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Parents rumble at kids baseball game


F250

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Legalizing weed is supposed to make the populace mellow but not these Colorado parents. They must have opted for the Four Loko on this day.

 

"Parents and coaches were unhappy with a call made by the 13-year-old umpire during Saturday's game, according to the Lakewood Police Department. They then stormed the field and began punching each other as the 7-year-old players looked on."

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/19/us/parents-brawl-little-league-baseball-trnd/index.html

 

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I reffed kids games in hs.  I had to call the police on more than one occasion., and that required me walking to a pay phone.  Crazy parents aren’t a new thing, they just get more publicity these days because everyone has a video camera in their pocket.

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I fucking loathe parents who act like petulant assholes towards youth sports / teenage umpires. It’s a fucking child’s game. Get a grip.

Recently had an opposing coach (9yo kid pitch) berate a teenage umpire and then leave, trying to take his son (the pitcher) with him. Kid stayed. Dad tried to come back later. Teenage ump asked me what to do. I told him this was his field and if he didn’t want the guy back to tell him to gtfo. Which is exactly what he did.

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18 minutes ago, BlueGreySky said:

I fucking loathe parents who act like petulant assholes towards youth sports / teenage umpires. It’s a fucking child’s game. Get a grip.

Recently had an opposing coach (9yo kid pitch) berate a teenage umpire and then leave, trying to take his son (the pitcher) with him. Kid stayed. Dad tried to come back later. Teenage ump asked me what to do. I told him this was his field and if he didn’t want the guy back to tell him to gtfo. Which is exactly what he did.

THIS!   And if you have been around the pay to play leagues ( travel ball), it's fricken worse.     The Moms are probably worse than the Dads around here and when my kids played league ball, a few of them got thrown out of the ball park.   My gosh I miss the days when my kids played youth sports but I don't miss the shitty attitudes of some of the parents.  Especially the parents who thought their little Johnny was the next MLB prospect and would trash other kids when they made errors or struck out.  But when their little Johnny screwed up, it was either someone else's mistake, the Umps or the coaches.  Funny thing is a few of these kids that fit this profile probably had thousands of dollars spent on travel ball and private lessons over several years and not one of them played an inning of post high school baseball.  It's like they could have paid for several semesters of college with all that cash going into these cash making  machines call select ball. One of the greatest scams in youth sports today, IMO.  

I'm glad my 13 year old daughter is in band.  

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I used to go to my kid’s soccer games and utterly hated having to hear some parents constantly barking. It’s not about you, dipshit; it’s about the kids practicing sports and having a good time at it. Get a life.

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I never paid any attention to soccer prior to my son getting involved.  I figured the parents would be pretty chill.  I was wrong.

He plays a pretty high level of select travel now, and some of the things I've seen are just embarrassing.  Refs booting parents (more often than not Moms), coaches booting parents (including our coach tossing one of our own), kids cussing out refs.  A month or so ago a parent for the other team in a regional tournament started in on the center ref maybe a minute or two after the match started.  His go-to insult for a blown offsides call was that the ref was racist.  (The ref was white, as are probably half the kids on our team.)  Kind of a big leap there.

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1 hour ago, Dr. Beeper said:

I coach my son in football and basketball (used to in baseball too). He’s 9, and he rocks (wanna check tape?), and I rock. He plays on about 5-6 teams every Fall / Spring. I’ve seen deplorable parent behavior - always on the other side. Except for one incident this winter in basketball with a parent that I found out about after the fact and apologized for. 

My favorite story is the time our flag football team as kindergarteners was so thoroughly dominating a first grade team that at the end of the game, the opposing meathead coach instructed his boys to lateral the ball to his fat son on a kickoff. Fat son ran down the field and intentionally ran into 3 of our boys, seeking contact, knocking them down. Again, flag football. 16-year old Ref throws a flag and calls the game. Coach goes ape shit. Literally unhinged. F-bombs in front of all kids. I’ve never seen anything like it. I tell our boys (2 of whom are crying) to go to the sideline. The 16-year old ref begins antagonizing the other coach, who is 40, about 6’2” 250. I have to get in between them. Tell the kid “Report this tomorrow. Now, turn around and walk to your car, and do not say another word to this guy. You’re about to get your ass kicked.”  This guys wife and other moms join in on berating this kid. It was a terrible scene. All over 6-year old flag football. 

yeah, well, that prick teenager ref shouldn’t have called the game. *sniff*

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I reffed for 5 years (soph hs-soph college).   Mainly basketball with a lot of baseball, and some softball and soccer.  I can’t imagine there are many better paying part time jobs for hs kids, but you earn every fucking penny.  In the early 90’s it started at $15/game,  and when I started reffing older kids when I was in college, I made as much as $35/game.  In hs it was also cash money, no taxes. I could write a book about the ridiculousness I witnessed during that time.  I will say this, it teaches you a lot about dealing with people. 

 

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I volunteered to be a LL umpire for a season once. ONCE! Even agreed to donate the pay (think it was $8 a game) back to the league when I signed up. I didn't realize why they were begging for umps. 2 games we had to be escorted off the field by cops. 1 game I got pulled over by the home team cops and thrown in jail for 4 hours over a nonexistent traffic warrant. /csb

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2 hours ago, Nueces River Rat said:

THIS!   And if you have been around the pay to play leagues ( travel ball), it's fricken worse.     The Moms are probably worse than the Dads around here and when my kids played league ball, a few of them got thrown out of the ball park.   My gosh I miss the days when my kids played youth sports but I don't miss the shitty attitudes of some of the parents.  Especially the parents who thought their little Johnny was the next MLB prospect and would trash other kids when they made errors or struck out.  But when their little Johnny screwed up, it was either someone else's mistake, the Umps or the coaches.  Funny thing is a few of these kids that fit this profile probably had thousands of dollars spent on travel ball and private lessons over several years and not one of them played an inning of post high school baseball.  It's like they could have paid for several semesters of college with all that cash going into these cash making  machines call select ball. One of the greatest scams in youth sports today, IMO.  

I'm glad my 13 year old daughter is in band.  

It's THE biggest scam & it's ruining youth sports.

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1 hour ago, jimmyjazz said:

I never paid any attention to soccer prior to my son getting involved.  I figured the parents would be pretty chill.  I was wrong.

I only have experience baseball (lots), soccer, and flag football. Generally the soccer parents were pretty chill, but by far the worst parents I've seen were soccer parents. FWIW.

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This shit is really getting out of hand.  I don't know what the fuck happened a few years ago but you can't find parents in Texas who don't think their little slugger is going to a Div. I program to play a big-time sport (football, baseball, basketball, maybe lacrosse).  It's not fucking happening, unless you're Somoan or Dominican.  Or a Dominican Somoan. 

And so this shit starts when they're fucking 9 years old.  The "traveling" teams, the elite leagues, the extra coaching, the thousands of dollars in high-tech gear, the private clinics, the premiere league "invitations", etc.  All because people think they're gonna make it all back when Junior gets that scholarship to Texas or Clemson.  First of all accept your child is good at their sport, but not exceptional.  Learn how Title IX works, most of the sports Junior can play at an elite level can't pay out a full ride.  And quit starting fights and being an asshole to the coaches, to the umpires, to the other parents, to the volunteering.  It's not worth the partial books scholarship to Montana State your kid is gonna somehow fuckup anyway because you never set a good example of how to treat people.  

Even if you're convinced your little guy is gonna play wide receiver or shooting guard in the Big XII someday soon...and you're willing to go fisticuffs with the little league commissioner over it...remember this at least:  Each year in this country, the amount of academic scholarship and grant money that goes unused totals in the several billions of dollars.  10-digit number.  Meanwhile, the unused athletic scholarship money barely registers in the millions of  dollars.  10 billion:10 million.  You are doing your child a 1000x more powerful service pulling them from a month of athletics in high school to just scour the nation for scholarships, foundations, and grant programs and then apply for those in force.  Plus, nobody starts brawls at the 1:1 interview panels for those kinda things.  Or shit, maybe they have.  That would be a fun youtube channel, some kinda worldstar for chess team moms.  

