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Maryville, MO —
My summers once revolved around baseball. Growing up in small-town America in the 1970s, there really wasn’t much else to do. Either cut weeds out of soybean fields or play baseball. Given that choice, I played a lot of baseball.
I wasn’t particularly good at baseball, but I wasn’t particularly a bad at it either. I just never expected baseball to screw up an entire generation of kids.
When I started in Little League, I was on the losing end of a lot of games, got stuck in right field (when I wasn’t riding the bench), and couldn’t hit a baseball even if I used the Force. Yeah, yeah, Luke Skywalker blew up the whole Death Star hitting something small by using the Force. Good for him. I’d make a horrible Jedi.
But I learned a valuable life lesson during this time. Losing sucks and winning feels great. So I worked to get better, got moved to third base, hit a bunch of doubles*, and, guess what? I felt better about myself.
Enter T-Ball.
T-Ball resembles baseball in a cursory way, much like Foosball resembles soccer, and sessions of Congress resemble a forensic debate on the elementary school playground.
Congressman A: You shut up.
Congressman B: No, you shut up.
T-Ball is fundamentally different than baseball in that people started worrying about a child’s self-esteem, so someone took the main self-esteem-building characteristic out of the game – no one loses.
T-Ball goes like this:
n Batting orders are randomly chosen and change every inning (to be fair).
n Position players are randomly chosen and change every inning (to be fair).
n Every player bats (to be fair).
n Every player scores, except the exceptional players who are held back from scoring too quickly so the regular children don’t feel bad (to be fair).
n No one is called out because that might hurt their feelings (to be fair).
n There’s no official score (to be fair).
n The game is over in an hour (to be fair).
n All the parents clap.
n The end.
In life, people win, people lose. Some people are naturally better athletes/students/musicians/artists/writers/etc. than other people. No matter how hard people try, YOU CAN’T MAKE CHILDREN THE SAME. Children need a challenge, they need a goal, they need feel passionately enough about something they’ll want to get better at it.
My summers once revolved around baseball. Growing up in small-town America in the 1970s, there really wasn’t much else to do. Either cut weeds out of soybean fields or play baseball. Given that choice, I played a lot of baseball.
I wasn’t particularly good at baseball, but I wasn’t particularly a bad at it either. I just never expected baseball to screw up an entire generation of kids.
When I started in Little League, I was on the losing end of a lot of games, got stuck in right field (when I wasn’t riding the bench), and couldn’t hit a baseball even if I used the Force. Yeah, yeah, Luke Skywalker blew up the whole Death Star hitting something small by using the Force. Good for him. I’d make a horrible Jedi.
But I learned a valuable life lesson during this time. Losing sucks and winning feels great. So I worked to get better, got moved to third base, hit a bunch of doubles*, and, guess what? I felt better about myself.
Enter T-Ball.
T-Ball resembles baseball in a cursory way, much like Foosball resembles soccer, and sessions of Congress resemble a forensic debate on the elementary school playground.
Congressman A: You shut up.
Congressman B: No, you shut up.
T-Ball is fundamentally different than baseball in that people started worrying about a child’s self-esteem, so someone took the main self-esteem-building characteristic out of the game – no one loses.
T-Ball goes like this:
n Batting orders are randomly chosen and change every inning (to be fair).
n Position players are randomly chosen and change every inning (to be fair).
n Every player bats (to be fair).
n Every player scores, except the exceptional players who are held back from scoring too quickly so the regular children don’t feel bad (to be fair).
n No one is called out because that might hurt their feelings (to be fair).
n There’s no official score (to be fair).
n The game is over in an hour (to be fair).
n All the parents clap.
n The end.
In life, people win, people lose. Some people are naturally better athletes/students/musicians/artists/writers/etc. than other people. No matter how hard people try, YOU CAN’T MAKE CHILDREN THE SAME. Children need a challenge, they need a goal, they need feel passionately enough about something they’ll want to get better at it.
My college creative writing professor told me I’d never become a published author. And although many of you probably wish he were right, I couldn’t accept that. I wanted to play third base, I wanted to hit well, and I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. All that happened because I lost.
This is the Offutt T-Ball Hypothesis: “If every player wins, every player loses, and no one deserves a Popsicle at the end.”
*My first Little League home run is marred by the fact that while I rounded the bases I stopped at second because I’d never been that far on my own.
