Seriously, do you know what this sounds like to me? It sounds like the co-commish is a wannabe communicator. He thinks he's helping his coaches communicate with their players. He thinks he's making Little League better. He's probably read something about Web 2.0 and now feels as if he's mastered it.

As I see it, the only solution is for all the coaches--every one--to ignore the web site and pleasantly refuse to file their game notes. Life and Little League will go on and maybe the guy will go away.

Once I saw a coach hit the kids when they "underperformed," so I think the cosmic shift happened decades ago. I've never thought of Little League, or sports, in the same way.

I umpired in little league 20 years ago, so I've long ago given up on the Norman Rockwell stuff.

Jane, I hope your analysis is right—that this guy is just a busybody communicator goof—but I'm somehow shocked inside by this assumption that kids need an electronic "morale booster" of any kind.

Some natural morale boosters include: The green grass, the crack of the bat, concentration, running, getting to wear a uniform, imagining yourself making a great catch, sitting in the dugout singing, "eh, batter, eh, batter, eh batter swing."

Has sports, in combination with Electronic Reality, turned every fucking thing we do into Fantasy Football?

Maybe I'm making too much of this. But maybe I'm not.

What you're witnessing, sadly, is the assignment of adult emotions to children. Happens all the time. Why can't we just let kids be kids? My guess is the Little Leaguers forgot all about the devastating loss about five minutes after the game ended.

Why can't we just let ourSELVES remember what it was like to be kids? We remember to the extent that we bother to organize these games at all. But we forget to the extent that we think a loss comes with a "cloud."

I remember this sort of thing: There was usually ONE super, hypercompetitive player on the team who would be crushed after a loss. And everybody else?

"Pizza!!!!!!!!!!!"

I don't want to appear self-righteous about my point of view here. It seems so incredibly, stupendously obvious that I'm almost embarrassed to say this stuff.

David, times have a-changed, my friend. You'll find out when Scout gets to the little-league (or soccer or t-ball or gymnastics or Brownies) stage. Parenting is a competitive sport. Parents compete in our school to chaperone field trips. We have more class parents and classroom volunteers and little league coaches than we know what to do with. All because parents all pouring our their competitive drive and need for validation onto their poor children. This is how it is. The good news is, you can choose your level of participation in the madness, or you don't have to participate at all. The other parents will look at you funny, and possibly whisper behind your back. But your child will grow up to be like you, showing a strong independent streak and a healthy distrust of overly structured organizations or activities.

Scout is in a soccer league. So far, so good. I laugh the entire time, constantly making jokes with the other parents. My soccer nickname for Scout is "Dick Cheney" (can't fault her for aggressiveness, but the helpfulness is debatable).

Hey, if she gets good we don't have to laugh the whole time. I like sports, and play them with seriousness and intensity. If that's where my little Dick Cheney takes it, that's terrific.

But I swear, if she ever needs to look at a web site for a morale-boost, I'm pulling her off the team and having both our heads examined.

My friend Andy is an elementary school counselor, and he did say that the playground games of kick ball and such have changed overnight with Nintendo games. Kids simply don't know how to PLAY the game in person anymore. And if they get out at first, they throw a tantrum and yell, "I'm past level 20 on this game on my gameboy."

How sad is that?

On the upside, Natty is on a traveling soccer team now that he's in 6th grade and this is what his coach wrote to us this week, "Even though we lost 13-0 this weekend, I was impressed by the boys' persistence, and consider this their best game yet. Please let them know."

So there's hope.

Oh gracious! No - this guy is silly. I like your approach to Scout's soccer games, David. It's how I plan to approach it when Emily gets there. My friend Amy was in hysterics when her daughter played teeball at age 3. She encourages her daughter and then lets her make the decision. Meanwhile she is collecting these great memories of her daughter's first attempt at sports in general. I agree, if a kid can't enjoy baseball at the base level as you described, then they aren't going to enjoy it anymore because their coach wrote something on the Internet. And Amy G., I plan to be the parent who gets talked about behind my back. :)

David, just be happy this league acknowledges losses at all. Many kids' leagues these days round up the losing team's score at the end of the day, so that every game ends in a tie. Because God forbid these children suffer any affront to their self-esteem or learn that sometimes in life, there will be losers.

