[LuckE2Bhere]

Reminds me of coaching a 10 year old LL tournament team.  All the south bay leagues were participating.  The Los Gatos coach asks the district representative "Let's say I have my last guy on the bench, I'm getting 10-runned, it's the 4th inning.  What's my incentive to put him in?"  He asked it as a genuine question.  The district rep stumbles, possibly because he'd never heard such naked I-want-to-cheat crap before and said "Well, you'll get in trouble."  LG coach says "What do I care?  It's the last game and my kid is 10 years old."  I looked him in the eye and said "How about because it's the right thing to do?"  LG coach does Olympic eye roll and stuck the landing.  "Oh.  Yeah.  Right." he said in the snarkiest voice possible.

Honestly, it was only the fourth-worst thing I saw an LG parent or coach do in sports.  Not that I hold on to things...

My son is playing in college now, but I still volunteer as an umpire to facilitate post-season/All-Star games (massive shortage of umpires, for many reasons).  I'm often asked why LL has some of the seemingly crazy/obscure rules that can be found in our little green book.  My answer is usually something along the lines of "just about every crazy rule was necessitated by the actions of some crazy parent!"  Fortunately, the kids who really love the game still make it worthwhile.

[LuckE2Bhere]

Reminds me of coaching a 10 year old LL tournament team.  All the south bay leagues were participating.  The Los Gatos coach asks the district representative "Let's say I have my last guy on the bench, I'm getting 10-runned, it's the 4th inning.  What's my incentive to put him in?"  He asked it as a genuine question.  The district rep stumbles, possibly because he'd never heard such naked I-want-to-cheat crap before and said "Well, you'll get in trouble."  LG coach says "What do I care?  It's the last game and my kid is 10 years old."  I looked him in the eye and said "How about because it's the right thing to do?"  LG coach does Olympic eye roll and stuck the landing.  "Oh.  Yeah.  Right." he said in the snarkiest voice possible.

Honestly, it was only the fourth-worst thing I saw an LG parent or coach do in sports.  Not that I hold on to things...

My son is playing in college now, but I still volunteer as an umpire to facilitate post-season/All-Star games (massive shortage of umpires, for many reasons).  I'm often asked why LL has some of the seemingly crazy/obscure rules that can be found in our little green book.  My answer is usually something along the lines of "just about every crazy rule was necessitated by the actions of some crazy parent!"  Fortunately, the kids who really love the game still make it worthwhile.