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The Game In Its Proper Perspective As managers, coaches, and parents grow in their understanding of the game and try their hands at teaching young players the game, they come to realize that there is much more to properly coaching a Tee Ball team than simply chaperoning kids with gloves on their hands. They learn, some sooner than others, that these children bring with them all of the elements that favor the coach in his role as teacher. It is an incredible waste of an opportunity and a great injustice if parents and coaches don't do their best to teach their players as much as they can. How do they do this? How far do they go? Is it reasonable to expect 5, 6, and 7-year-old children to learn to stop the ball when it's hit to them? How about catching fly balls? And throwing the ball to the right base? Should they be drilled on throwing accurately? Should they be taught to hit properly? Does it really make any difference if the players develop terrible bat swings or that they don't get in front of the ball when they field it? Let's look a little further. Knowing that your players are going to slide into bases, should they be taught the right way to slide, or should they be allowed to do whatever they want to do? Most parents and coaches agree that these things should be taught, particularly when they learn that the game is made safer by quality comprehensive instruction, but few progress further because they either lack the knowledge to teach the right thing or they're reluctant to get too deeply involved in the game, or both. You see, this is such a difficult issue for many because parents and coaches often confuse perspective with commitment. They don't know where the line is between taking their responsibilities seriously and taking an excessively aggressive approach to the game. They're uncertain whether they have lost their perspective or upheld their commitment when they take the time to develop their players' skills with a lot of practice and drills. That's why some leagues don't keep score - they're concerned about the outcome. I recommend parents and coaches remember two important things about Tee Ball: First of all, they should remember that Tee Ball is only a game. Secondly, they should remember that understanding that Tee Ball is only a game is not a good excuse to avoid teaching their players about winning, losing, sportsmanship, gamesmanship, and "gutting it out." Ask a coach why he doesn't teach and drill his players on basic baseball skills and he'll usually tell you, "We're not that serious about the game here." Well, why aren't they? And why does the chief complaint people have about youth athletics usually have something to do with someone taking the game "too seriously?" Many attribute this problem to the competition, but as far as I'm concerned, the problem, insofar as it is a problem, is actually caused by poor behavior by adults who should know better. I both, competitive Tee Ball leagues where score was kept and outs were counted and so-called "non-competitive" Tee Ball leagues where there was none of that, the one thing that is common to both types of leagues is the presence of a relatively few obsessive adults who always seem to find ways to have a problem with the umpires, the coaches, the parents, the score, and so on. Precautions such as changing the rules of the game and not keeping score don't prevent these problems, they simply provide them different grounds on which to surface. The problem is not that the game is taken too seriously - the problem is that we adults can tend to lose our perspectives. My team lost the fifteenth game of my first season as a coach by 40 runs. That ran our record to 1 win and 14 losses. Humiliating, right? Nope. Most of my players didn't know the difference. Kids place a premium on what their coaches and parents emphasize. At the end of that game, we emphasized appreciating the skill and teamwork the other team demonstrated and noticing that they obviously played hard and had fun along the way. Our kids were smart - they knew the other team was really good and they wanted to be like them. We took satisfaction in recognizing that our own players played hard and had fun, and that they were making great progress as they went - some day they'd blossom. However, after the game a parent approached me and told me that one of the other parents had been making a fuss in the bleachers over our team's lack of success. I phoned that parent and asked him if there was something we needed to talk about and after a while, we got down to it. He said that he was tired of being humiliated and he was tired of seeing his kid humiliated. being humiliated and he was tired of seeing his kid humiliated. I didn't pull any punches. I told him that if his kid was humiliated, it was probably because his father was focusing on the wrong things. We had a team that was not good enough to beat the good teams and nothing we did at practice and nothing I said at the games was going to change that. Our job was to capitalize on our opportunities and not to place unrealistic expectations on our team. As it turned out, our last four games of the season were with teams nearer to our own caliber and our kids did fine. In fact, we won those four games, the kids loved it, and we did it without compromising the principles we had maintained all along. Unfortunately, there was grumbling in the bleachers again and, of course, I made a second phone call to the same parent I had called four games earlier. This time his complaint was that he didn't like having his kid play on a team where winning was everything. What do you do? The fact is that it's essential that everyone take the game seriously - coaches, parents, umpires, and children. Taking your responsibilities as a manager or coach seriously means that you don't lose your head during a close game. It means that you teach your players as much as is reasonable and give them every opportunity to become good enough to have bright moments in games. It means that you teach them how to lose gracefully after a tough game and it means that you teach them how to be generous and polite when they win. It means that you teach them about teamwork and cooperation and it means that you help them become disciplined enough to do what you taught them to do. It means that you teach them to play aggressively and ambitiously, but it also means that you don't win at all costs. It means that if your team is a little short of talent that you do as much as you can with your team and your individual players anyway. In Tee Ball, there's always something to be successful at. A coach's perspective is not blown simply because he insists that his players not hit pop flies or because he has a word for them when they make an error of concentration on a routine play. His perspective is blown when he expects players to perform skills in games that they have not first mastered in practice, or when he handles a situation on the field in anger without regard for the example he sets for the players. In my opinion, he has also blown his perspective when he does not attempt to train his team to standards of excellence. Realize that I didn't say that he has blown it when his team doesn't achieve excellence; I said that he has failed when he doesn't try and doesn't encourage his team to try to accomplish what they can. Regardless of the won-lost record at the end of the season, if you take your responsibilities seriously and keep things in perspective, you will build a team of winners. When parents don't take the game seriously they don't work with their kids at home, cheer for them in the bleachers, and have them to practice and games on time. When umpires don't take the game seriously they don't hustle to see the whole play so the great plays can be properly recognized and rewarded and they don't ensure the rules of the game are enforced so that orderly play and a proper learning environment can be assured. When the players don't take the game seriously they don't learn and they don't attain the physical and mental development this game is designed to give them. You see, not taking the game seriously enough is at least as damaging as taking it "too seriously." Let me set one thing straight right here at the beginning: I hate to lose at ANYTHING; however, I know how to take a setback and turn it into an opportunity. How many Baseball Hall of Famers failed in more than 60% of their attempts to reach base safely? Success has its sweetest taste when it has risen out of failure. Coaches should never quit on their players or their team, parents should never quit on their children, and players should never quit on themselves - regardless of how bad things appear.
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