only saw one parent who came close. I expect that parent would be lots of fun in future years, if this is the behavior level at this age.
Comment by Sharon GR — December 22, 2005 @ 9:28 am