Father's Daze. (Here Below).WHAT IN THE WORLD happens to Dads when they show up at a practice or game to watch their kids and stay just long enough to start some kind of war with coaches, umpires, other Dads, and even their own kids? Can you remember a time when kids could play their games without any help from adults? It didn't did·n't Contraction of did not. didn't did not didn't do even have to be a regular game. It could be a practice game played without uniforms, coaches, or officials. As sport expanded and became more important in our lives, the adults and parents started coming around to organize everything. Little League, Pop Warner Pop Warner refers to
And this worked most of the time. Kids enjoyed feeling like big leaguers, and their Dads liked it even more. They became overly involved, and that meant complaining to coaches, yelling yell v. yelled, yell·ing, yells v.intr. To cry out loudly, as in pain, fright, surprise, or enthusiasm. v.tr. To utter or express with a loud cry. See Synonyms at shout. n. at the officials, quarreling quar·rel 1 n. 1. An angry dispute; an altercation. 2. A cause of a dispute or an argument: We have no quarrel with the findings of the committee. intr.v. with other parents. It became scary scar·y adj. scar·i·er, scar·i·est 1. Causing fright or alarm. 2. Easily scared; very timid. scar . A new kind of youth picture started making the papers and TV -- Dads punching umpires, Dads punching one another, and the ultimate depravity: a 275-lb. truck driver beating another parent to death with his fists because he thought the guy wasn't was·n't Contraction of was not. wasn't was not wasn't be properly supervising his son's hockey practice. It saddened us and made us wonder. Do the "goods" outweigh out·weigh tr.v. out·weighed, out·weigh·ing, out·weighs 1. To weigh more than. 2. To be more significant than; exceed in value or importance: The benefits outweigh the risks. the "bads" in our heavily organized youth sports? Are we doing all we can to manage the over-zealous parents who inflict themselves upon our sports? There are no easy answers. As with all of our problems in sport, we accept the positives and do our best with the negatives. But we look back and wonder: Were we lucky to grow up in a blue-collar neighborhood of immigrants, where we had to play our kid games without any coaches or parents around? Our Papas (nobody called them "Dads") worked six days a week and always spent Sundays with the wife and kids. All of us would have given our lives to play on manicured fields, wear uniforms, and have a coach. But none of us felt deprived. We knew that "playing ball" was the best part of our lives and that there were no close seconds. The thought of a Papa yelling at someone or punching someone at a ball game was unthinkable. |
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