Poor Sport

I’ve never wanted to be the President of the United States. I value my privacy, don’t like people second-guessing my every decision, and have no desire to leave my comfortable red house to go live in that pretentious white one.

While I wouldn’t want to be president, I find the idea of being a dictator immensely appealing. I’d be a benevolent dictator. People would be happy under my rule. I’d not only make the trains run on time, I would give people eight weeks off a year, a generous income, and universal healthcare. I would treat people with dignity, uphold equal rights for all, and make sure every young person who wanted to attend college, could. Not every young person wants to, so if they decided to be a cabinetmaker or mechanic, that would be fine with me. In my little empire, a good mechanic would be as important as a good doctor.

Most dictators have long lists of forbidden activities, but I would forbid only one thing—youth sports leagues. I would absolutely and comprehensively prohibit any adult from organizing, directing, or otherwise arranging any youth or children’s sports. Adults violating this law would lose their eight weeks of vacation.

Like anyone who nurses a grudge against something, I remember the exact moment when I came to despise organized youth sports. My son was 4 years old and had joined a soccer team, coached by a man who aspired to become the Bob Knight of youth soccer. At the first game, the coach kicked the water cooler and screamed at the preschoolers for not understanding the subtleties of soccer. To my everlasting shame, I did not take my son and go home. There are three endeavors that cause us to lose all reason: sports, religion, and nationalism. Under their banners, we not only tolerate idiocy, we reward it. At the end of the season, he was named Coach of the Year.

I have relived that game many times in my mind, wishing I had gone to the coach, grasped his thick head firmly in my hands, stared him squarely in the eyes, and said in slow, clear words, as one does with any simpleton, “This is not about you.”

Predictably, this experience soured my son on organized sports. He did develop a fondness for unorganized sports, and spent thousand of happy hours in our side yard, moving from one sporting season to the next—baseball, basketball, football—in the company of his peers, bickering, negotiating, and sweating their way through one game after another.

My office window overlooks their arena,and their games have been a pleasant distraction these past 10 years. I watch them choose sides, not giving two cents about preserving someone’s self-esteem. The competent players are chosen first, the weaker players last. At face value, this age-old exercise seems cruel, but through it children learn talent is not equally distributed. I know people who’ve not learned that until their first job out of college, when they are shocked to discover not everyone gets the same raise, that in the real world trophies aren’t handed out just for playing.

With no adult overseeing their activities, my sons and their friends have learned to settle their disputes. Roughly, at first, with shoves and name-calling; but eventually with tact and wit, negotiating their way through thorny patches with the finesse of French diplomats. I played two years of Little League and 10 years of sandlot baseball. Little League taught me that an adult would always be on hand to settle disputes. Sandlot baseball in Kevin Barry’s front yard taught me to work out my differences so the game could go on, teams and egos intact.

Here are two true-life examples of youth sports run amok: