This actually happened. Your job is to decide whether it should have.
In a nine- and 10-year-old PONY league championship game in Bountiful, Utah, the Yankees lead the Red Sox by one run. The Sox are up in the bottom of the last inning, two outs, a runner on third. At the plate is the Sox' best hitter, a kid named Jordan. On deck is the Sox' worst hitter, a kid named Romney. He's a scrawny cancer survivor who has to take human growth hormone and has a shunt in his brain.
So, you're the coach: Do you intentionally walk the star hitter so you can face the kid who can barely swing?
Wait! Before you answer.... This is a league where everybody gets to bat, there's a four-runs-per-inning max, and no stealing until the ball crosses the plate. On the other hand, the stands are packed and it is the title game.
So ... do you pitch to the star or do you lay it all on the kid who's been through hell already?
Yanks coach Bob Farley decided to walk the star.
Parents booed. The umpire, Mike Wright, thought to himself, Low-ball move. In the stands, Romney's eight-year-old sister cried. "They're picking on Romney!" she said. Romney struck out. The Yanks celebrated. The Sox moaned. The two coaching staffs nearly brawled.
And Romney? He sobbed himself to sleep that night.
"It made me sick," says Romney's dad, Marlo Oaks. "It's going after the weakest chick in the flock."
Farley and his assistant coach, Shaun Farr, who recommended the walk, say they didn't know Romney was a cancer survivor. "And even if I had," insists Farr, "I'd have done the same thing. It's just good baseball strategy."
Romney's mom, Elaine, thinks Farr knew. "Romney's cancer was in the paper when he met with President Bush," she says. That was thanks to the Make-A-Wish people. "And [Farr] coached Romney in basketball. I tell all his coaches about his condition."
She has to. Because of his radiation treatments, Romney's body may not produce enough of a stress-responding hormone if he is seriously injured, so he has to quickly get a cortisone shot or it could be life-threatening. That's why he wears a helmet even in centerfield. Farr didn't notice?
The sports editor for the local Davis Clipper, Ben De Voe, ripped the Yankees' decision. "Hopefully these coaches enjoy the trophy on their mantle," De Voe wrote, "right next to their dunce caps."
Well, that turned Bountiful into Rancorful. The town was split -- with some people calling for De Voe's firing and describing Farr and Farley as "great men," while others called the coaches "pathetic human beings." They "should be tarred and feathered," one man wrote to De Voe. Blogs and letters pages howled. A state house candidate called it "shameful."
What the Yankees' coaches did was within the rules. But is it right to put winning over compassion? For that matter, does a kid who yearns to be treated like everybody else want compassion?
"What about the boy who is dyslexic -- should he get special treatment?" Blaine and Kris Smith wrote to the Clipper. "The boy who wears glasses -- should he never be struck out? ... NO! They should all play by the rules of the game."
The Yankees' coaches insisted that the Sox coach would've done the same thing. "Not only wouldn't I have," says Sox coach Keith Gulbransen, "I didn't. When their best hitter came up, I pitched to him. I especially wouldn't have done it to Romney."
Farr thinks the Sox coach is a hypocrite. He points out that all coaches put their worst fielder in rightfield and try to steal on the weakest catchers. "Isn't that strategy?" he asks. "Isn't that trying to win? Do we let the kid feel like he's a winner by having the whole league play easy on him? This isn't the Special Olympics. He's not retarded."
Me? I think what the Yanks did stinks. Strategy is fine against major leaguers, but not against a little kid with a tube in his head. Just good baseball strategy? This isn't the pros. This is: Everybody bats, one-hour games. That means it's about fun. Period.
What the Yankees' coaches did was make it about them, not the kids. It became their medal to pin on their pecs and show off at their barbecues. And if a fragile kid got stomped on the way, well, that's baseball. We see it all over the country -- the overcaffeinated coach who watches too much SportsCenter and needs to win far more than the kids, who will forget about it two Dove bars later.
