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Kindness in ourselves is the honey that blunts the sting of unkindness in another. - Grantland Rice

I'm sure most of you have heard or read about the 9-10 PONY league championship game played in Utah earlier this summer. If you haven't, the best overview comes from the local paper — The Salt Lake City Tribune :

Here's the setup: The two best teams in Bountiful's 10-and-under Mueller Park Mustang League - the Yankees and Red Sox - met in a championship game, played the last Friday night in June. The undefeated Yanks were in the field, up by one run in the bottom of the last inning. With the tying run on third, two outs in the books, and the Red Sox' best hitter, Jordan Bleak, coming to the plate, Yankees coaches huddled and decided to do something they hadn't done all season: They told their pitcher to intentionally walk a hitter. An absolute anomaly in a low-key recreational league in which regular-season games were governed by competitive limitations, such as a maximum of four runs allowed in an inning. Those limits had been suspended for the championship game.

Bleak already had nailed a three-run homer and a triple.    "It was a baseball move," says Shaun Farr, one of the Yankees' coaches. "These kids wanted to win."    

Romney was the only thing that stood in their way. 

I'm not sure you can surf the net without seeing someone's take on the issue .  The opinions range from "How dare they pick on a cancer survivor" to "How dare they question good baseball strategy."

When you look at the situation, both opinions have some merit.  The kid's a 10 year old cancer survivor, ordering an intentional walk to get to him is like the lion ordering the weakest gazelle off the menu.  On the other hand, Romney is a part of the team and he wasn't looking for any special treatment.  Walking a strong hitter to get to a weaker one is part of the game.

While I'm not one to criticize anyone's desire to win, I can't see where anyone benefited from this situation.  Yes, the Yankees won the game, but did they get any better by winning it that way?  Did the pitcher figure a way to get past a strong hitter?  Did the fielders have to make a good play to end the game?  Did the coach help his team understand the game better by going after the weakest hitter?  The last point is debatable, but I say no.  Instead of building up their team they effectively told them "Sorry kids, you're not good enough to get him out.".  That's not coaching, it's stage managing kids for your own ego.

Contrary to what the coaches are saying, trying to win isn't the crime here.  What I see as the problem is they confused their primary responsibility to the kids.  Most of the justification centers on the belief that a coach's primary responsibility is to win.  I agree — but only if the game has any chance of being remembered in two weeks by someone not related to a player.  Otherwise the primary responsibility is improving each player. 

This doesn't mean the coaches couldn't win.  Pitch to the next kid in line.  Hit, walk or out, those are the cards you were dealt.  If Romney's turn in the order came up as a natural progression of the game no one outside of the 25-30 families involved would have heard about this — unless he came through.  But by ordering an intentional walk the coaches crossed the line.  They preyed on a weakness rather than count on the strength of their team. 

Yes, if you keep score the object is to win; otherwise why bother to play.  I have no argument with a coach doing what he can to put his team in position to win.  But I do have a problem when adults - coaches and parents - make winning more important to themselves than it is to the kids.

My son's soccer team won the league championship in the spring of first grade.  On that team were twin brothers — Peter and Paul, the two most competitive kids I know (with my son only a shade behind).  They would be ecstatic after wins and inconsolable when we lost.  In the championship game Paul controlled the game whenever he was in and Peter played goalie for a half (pitching a shutout) and scored the winning goal in overtime.  Absolutely a Hollywood ending, capping an undefeated season for the team.

I started practice the following fall by gathering the team around me.  I had visions of John Wooden and Joe Paterno congratulating their teams and telling them to get back to work…  I said, "This is a new season, you did well last year, but this is the last time we'll talk about last year — Congratulations Champs!"  I was looking right at Peter when I finished and he had a puzzled look on his face, then said "Oh yeah, we won last year."  The one kid who valued winning - especially that victory - more than anyone else on that team had completely forgotten about the biggest game of his young life in the span of a summer. 

I realized there that it doesn't take long for everyone to forget — or care — if you win a championship.  For the kids, victories are nice when they happen, but then they fade into the background as the next baseball game, swim meet and sleep over happens.  When you coach kids winning is fleeting, it's the lessons you teach, physical skills and sportsmanship, that last.