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3 hours ago, BrazilHorn said:

At Post Oak we had to attend a meeting on sportsmanship and they showed this video. It’s always stuck with me as I guarantee you parents would hate being treated at their work the way they treat their kids at sporting events. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ReKw6J5tK2c

 

3 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

These parents are counting on Jr earning a 10% scholarship to play baseball at Div 3 NE Nebraska Tech. how dare you call that a strike in his U11 game. You’re ruining his life.

 

31 minutes ago, Lobo said:

This shit is really getting out of hand.  I don't know what the fuck happened a few years ago but you can't find parents in Texas who don't think their little slugger is going to a Div. I program to play a big-time sport (football, baseball, basketball, maybe lacrosse).  It's not fucking happening, unless you're Somoan or Dominican.  Or a Dominican Somoan. 

And so this shit starts when they're fucking 9 years old.  The "traveling" teams, the elite leagues, the extra coaching, the thousands of dollars in high-tech gear, the private clinics, the premiere league "invitations", etc.  All because people think they're gonna make it all back when Junior gets that scholarship to Texas or Clemson....

Yeah people don't understand that their kid has a minuscule chance for a scholarship that's, far more likely than not, worth less than the money they're spending on the travel team, the travel, the extra coaching, etc. They also don't understand that even if little Johnny or Janie is all-world from age 6-12, nobody knows what they'll be like relative to the other kids once puberty kicks in. It's unreal how many of those little all-stars get left in the dust by other kids weren't that great but then hit puberty  and got really good, really quick. The hard-working kid with less talent can beat the talented kid who doesn't work that hard, but the talented kid who works his or her ass off will beat both of those kids every time.

I've been coaching for a few years now, & I just want my kid to have fun with his buddies, learn and appreciate the game, learn how to practice to get better at something, and if it's what he wants, have a reasonable chance to play H.S. ball (which is a longshot because he tracks to Bowie, where a lot of good players never get a real shot even though they'd be some of the better players at a lot of other schools). College? MLB? Pffft. My kid's good, but damn - I've said it before and it's really worthy of another topic - most people just don't really appreciate how good pro athletes or even "just" college or lower level pros are. There are thousands upon thousands of baseball players nobody's ever heard of that would make even the typical 'good' HS player look like a complete chump.

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The same thing happens for UIL academic competitions. Parents wanting to confront judges about how some thing subjective like 3rd grade storytelling. 

I hate zero tolerance policies but we need to go in that direction for youth sports. If you have a problem with a ref/ump you go through a formal process to file a complaint. If you have a problem with a coach, you take that up on your own time. We now have a shortage of referees despite despite decent pay because of this. Yell at the ref once and you’re done for the season.

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FYI some of y'all might like the Little League thread over in baseball. Lots of good stuff in there, including a lot of stuff about asshole parents, coaches, travel/select ball etc.

 

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12 hours ago, conVINCEd said:

I reffed for 5 years (soph hs-soph college).   Mainly basketball with a lot of baseball, and some softball and soccer.  I can’t imagine there are many better paying part time jobs for hs kids, but you earn every fucking penny.  In the early 90’s it started at $15/game,  and when I started reffing older kids when I was in college, I made as much as $35/game.  In hs it was also cash money, no taxes. I could write a book about the ridiculousness I witnessed during that time.  I will say this, it teaches you a lot about dealing with people. 

 

Spot on.

I used to ump what we called "The Mexican League" up in Gunter when I was in college.  It was a North Texas men's league, and no one from the FtW chapter of umpires wanted to drive to Gunter, so I always got the games even though I wasn't in the chapter.  Gunter's team was all migrant farm workers who didn't speak English.  $70 to do a doubleheader on Sundays.  Good times.  One time the other umpire made a bad call, and a lady in the crowd really let him have it in Spanish.  I spoke just enough to understand, and I busted out laughing.  She saw that, so she started yelling at me in Spanish, mostly good-natured stuff.  When the game was over, she brought me those badass horchuta cookies and beer ( I think I was 19), and did that every game for the rest of the season.  

