He might not have been good enough for his own coach, but if I had a t-ball team, Harry Bowers would be my first pick.
Before a t-ball game last month, Pennsylvania State Police said 7-year-old Harry, of Dunbar, PA, was plunked in the head with a ball thrown by a teammate. Undaunted, young Harry refused to go down.
So the second boy threw another ball, this time hitting Harry in the groin. After that one, he went to his coach, who told the 7-year-old to sit out that day's game.
And that isn't even the worst part of this story.
The worst part of this story, and the reason the state police are involved, is that the coach, Mark Downs, Jr., has been accused of paying the teammate $25 to injure Harry so he couldn't play.
Apparently, according to an Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report, Downs thought Harry, who is autistic, was dragging the team down. Downs faces a slate of charges, including felony assault and corruption of minors.
If the accusation turns out to be true, Downs also would be guilty of bad coaching, which technically isn't a crime. But if I were in charge of a team that had a kid who could take a baseball in the head without quitting, I'd find a place for him.
As horrifying as that story is, it merely serves as the latest evidence that the biggest problem with youth sports often is adults.
For the past few weeks, the Bravo network reality show "Sports Kids: Moms and Dads," has placed six young athletes and their parents before the camera for entertainment's sake. All of the parents in "Sports Kids" come off better than Downs, although that isn't exactly setting the bar very high.
It's probably no coincidence that the most uplifting tales in "Sports Kids" belong to the older athletes — the basketball player, figure skater, and two sisters who compete in equestrian events — while the most troublesome stories are those of the cheerleader and football player, both of whom are younger than 10.
With the teenagers, it's clear that they are putting in long hours practicing and — in the case of the horse riders, cleaning stables — because the love their games.
Keeping in mind the standard disclaimer that in any reality TV show "reality" is whatever the director says it is, it sometimes appears that the football parent featured on Bravo's show is trying to relive his athletic career through his son.
While both the football and cheerleading parents appear, at least on the show, to be guiding their charges down a path that the kids want to walk, it remains to be seen how the parents will take it if the ambitious workout schedules lead to burnout a few years down the road and the kids decide to walk away.
As much as the football father appears at times to be reliving his own athletic career through his son, things might go even worse for the cheerleading kid, less because of her parents than for the nature of her sport.
In competitive cheerleading — and isn't that an oxymoron? — as in gymnastics, the smallest mistake could be the difference between first and 10th place. In one competition, the cheerleader featured in the Bravo series took a stumble in one competition and was harshly criticized by it for her coach.
In that instant, the child learned that anything less than perfection, an unattainable standard for we fallible humans, is failure. It remains to be seen how that lesson will affect her in the years to come.
And the same goes for other young athletes in all sports. People don't — at least in most cases — become pushy sports parents or coaches because they hate the kids.
Usually, it's because the children experience some success at a young age. The adults then become convinced that they're acting in the child's best interest.
Of course, Farinelli's parents probably felt the same way.
Many music historians regard him as the finest singer who ever lived. And he had his parents to thank for it.
They, after all, were the ones who sent young Farinelli to a doctor who clipped the child's manhood, preserving his prepubescent singing abilities even as the rest of his body matured, according to the Twentieth Century: History With the Boring Parts Left Out, edited by David Wallechinsky.
Farinelli was a castrati, which means exactly what you think it does. During his heyday in the 1700s, parents sent their sons, sometimes as young as six, off for an operation that — they thought — would assure superstardom in church choirs and opera houses.
Today, at least, irresponsible adults mutilate children emotionally rather than physically.
But Farinelli's example does inspire an idea for a fitting punishment if Downs turns out to be guilty.
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