By Josh:
Parents
As much as coaches can ruin baseball for a kid, parents can be even more at fault in a lot of situations. I’m seeing more and more parents thinking that they need to get their 6, 7 and 8 year old kids playing year round in tournament ball. Playing spring, summer and fall ball aren’t bad things. The question though is whether or not it is the kids that are excited to play or the parents making them play so they can ‘keep up’ with other baseball kids.
It’s also parents who are some of the worst people to listen to during a game. Ever seen a kid get absolutely destroyed by their parent during a game? I have and to no ones surprise that kid never wanted to play. Or have you heard a parent just go ballistic on an umpire in a little league game? Just a couple weeks ago a huge fight broke out at an 8U game that had a 13 year old umpire because parents didn’t like what he was calling.
This year I coached my daughter’s 8U softball team and we didn’t even have umpires because it wasn’t needed. If there was a close play the coaches from both teams would just look at each other until someone made a call and then we moved on. There is never anything in a little league game worth parents screaming and yelling at an umpire.
For parents who aren’t willing to volunteer and coach there is also no reason to do anything but cheer on your child. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve seen parents just scream at their kid all game long. That is the quickest way to get a kid to hate baseball that I’ve ever seen. It happens all the time and I can’t blame kids for walking away from even being a fan of the game.
I wish parents would realize that when a player does get older and is being recruited that coaches look at parents just as much as the players. At a local tournament I overheard two college coaches talking about a player they had both been interested in but one coach stopped recruiting the kid because they listened to the parents during a game and scratched the kid off of their list.