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23 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

Spot on.

I used to ump what we called "The Mexican League" up in Gunter when I was in college.  It was a North Texas men's league, and no one from the FtW chapter of umpires wanted to drive to Gunter, so I always got the games even though I wasn't in the chapter.  Gunter's team was all migrant farm workers who didn't speak English.  $70 to do a doubleheader on Sundays.  Good times.  One time the other umpire made a bad call, and a lady in the crowd really let him have it in Spanish.  I spoke just enough to understand, and I busted out laughing.  She saw that, so she started yelling at me in Spanish, mostly good-natured stuff.  When the game was over, she brought me those badass horchuta cookies and beer ( I think I was 19), and did that every game for the rest of the season.  

Ever go to a game in Mexico, Puerto Rico, etc? It's a very different experience, and it's awesome. And the men in the crowd are typically pretty quiet. It's the women that are brutal on the umps and esp on the players. I mean absolutely brutal.

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Maybe little kids shouldn't play organized sports. Maybe they should just play with other kids and decide themselves what they want to play. Baseball? Fine. No adults. Freeze tag? Fine. No adults.

Playing sandlot sports was fun for the playing. Who remembers what team won? You learned to get along and negotiate and cooperate without a coach or umpire or parent watching.

I was lucky that there were so many kids around when I was one. Some kind of game of football, baseball, tag, etc. could almost always be cooked up.

My best memory of those young days was a mix of older and younger kids exploring the fields at the edge of the neighborhood. One guy had a pellet gun. We found a dead rabbit. We heard and saw lots of birds. I knew maybe one other kid in the group. It was an adventure.

Maybe step away from hyper-organized activities. Let the kids live their play desires not their parents'.

 

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13 hours ago, conVINCEd said:

I reffed for 5 years (soph hs-soph college).   Mainly basketball with a lot of baseball, and some softball and soccer.  I can’t imagine there are many better paying part time jobs for hs kids, but you earn every fucking penny.  In the early 90’s it started at $15/game,  and when I started reffing older kids when I was in college, I made as much as $35/game.  In hs it was also cash money, no taxes. I could write a book about the ridiculousness I witnessed during that time.  I will say this, it teaches you a lot about dealing with people. 

 

My teenager has been an umpire and 7on7 ref for the past several years. Baseball pays the best between 30-50 dollars a game but it is definitely work.

He says the secret is tuning out the parents and vanishing the second the game is over. Never linger around the field after a game.

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When I was a kid, the main problem in youth sports was the loudmouth Dad that was super-hard on his kid and vocal about it.  One in particular.  The only threat of confrontation or violence were the other Dads that thought he was a jackhole and wanted to say something./whiteprivilege I guess, or maybe just fucking civilized

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1 hour ago, Dr. Beeper said:

Couple of things. It starts a LOT sooner than 9. And, there are plenty of white kids that get football, baseball and lax scholarships, and in fact I think my 9-year old could get any of those. Believing that and training for it, if the kid is into it, while managing a kid’s time spent on a particular activity (leading them away from it at times) - there’s nothing wrong with that. There is something terribly wrong with parent behavior exhibited in the video. 

I agree.  My point on just to the scholarship issue is still two-fold... yes as you said “  plenty “   Of white kids still get scholarships to play baseball and lacrosse and football.    But as a proportion of how many white kids play those sports even at “elite levels “,  it is so insanely small that even pursuing it makes one question the mental state of the parent.  But I do like what you said about if this child is really into it and enjoys it and gets some life lessons and friendships out of it, then by all means pursue it with great zest and fervor.  

 Second point is simply math.   A parent might spend $10-$20,000 a year on travel coaching equipment lessons clinics more travel, And then their child does not get a full ride to a major program,  and the parent gets angry and fights at the games of the younger siblings.    I would encourage America to do the math ,  let your kids play in low stakes public leagues   Save that $20,000 a year put it into a 529 plan ,  and when Junior doesn’t go pro in basketball you have enough money saved up for him to do both undergrad and law at Yale University.   Other Than a one in 1 million chance at a full ride for football or basketball,  parents need to understand for their boys that title IX will make sure that they get nothing more than maybe books and a couple of thousand dollars in a year In tuition  assistance and that is absolutely at best. 

 Perhaps they were just told that by a college athletics professional just minutes prior to this brawl.  

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1 hour ago, F250 said:

My teenager has been an umpire and 7on7 ref for the past several years. Baseball pays the best between 30-50 dollars a game but it is definitely work.

He says the secret is tuning out the parents and vanishing the second the game is over. Never linger around the field after a game.

I've told this story, but I'm gonna tell it again.

I started umpiring youth league games when I was in HS.  My supervisor loved me because I knew the rule book backwards and forwards, and I needed money, so I was always willing to do games.  The week I was graduating, I specifically told him to not schedule me or even think of calling me to work on Thursday because I had a graduation party to go to.  Sure enough, my phone rang on Wednesday, and he's begging me to work a game Thursday  because someone cancelled -- "It's a single Pee Wee League game at 6, so you'll be done by 8 and you can still go to the party."  I told him to call everyone else on the list before he called me back.  And yeah, he called back, and yeah I took it.

As some of y'all know, the problem with Pee Wee League games is that they're always 22-18 games where you only play 3 innings because of time limit, because they're nothing but walks and walks and walks.  

So I show up to the game determined to be done before 8pm so I could get to this party.  And I told both coaches at the pregame meeting, "Listen, I'm going to have the biggest strike zone in the history of baseball tonight -- you tell your kids to come up to the plate ready to swing the bat." 

After about an hour, we were heading into the 6th inning and the score was 5-3 because if I thought the batter could have reached the pitch with his bat, I called it a strike.  Then one of the pitchers just completely lost it and couldn't throw a pitch anywhere near the plate, so we had about 15 walks in a row and that final inning took about an hour.  And when the final out was made, I turned and started to run to my car.

Except there was an entire gauntlet of parents from both teams in my way.  And they were all wanting to shake my hand.  And they were saying things like, "That was the best game we've had all season" and "Can you umpire more of our games?"  

But I didn't get laid at the party that night.  :sadbanana

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I'm picturing you as the keg delivery guy-Ben- in "Dazed & Confused"......."Listen man, I thought I'd stop by a little early and expand the strikezone, see if anybody was home 'cause I got this little party action happenin' later tonight, if you know what I mean.  (pauses, reads the situation).....Welp, inconvenience for you.  Wrong little league game altogether."  

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3 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

Maybe little kids shouldn't play organized sports. Maybe they should just play with other kids and decide themselves what they want to play. Baseball? Fine. No adults. Freeze tag? Fine. No adults.

Playing sandlot sports was fun for the playing. Who remembers what team won? You learned to get along and negotiate and cooperate without a coach or umpire or parent watching.

I was lucky that there were so many kids around when I was one. Some kind of game of football, baseball, tag, etc. could almost always be cooked up.

My best memory of those young days was a mix of older and younger kids exploring the fields at the edge of the neighborhood. One guy had a pellet gun. We found a dead rabbit. We heard and saw lots of birds. I knew maybe one other kid in the group. It was an adventure.

Maybe step away from hyper-organized activities. Let the kids live their play desires not their parents'.

 

It's great until that weird clown shows up in the sewers.

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4 hours ago, Beau Vine said:

Spot on.