Yeah, this "no losers" thing is nuts--but I don't think it's nuts just because everyone's gotten soft and mushy. I think we're misguided into thinking—and thinking our kids will think—that just because you lose a baseball game doesn't mean you're a loser!

My dad, a professional writer, is the world's WORST golfer. He gets up on the first tee, and he gets terribly nervous, thinking the whole world is going to see him shank the ball into the creek (which is exactly what he IS going to do).

To calm his nerves, he declares loudly, "Arnold Palmer can't write!"

(These days, Palmer can't golf, either; but why quibble with an octagenarian?)

Of course, I meant to say we're misguided to think losing a baseball game DOES make you a loser. Fingers move faster than brain.

I agree that the "no losers" trend is silly. I mean, come on, who is it fooling? Regardless of whether there is an official winner/loser, everyone - coaches, parents, kids - knows what the real score would have been at the end of each game.

(Meant to include this in my previous comment)

"Even though we lost 13-0 this weekend, I was impressed by the boys' persistence, and consider this their best game yet. Please let them know." This is a great message, but why not just say it to the kids face-to-face?

Good point. And I'll have to ask Natty if he did say it the team.

My favorite it watching my daughter's Kindergarten soccer team though. It's all about the dogs on the sidelines (Lily comes off the field to pet a dog during play quite regularly) or the pink soccer socks she's wearing (Hey Makena, look at my socks!) That's where the real entertainment is.

As with most discussions I get into with David, I'm endorsing the middle ground.

I coach my 6th-grade son's soccer team. My philosophy is this: Yes, there will be losers (and often, that's our team!). No, losing a soccer game (or two or three) doesn't mean you have no value as a human being. It does mean you lost the game and perhaps you really didn't play your best or even try your best. In fact, maybe the team lost because of one kid who walked around the field the entire time. That's the way life is: sometimes you find yourself on a losing team and you have to suffer the consequences of one guy not trying his best.

So deal with the loss, deal with the disappointment, and then as David so wisely advises: "Pizza!!!!!"

Why are we so reluctant to allow our kids to experience life at its most full -- the good and the bad, the joys and the sorrows, the triumphs and the disappointments? After all, we are not raising children. We are raising future adults. (Please don't misunderstand: they are not yet adults, but they will be one day and it is our jobs as parents to train them for it.)

I'm sure there are some parents of kids on my team who wish I pushed the kids harder and drilled them with skills training more vigorously. Those are the parents who yell from the sidelines, "What's wrong with you, Josh???!!!! Use your head!!!!"

Now that is something no kid should have to endure -- public humiliation at the hands of his parents.

Well, you see this is why so many of us loved Brett Favre, I think. You know he tried his best, you knew he wanted worse than anybody. When he threw a touchdown he jumped around like a maniac. When he threw an interception he walked off the field disappointed--but, significantly, never appearing to regret what he'd done. He tried, he failed. Maybe he learned something from it. Maybe not. But on to the next. What else is there?

(And: What's the problem?)

>>> My guess is the Little Leaguers forgot all about the devastating loss about five minutes after the game ended.

Robert, I was thinking the same thing just before I read your comment, and I can verify it from my own experience. I played organized baseball from the time they couldn't find a uniform small enough to fit me until I was a full-grown teenager. To this day, I only remember the joy of playing the game. I have no recollection of whether the teams I played on were winners or losers (although I concede I might remember if they were winners). I remember the absolute honor of being chosen for a couple of all-star teams, but remember no heartache from those seasons when I was NOT chosen. It was an honor to be chosen because only the best got to play on those all-star teams. You had to be competitive.

