Where I grew up – the northwest suburbs of Chicago – almost every single kid I knew played little-league baseball. It was just sorta that thing we all did during the summer, instead of going to school.Â
Heroes get remembered, but legends never die. Follow your heart kid, and you'll never go wrong. pic.twitter.com/giWPmBGWHO
— Sandlot (@SandlotBambino) December 24, 2016
And being that I was born in 1991, the entirety of my little-league career fell squarely in the “everyone gets a trophy,” era. Which, if I can digress for a moment, is always a complaint about my generation that has made me laugh. I mean, it’s not as though the 7-year old version of myself snuck out on the weekend – using my father’s car – and bought 64 trophies for the rest of the kids in my league.
So why’d you give the trophies to us if you didn’t want us to have them?! Was it all a cruel set-up to more easily make fun of us twenty years later? If so … well done.
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Of course, that was never the intention.
The point of the trophies is to teach kids the importance of working hard, having fun, and giving it your very best. Because although that might not actually be “all it takes,” to get by in this world – and I get that – kids are kids, baseball is baseball, and summers are for fun – why spoil it?
Unfortunately, this one little-league coach may not see it exactly the same was as I do. Check out the “pep-talk,” he gave his kids before their last game of the year, headlined by the following … memorable sing-a-long:
“Hit dingers, disgrace the pitcher’s family, make the other players cry and stomp their butts into the ground.”
So, yeah.
If this coach isn’t kidding and/or purposefully trying to achieve internet fame – like Matt Snyder has already shrewdly pointed out at CBS Sports – this video will be met with quite a split of opinion.
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For me, there’s enough non-winning parts of life when you’re an adult (like going to the DMV or switching your cable package), that I don’t mind too much if the kids get to just go out there and have a little fun:
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