So that kid from the Bronx, New York, Little League team was 14.
That explains the 70-mile-per-hour fastball. And the dazed look and shaking knees of his 11 and 12-year-old opponents.
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His parents and coaches should be ashamed, as should anyone else who was associated with the charade. They should be embarrassed for taking Little League baseball so seriously.
But before vilifying the team from the Bronx, let’s not let the eventual Little League World Series finalist, a team from Florida, completely off the hook.
After one inning that I watched on ESPN, the television cameras focused on the team’s head coach who was panic-stricken, explaining to one of his players that he was having trouble “stealing signs” from the other team’s catcher.
“Stealing signs” is not necessarily against the rules of Little League baseball – but as a practice it’s far from sportsmanlike. In the Major Leagues, get caught doing it and you’re likely to find a 95-mile-per-hour fastball grazing your chin.
Apparently these particular kids are being taught that it better to take a short cut to get one-up on the competition, than working harder by taking extra batting practice or fielding some extra ground balls.
None of this should come as much of a surprise — not in an age of soccer parents screaming for five and six-year-olds to score a goal or when reports of actual fights between parents and coaches at youth hockey games are not uncommon.
Nor is any of this new.
Here’s my most vivid memory from my days of playing Little League baseball – about 25 years ago.
I am nine or 10, it’s a weeknight and my team is playing in a special playoff game – the winner of which will move on to play in a citywide championship series. The team we are playing against is expected to win the game, but somehow we take them into extra innings. Our coach must have sensed that we were wearing down or that the other team’s better players were scheduled to bat the next inning. Suddenly he decides it’s getting too dark. The coach of the other team can’t believe it. The coaches and the umpire argue. At one point some parents have to calm the coaches down, restrain them from going after one another. The argument goes on – and on.
Soon, it is too dark to play. The city series starts the next day so we have to flip a coin to see who wins our special playoff game. We win the coin flip, but lose the next day in the first game of the city series.
In thinking back, I’m glad we lost in that city series. We didn’t deserve to be there in the first place. Instead of learning whether we had it in us to pull off an upset, we all learned that taking a short cut didn’t really do us any good in the long run.
So what’s this all got to do with business?
Not that much, I hope.
We can only wish that kids these days are resilient enough to shake off the mixed messages we send them. But we hear a lot of talk about the need for businesses to attract skilled workers and we know just how valuable a dedicated worker can be to a company. Today’s kids aren’t learning the value of hard work when they see adults fudge a birth certificate, or come to blows at an ice rink.
And they certainly aren’t learning anything by “stealing signs” and short-cutting their way to a win.
