When Finishing First Is Different Than Winning

Parents are awful people.

Okay. Maybe not all of them. Certainly not Baby and me. But many, many are.

Now I suppose you want me to actually substantiate my claim.

This week, from AP reporter John Christoffersen, comes a story out of New Haven, CT, about Jericho Scott. Jericho Scott pitches for a baseball team. That is, he used to pitch for a baseball team. You see, Jericho Scott was banned from pitching, by his own league, because his pitches are too fast for the opposing hitters.

Did I mention that Jericho Scott is a nine-year-old little leaguer?

According to Peter Noble, attorney for the Youth Baseball League of New Haven, Jericho Scott pitches too fast (around 40 mph) for the level at which the rest of the league hits. From Christoffersen:

Noble acknowledged that Jericho had not beaned any batters in the co-ed league of 8- to 10-year-olds, but say parents expressed safety concerns.

League officials say they first told [Jericho's coach Wilfred] Vidro that the boy could not pitch after a game on Aug. 13. Jericho played second base the next game on Aug. 16. But when he took the mound Wednesday, the other team walked off and a forfeit was called.

Congratulations, parents of New Haven! You have plumbed a new and woeful depth. You have managed to ban one specific child from playing because he is superior to your entire lot of children, and you have done so by using your own children's safety as a shield for your inability to cope with the fact that someone else's kid is better than yours. Nice job by you. If the pitching ban on Jericho Scott stands, and if his team (with its 8-0 record) is disbanded and the other players are distributed to the remaining teams (which will happen, per league officials, as reported by Christoffersen), then know this:

Your children might end the season finishing first, but they will not be winners.

Parental claim substantiated? Excellent! Let's move on.

When I first heard this story on ESPN's Pardon the Interruption, I really wasn't surprised. In this bizarre era of youth athletics, where parents dictate that all games end in ties, and where parents insist that all players get trophies, and where parents physically attack referees (or opposing teams' players!), and where parents file lawsuits if their kids don't make the squad, why wouldn't parents do something like this, too?

I have been a personal witness to some of this embarrassing parental behavior, both as spectator and as coach. I used to think that the root of the problem was glory-by-proxy. With a child on the field, these parents, in their own minds, no longer needed to wallow in the history (revisionist or otherwise) of their own school-age athletic conquests. Instead, through use of procreation, coupled with negotiation, legislation, intimidation, litigation, or some combination (thereof), they could live a happy and vicarious existence and say, "Winning the big game is behind me now, but when my child achieves athletic greatness, so shall I achieve athletic greatness."

I have a news flash for you people. What you call negotiation, legislation, intimidation, or litigation, we call buffoonery. At those end-of-season gatherings - you know, the cookouts and pool parties and such, where we all share one last team hurrah before the calendar separates us for another year - we're not laughing with you; we're laughing at you. And when we see your child, we don't think, "Oh, there's Johnny with the great arm! Lucky kid!" We think, "Oy, there's Johnny with the crazy dad. Poor kid."

I thought I'd clue you in, because it's never too late for you to change.

Or perhaps it is too late. I read something else recently that leads me to believe that the "by-proxy" portion of "glory-by-proxy" is no longer necessary. (Sorry, child athletes. Your latest moment in the sun, no matter how dysfunctional it was, might have been your last.)

In a disturbing article in the Health section of The Washington Post (8/5/2008), writer Laura S. Jones tells a well-documented tale about the increased use in performance-enhancing drugs and other substances in amateur athletes. And by "amateur," I don't mean athletes in the amateur ranks on the path to, or even on the verge of, turning pro. I mean everyday neighborhood jocks: your friends, your neighbors, your relatives, even Larry from Accounting. One excerpt from Jones:

...experts say a growing number [of amateur athletes] are using painkillers, caffeine (in pill and standard liquid form), decongestants and asthma drugs to get an edge by increasing their energy and the flow of oxygen-carrying blood.

Those asthma drugs include inhalers, because really, injection and ingestion might not be fast enough; sometimes sucking it is the only way to go. But if these choices don't get the job done, here's another excerpt, quoting an athlete posting suggestions online:

"Just tell a doc you tried Tramadol [a prescription opiate] for back pain and it worked great. Then take it with caffeine 30 minutes before a race for a big boost."

Is this what people have become? Rather than accept the fact that they cannot compete at the desired level in Sport A, and either adjust their expectations or move on to Sport B, they instead pump their bodies with Sudafed, Red Bull, and a toot? For what? To finish 23rd instead of 35th? To finish 4th instead of 6th? To have bragging rights and maybe a trophy? How keen.

Once people decide to negotiate, legislate, intimidate, or litigate their own conscience, once they decide that it's okay to abuse substances for the purpose of enhancing their own performance, once they are willing to trample sportsmanship in the name of glory, they might as well save the money, spare the health risk, and simply ban anyone better than they are from competing against them.

The best they can do is finish first. They certainly can't be winners.