I used to ump what we called "The Mexican League" up in Gunter when I was in college.  It was a North Texas men's league, and no one from the FtW chapter of umpires wanted to drive to Gunter, so I always got the games even though I wasn't in the chapter.  Gunter's team was all migrant farm workers who didn't speak English.  $70 to do a doubleheader on Sundays.  Good times.  One time the other umpire made a bad call, and a lady in the crowd really let him have it in Spanish.  I spoke just enough to understand, and I busted out laughing.  She saw that, so she started yelling at me in Spanish, mostly good-natured stuff.  When the game was over, she brought me those badass horchuta cookies and beer ( I think I was 19), and did that every game for the rest of the season.  

I played on that Gunter team for a few years while in college. Good group of guys. 

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Obviously football and basketball are extreme long shots for almost every kid, especially gringos.  There's a bit of a different dynamic at play in some of the lesser sports, though.  My son wants to play soccer in college -- he's not looking for a D1 program like UNC or Duke, he'd be cool at Southwestern or some other small school -- and conversations with coaches at those schools have highlighted an important aspect of recruit-ability:  grades.  Their take has consistently been if a kid is a good athlete who basically knows how to play the game and they're pulling maybe 3.5 or so in HS, they'll probably latch on somewhere.  The risk is just way lower.  Is there value in that?  It probably depends on the kid.  Mine is fairly interested in education, and I could easily see him teaching HS and being part of the coaching staff as well.  A small school in Texas is prime for that path.

Edited by jimmyjazz
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14 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Obviously football and basketball are extreme long shots for almost every kid, especially gringos.  There's a bit of a different dynamic at play in some of the lesser sports, though.  My son wants to play soccer in college -- he's not looking for a D1 program like UNC or Duke, he'd be cool at Southwestern or some other small school -- and conversations with coaches at those schools have highlighted an important aspect of recruit-ability:  grades.  Their take has consistently been if a kid is a good athlete who basically knows how to play the game and they're pulling maybe 3.5 or so in HS, they'll probably latch on somewhere.  The risk is just way lower.  Is there value in that?  It probably depends on the kid.  Mine is fairly interested in education, and I could easily see him teaching HS and being part of the coaching staff as well.  A small school in Texas is prime for that path.

It's like this in baseball where they offer a partial scholarship with some academic money.  A lot of people don't understand that you need the grades and the athletic ability to be a college prospect.

If a teenager approaches the process by putting in the academic and athletic work, it's a win-win no matter what happens. My oldest had partial scholarship offers from several Southland Conference schools and a Sunbelt school for baseball. He ended getting a full ride on an Air Force scholarship and forgoing college baseball. For HS kids, grades will always open up more opportunities than athletics with the exception of the genetic statistical outliers.

 

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4 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

Maybe little kids shouldn't play organized sports. Maybe they should just play with other kids and decide themselves what they want to play. Baseball? Fine. No adults. Freeze tag? Fine. No adults.

Playing sandlot sports was fun for the playing. Who remembers what team won? You learned to get along and negotiate and cooperate without a coach or umpire or parent watching.

I was lucky that there were so many kids around when I was one. Some kind of game of football, baseball, tag, etc. could almost always be cooked up.

My best memory of those young days was a mix of older and younger kids exploring the fields at the edge of the neighborhood. One guy had a pellet gun. We found a dead rabbit. We heard and saw lots of birds. I knew maybe one other kid in the group. It was an adventure.

Maybe step away from hyper-organized activities. Let the kids live their play desires not their parents'.

 

I agree, but the problem is that (generally speaking) they just don't. Not anymore. They always have Fortnite or whatever other video game to occupy them when their parents aren't telling them to gtfo the house. And Youtube, and eleventy bazillion shows on demand. We had Beverly Hillbillies and Gilligan's Island. When there was nothing on tv or our parents kicked us out & we got bored, we could go get a baseball game together and be down at the church backstop playing within about 45 minutes. And even the kids that sucked had a general grasp of the game & could kinda play. Try that shit now. There are about 30 kids just on our 1-block long cul de sac, and I'd be shocked if my kids could get enough willing and/or able kids together in a 1 mile radius to form even one team.

Baseball was our Fortnite.

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