For the first time in several years, I attended a youth baseball game on Saturday. It was a chance to watch two of my very favorite people swing a little pink bat and hit ground balls that resulted in infield hits and RBIs. When I was 5 and 6 years old we played tee ball and everyone went station to station in a train until everyone had an at-bat and scored every inning. This was coach pitch, complete with strikeouts and put outs in the field. In further conversation about this change, I was also told that some leagues use a hybrid model where the coach pitches a couple of pitches to each child and if the kid hasn’t hit the ball then they put it on a tee. If I were a league commissioner, I’d probably use the tee as a backup but allow the fielders to actually record outs. Well, when I say field what I actually mean is that the kid who corrals the ball runs to whatever base to try to beat the runner. The only times throws were attempted while the ball was in play were from the pitcher or second baseman to the first baseman. The outfielders also just ran the ball back into the infield. Teaching this isn’t a great lesson to young children about how baseball is played, but it did tamp down on the possibility of Bad News Bears baseball and Little League homeruns.

The worst part of youth sports is overbearing parents, and this game was no exception even if the parents were by and large well-behaved. Most commentary was positive and instructive and all of the negative yelling was from parents directed at their own children. I’m not sure if that is better or worse, but I will say that it isn’t the kid’s fault if you never taught them to run through first base or how to slide into second. Maybe when I’m actually in the position of a father watching my children play I’ll react negatively too. I do thing that the youth coaching I’ve already done should help. Yelling is counterproductive on so many levels. And that applies in more contexts than a children’s baseball game.