A nine year old boy in Connecticut has been told he is simply ‘too good’ to pitch in their local youth baseball league.  Here is an excerpt from the story according to ESPN.com:

“The right-hander (Jericho Scott) has a fastball that tops out at about 40 mph. He throws so hard that the Youth Baseball League of New Haven told his coach that the boy could not pitch any more. When Jericho took the mound anyway last week, the opposing team forfeited the game, packed its gear and left, his coach said.”

I could somewhat understand this move if Jericho was hurling 40 mph fastballs at other kids and posed a risk to their health, but this simply is not the case.  His coach is quoted saying, “He’s never hurt any one. He’s on target all the time.”  Not to mention the fact that children playing at this level are required to wear helmets, so there goes that justification.  If the kids are not being put into any danger by his pitches, then what reasons could this youth league have for banning Jericho from pitching?

I think this is a case where the promotion of mediocrity is working to stifle Jericho’s talents.  It seems that over the past few decades America has been working really hard to ‘level the playing field’, if you will, with parents doing their best to ensure their children never have to face any sort of challenges.  This stellar parenting style has already resulted in a generation of useless, unmotivated, zombie-people, whom I refer to as my contemporaries, that somehow feel they are entitled to office jobs that pay $50+/hour.

Instead of lying to our kids and helping to foster the belief that they can be successful in everything without much effort, we need to let them know that it is alright to LOSE, and show them the virtues of learning from loss.  Letting your kid leave a game because they do not want to face a skilled pitcher teaches them nothing, and enabling them to act in this sort of manner is an unacceptable behavior for a parent.  Parents with this mentality might as well preface their playground visits with, “Don’t worry Charlie, if there are some kids that can run faster than you, or climb the slide better than you at the park today, we will just go home and play Wii”.

What kinds of things do parents think they are setting their kids up for later in life by always leading them down the easy road?  How do you think they will react when they actually do fail at something you could not protect them from?  It’s any wonder China is going to be taking us over in the next few years.  Our kids are in public schools where teachers teach to the test, where no child is being left behind because we are catering the curriculum to the slowest kid, where the games have no score, and every child is presented with a trophy at the end of the year just for showing up.

I am not a parent, and I would obviously not take pleasure in seeing my child sitting on the sidelines crying because Bobby Jo pitched balls to fast for him to hit, but I most certainly would not let him pack up his things and leave because he thought it was just ‘too hard’ for him.  Sometimes we all have to step up to the plate and bat, even if we are scared a little. Our world is going to be a sad place indeed if all of our kids are socialized into believing that it’s acceptable to walk away from a challenge.

I am hopeful that some of the more intelligent parents in New Haven will stand up to protest the disbanding of Jericho’s team, although judging by their past behavior, it does not seem very likely.  The parents that supported the removal of Jericho from the mound are citing “safety reasons” behind their decision, but judging by Jericho’s accuracy and the fact that any sport could be considered dangerous, it would seem that “safety reasons”  actually translates into “the preservation of our children’s egos”.

August 26th, 2008 | Freelance Writing, News, Realpolitik, Natural Disasters