EDITORIAL CULTURE OF VIOLENCE PALMDALE BASEBALL DEATH POINTS TO LARGER SOCIETAL PROBLEM.

THE family of Jeremy Rourke, the 15-year-old killed during a violent outburst after a Palmdale PONY League game, says that the 13-year-old who allegedly struck him on the head with an aluminum baseball bat is ``a good boy who made a bad mistake.''

Rourke's family members are remarkably forgiving and compassionate. They deserve tremendous credit for not responding to violent rage with more rage of their own.

That said, what happened Wednesday is much more than a mistake.

There's no way to know for now what was going on in the assailant's mind, whether this violence was typical or unusual for his behavior. But what we do know is this incident is but one of many in a grim trend.

Harry Edwards, a consultant to the San Francisco 49ers for the past 20 years and a sociology professor at the University of California at Berkeley, says that the killing is one more instance of Americans' becoming desensitized to violence and other behavior that was once considered unacceptable.

``We are developing an insensitivity to incivility that increasingly recognizes no bounds as to what we feel we can do if provoked,'' says Edwards. ``You see it in road rage. You see it happening in schools. You most certainly see it in athletics, both in the stands and on the field.''

Take pro sports: ``If you feel you are sufficiently provoked and you're a basketball player, you go up into the stands,'' Edwards observes. ``If you are a baseball player ... you throw a chair into the stands.''

The incivility trickles down from our professional stars to all elements of society. How many stories have we heard about parents getting violent at kids' sporting events?

And, as the Palmdale tragedy shows, this violent mentality even makes its way to our kids. Some observers say that Rourke may have been teasing the 13-year-old, a pitcher for his team that had just lost for the first time this season.

How many times have we heard similar stories about teens who shoot up their high schools? Teasing, in their minds, was enough provocation to morally justify unconscionable violence.

That Rourke's family, which has reportedly known the suspected killer for years, can call him ``a good boy'' points to the depths of the problem. By all indications, this wasn't a troubled child, one from whom anyone expected an act of murderous rage. He was ``a good boy'' - that is, like most kids.

And perhaps that's what's most disturbing about this sad tale.

Whether through violent film and television, graphic video games or declining standards in our schools and homes, our ``insensitivity to incivility,'' as Edwards calls it, seems to grow only more severe. The horror stories about explosive acts of rage are all too common - not just in inner cities, but even in exurbs like Palmdale.

The result is we grow indifferent to such episodes because they happen all too often. In their own perverse way, they become normal. So much so that on a beautiful spring afternoon, even a good boy at a baseball field can succumb to a lethal sense of rage.