Agony of Defeat and the joy of the game

Like most Americans I love the little league world series. I am showing some of the highlights of the little guys as I love the little ones. They are so adorable out there with the behemoth's. Several years ago a pitcher for a team in the United States was cruising along. The two fielding errors by his team mates, and a walk to load the the bases then a grand slam. By that point of the game the pitcher was toast. The coach pulled the poor boy from the game. But ESPN kept following the boy and his melt down all the way to the dugout and into the corner. They kept it on a constant news feed that day. These are just kids so why do you feel the need to embarrass a young kid like that? It angered me that ESPN would do something like this. Since they now have MLB games and players at the game why not have one of the pitchers talk to the boy and tell him it happens to the best of them? Did ESPN enjoy humiliating the boy who had been humiliated enough? These boys take their performance very seriously. I don't enjoy watching a cute boy have a melt down because of a bad performance. The kid shown in the above video, I just absolutely loved him as did my uncle. Besides being cute, he was a good ball player.

In this next video as a former coach and as a parent or grandparent I would have been pissed. Yes he is a Brett Phillips look alike and is absolutely gorgeous. But you don't leave an injured child in a game. You don't force him to try and bat the next go around either. I give him credit for having guts and being courageous but he should have been removed after he was hit by pitch. Always believe your players.

The fact that I find most of the boys paying in the little league world series cute, it makes it difficult for me to root for just one team. I had an extreme crush on the catcher/pitcher for Louisiana when they won it all. Sorry but blond hair with blue eyes and braces gets me every time.

I feel if there is less pressure on these kids the better. I have seen where teams are getting banned because of cheating. Why? If you can't win fair and square then why compete? When I was in college, I was struggling with a difficult test in one of my accounting classes. I was the last one to turn my test in. There were four students who were from the accounting honors society who all were sitting in the back. They were holding their test papers up so others could copy their answers. I made a statement to my instructor, who told me she was aware of it. I told her I would much rather flunk honestly than cheat to pass. I ended up with a D that I was proud of. A team from the Philippines has been banned from ever competing in the LLWS again.

I still love the little league world series. I still love watching the boys put all of their effort into winning. I also love watching some of these coaches who are so positive with their boys and say to them, hey we lost it's not the end of the world. We will do better tomorrow and that is a good coach. I love focusing on the good plays by the players and good sportsmanship. But this is a great concept and watching these boys is even better.