Will

Here's a recent story on why sports are so important. My son is 12, very bright, and school comes super easy for him. He tests way above normal in science and English, and his teachers are aware that he's gifted. However, in soccer he is slow, not highly skilled, and not very aggressive yet he continues to want to play. He recently complained that in the drills at practice, he had a hard time getting it down and was the last one to finish.

So at our last parent-teacher conference, we once again were staring at straight "A"s but the teacher said, "Now, i want to share with you one thing I think is important to improve upon, Natty, and this will be hard to hear. You are very smart, sometimes smarter than me, but when you say things like 'This is so easy' it makes all the other kids in the class feel dumb. YOu need to be mindful of how you portray your intelligence."

At that point my son looked at me and said, "Do you think my classmates feel like I do at soccer when I can't get the drills?"

Bingo. I never could have taught him humility in a better way.

That is worth every dime we spend to have our average soccer player play organized sports.

I have a similar story, Eileen, but it comes from music rather than sports. My 11-year-old is not the gifted student that his 16-year-old brother is. School work does not come easy to him, mostly (I believe) because he does not give it the effort that he could and should. Simply put, when something doesn't interest him, he withholds his best effort (not unlike many 6th graders, I would imagine). Then, when he brings home a C or a D on his report card, he seems surprised that such a thing could happen.

This is his first year playing the clarinet in Beginning Band. To be honest, I wasn't sure he would do well in band because I know how much practice is required and I thought he would get bored with it. And soon after the school year began, he did, and it reflected in his playing and in his grades.

But then when I cracked down on him and insisted that he put in 20 minutes of practice five times a week, he quickly improved. Now he's improvising and figuring out how to play some of his favorite songs on his own, without sheet music. I've noticed his other grades have improved, too.

As you say about soccer, paying for that clarinet has been one of the best investments I could have made for him.

And to be happy in this American life, you only have to be good at ONE of a thousand things.

1-999 A WINNING RECORD.

So why are we mourning the 999--or convincing our kids to mourn them--or denying they're losses at all; when they're simply the bricks in the road to the 1.

"So why are we mourning the 999--or convincing our kids to mourn them--or denying they're losses at all"

Because our American culture says we have to be the best at EVERYthing. Just look at our advertisements, our politics, our professional sports, our TV shows, our "American Idol" worship, etc., for proof.

We don't teach kids the joy of activities--we teach them to compete. (It was the same way in the Mesozoic Era when I was a kid.) It has always been thus, in mandatory gym classes as well as organized sports.

My best kid memories include nothing competitive, only dawn-to-dusk neighborhood tetherball games, riding my bike around town steering with the handlebar streamers and pretending they were horse reins, and playing pick-up-the-penny in the pool until I was so sunburned I couldn't smile. I feel so bad for today's kids, who have been given every gift but time.

Good point, Jane. Before you get too depressed about it, though, there is hope. The kids in my neighborhood like to play "Kick the Can" and "Flashlight Tag." And one of my 11-year-old's favorite things to do is to ride our bikes over to the "horse farm" (a nearby stable that gives horseback riding lessons).

Ooh, Robert, I can see the white knuckles with which you're holding onto those horse rides with the 11 year old.

I can see them because they look like the white knuckles I have, holding onto Scout's and my pretend Sunday sneak attack "raids" on the great field house at Humboldt Park.

Those raids are as real to me as they are to her, and I'm going to have to grow up again soon,

David

Following up on the "why can't we let kids be kids theme," perhaps some of the problem lies in the fact that most kid's experience with sports, teamwork, etc. is through "organized activies." For every little league baseball game I played, there were many played in back yards up and down the street. Same with football, basketball, soccer etc.

In fact, in my youth "official sports" accounted for a very small percent of my overall sports experience. Also of note, since my dad was raised on a farm I didn't have to worry about him reliving his sports successes and failures through me since he never had any.

WARNING - Nasty conservative sarcasm alert.

Ahhh, I have a suspicion that the co-commissioner's post graduate brainwashing was in one of our nation's fine colleges of education. I'd bet dollars to donuts this person is a teacher.

Thanks NEA for making this world a much safer place for our children's psyche.