By James Wilson
When
I played Little League ball I was good at everything – fielding, throwing,
stealing bases – except hitting. When I
finally made upper division I didn’t get a hit the entire season. The humiliation was hellish; I would have done
anything to avoid it, but it made me strong. And I can promise it would have
been doubly humiliating had a rule been laid down that pitchers had to lob the
ball to players like me for our self-esteem.
Yet the powers that be in youth sports have discovered the supposed
immorality of permitting one team to dominate another – whether in football,
baseball or soccer – without sparing a thought for the emasculation of players
given a forced pass when the score reaches a certain point.
Men
– and boys – need to compete to be who they are created to be. They do not need to be cruel; they do not
need to bully, but they do need to seek and contest a prize. Each quest carries the risk of loss. Each one carries the potential for learning
to cooperate, growing from the experience of victory or defeat, and the value
of going after victory again with the benefit of lessons learned and skills
honed. What is not needed – or helpful –
is a bunch of adults grimly determined that defeat will not be tolerated even
if victory must be artificially limited.
A growing body of research is beginning to show that a principal way in
which irresponsible boys become responsible men is for parents and other
authorities to back off when they make risk-embracing decisions that can result
in skinned knees or severe defeat.
The
rationale advanced for forbidding lopsided scoring is that such winning teams
bully the lesser skilled. I am not
supporting absentee parenting, much less school authorities who look the other
way when the kids in their charge are being bullied. I have no use for bullies of any kind and I
have fought them as a boy, as a man, and as a parent. But my father taught me to stand up for
myself and I taught my son to stand for himself. When my son did stand up I backed him all the
way to the superintendent and got justice for him. In another school when there was no
administrative relief for an unfair punishment I sat in detention with my son
before telling the headmaster I was pulling him out of the school – with my
son’s concurrence. He learned the world
is not fair at the same time he learned he was not alone in it. Yet in this season coaches are threatened
with suspension and fines if they allow a game score to pass a certain point.
Do
I hate it when children are on the wrong end of a lopsided score? I hate it as I hated that hitless season when
I was twelve. But that is when a parent
or other authority figure comes alongside the child and bears his burden with
him. It is not the time to artificially
shield children – through rules rather than relationships – from burdens they
must carry with or without preparation as adults.
Jesus
knew this when he sent His twelve principal disciples out with neither bread
nor money nor extra clothing (Luke 9:1-6) to do what they had seen Him do, like
healing the sick, casting out demons, and proclaiming the Gospel no secular
authorities wanted to hear about. When
that first foray worked out well he sent seventy-two – armed with his authority
and His message. On Pentecost Sunday His
Spirit sent out the whole Body and here we are two billion plus later.
Efforts
to shield children from pain and embarrassment are commendable on their
face. But in this case the shielders
weaken one group while bullying another.
What the kids need a whole lot more than shielding – when we are not
talking about serious injury – is relationship with adults who love them enough
to stand with them, to help them pick up the pieces, to demonstrate their real
value that transcends a bad day at the ballpark. I had no one to stand with me when I was
twelve, and I still came out stronger for the experience. I learned how important it is to stand for
and with others, and that the things that hurt my pride are not the things that
kill my person. I received the most
important redemption for this time when I met a God who will always stand for
me and with me a decade later. Rules –
however well meant – teach none of these things. Only relationship can do that.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living
As Ambassadors of Relationships and The
Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by
e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net
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