A 13 year-old volunteers to umpire a little league game being played by seven year-olds. It’s a recipe for disaster in Lakewood, Colorado.
Parents are idiots.
This has somehow become our society. It’s not that all games end in brawls, but at virtually every rec or travel league baseball game this summer across America, at least one parent is going to act like an idiot.
And then the behavior of others will be decried without any self-awareness of their own ridiculousness.
The brawl in Colorado is horrifying and an outlier, but it reflects the idiocy of parents insistence that their child’s sports dream is embraced, and the results chronicled and celebrated.
Sports used to be a diversion for kids and a babysitter for parents. Most parents enjoyed the peace and quiet of a kid gone from the house to play baseball. Now, they won’t miss a pitch. That’s not bad in and of itself, but it reflects the insane level of importance parents attach to leisure exploits.
Parents are by far the worst aspect of youth sports – for kids, coaches, and umpires/refs. They question everything from a place of extreme ignorance. They are boisterous, inane, and occasionally cruel.
Youth sports used to be an escape for kids. In a world where grades mattered, strikeouts and home runs really didn’t. The worm has turned, and now the strikeouts and errors are the benchmarks by which childhood is marked.
Maybe the kids being embarrassed by today’s parents will grow up to put a seven year-old’s fun afternoon at the diamond in a little bit better perspective.
Couldn’t get worse, right?