By the way, the next morning, Romney woke up and decided to do something about what happened to him.
"I'm going to work on my batting," he told his dad. "Then maybe someday I'll be the one they walk."
Issue date: August 14, 2006
6 comments:
I'm going to have to agree with the Yankees coach. He was within the rules; he was in the championship game with a man on third with two outs, up by one run. I would not agree with beaning the hitter, or another illegal action. But I would think that the Red Sox coach could have pinched for Oaks (though there would have been an outcry about that also). I think this is just sour grapes on the Red Sox's part on losing the game; this is how baseball is played. It wasn't unfair; it was clean. People boo at major league games when ringers are intentionally walked for a lower-average hitter. Doesn't mean we should be calling for the head of, say Willie Randolph, when he tells Pedro Martinez to walk Ken Griffey so he can strike out Bronson Arroyo. People can boo all they want; it's a game; play to win, within the rules. Winning at any cost is wrong, but losing for a spurrious reason such as this is wrong. Just my thoughts.
Brett - I'm afraid you missed the point entirely. Yes, the Yankee's played within the rules. Nobody is questioning that. It's their INTEGRITY that is being questioned. And, by the way, this is NOT the big leagues, this is LITTLE KIDS, in a REC league. It's the world gone mad with incivility. As another writer pointed out in another article I read on this subject, there is still another UNWRITTEN rule of recreational sports that you DO NOT set up a player to fail. That is exactly what was done in this situation and I think it is beyond shameful. I hope those Yankee coaches have trouble sleeping.
Fie on you wimps for trashing the coach for doing the smart thing. What on Earth makes you think that the child in question would recieve special treatment because of his illness. The boys attitude shows so much more understanding than you people who bemoan the fact that he was picked on because of his problem. His solution to the problem was to get better at hitting, yours on the other hand was give him special treatment, which he will never get in the real world and to foster that idea is an insult to the boy and society in general. I am sure that he would not wanted to be treated as "special" just because of his illness. You sideline second guessers want to make those kind of decisions get off your butts and try coaching yourselves. I am sure it is easier to sit on the sidelines and crab about things that you are too lazy to do anything about. Until you walk in those shoes you should quit griping about the way the game is played.
Fie - used to express disgust or disapproval
These are KIDS!!! Why is winning so important? Do you think most of them will remember years from now whether they won or not, let alone still have their trophy to show for it? People say how people conduct themselves on a ballfield shows their true character. I guess this shows how much character Bob Farley and his sidekick lack. Charles Barkley was right when he said athletes should not be role models. Youth coaches however should fall into a different category.
Stop making everything a lesson in political correctness. The coach did the right thing. Take away the cancer and the kid's other problems. Would we even be talking about it? Of course not. If you play, you have to accept the rules. It is as simple as that. Are you saying that this kid should get special treatment? How about four strikes? Once you start, where does it end? If the parents of this kid cannot accept the rules, then they should not let their kid play. It is the parents who did not accept the rules. It was not the kid. The kid was fine with the other coaches' decision. How can I say all this? I just coached a baseball game. We have a dyslexic kid on the team. We were down 13-2 and came back. The score was 21-20, my team behind, with the winning runs on base. I let the dyslexic kid bat. He struck out (as he had struck out the previous three times at bat) and my team lost the game. My kids were all crying. They were wrung out. They had done all they could to win and I, as their coach, had let them down. To all you whinners out there, listen: As a coach, you owe it to the boys on your team to do everything legal to win. It is not fair to them, otherwise. You cannot ask them to go out there and do everything they can to win without you, as a coach, doing everything you can to win, too. Let us not pretend. Winning does matter to these kids. As a coach, the goal is not to change the world; it is to teach your boys to win within the rules. In the real world, they will pitch around the strong hitters. I am sorry that there are parents out there who have missed that. I do not know what they are teaching their kids. I know that it is not the message the kids in China and India are getting.
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