Sports teach a lot of lessons. I think that’s partly why parents sign up for them. Learning teamwork, getting exercise, being active, doing something instead of staring at a screen, meeting other people, and playing a game they love — all good things.
Baseball has taught us a lot of lessons. What kind of coaches we don’t want our kids to have as examples of adults. How our kids handle hard situations where things don’t go their way and how we need to help them when that happens. When they need to get back at it and not let their teammates down, despite how they feel or how tired they are. Even when it’s time to quit. All big lessons.
Sportsmanship is a huge lesson. Huge. You don’t have to look far to hear stories of parents getting ejected from games for freaking out on referees or umpires when the call didn’t go the way that benefitted their child’s team. Coaches who blame the refs or umpires or other team, instead of saying, “Next time, let’s work harder. Next time we’ll practice more. Next time we’ll work on XYZ.” Parents who tell kids “It’s not your fault, that was a bad call.” Plenty of sportsmanship lessons out there. We’ve all seen it. It’s on every sideline, at every game.
READ: How to Rein in Your Crazy During Kids’ Sports
And then one day it’s your kid who makes that mistake. Your kid who misses the extra point to lose the game. Your kid who drops the fly ball. Your kid who doesn’t block the penalty shot. Your kid who loses the set and loses the match for the team. Your. Kid.
As a parent, that’s the worst bad dream. That when the game is lost, everyone looks at you and thinks “My kid would have made that shot/caught that ball/scored that point. We would have won. YOUR KID MADE US LOSE.” Of course, it’s not so simple. There’s a lot of plays over the length of time of the game that contributes to a win or loss. And most of them in fact do not involve your kid, because most teams have many players on them. But it sure feels like it when your kid is the last one touching the ball.
Recently my child got the last out in a game to win a tournament championship. I seriously doubt all the other moms were looking at my kid like HE JUST LOST THE GAME. We were down by almost a dozen. But he was the last out. It FELT like he had just lost the game, to me anyway. All the kids lined up on the field and the staff did medals and my kid’s team held up the big second-place trophy and pushed and laughed with each other. My child was fine. He was having fun with his friends. It was me who was upset.
READ: Ode to the Baseball Moms
As we left the game, another mom caught up to us and returned a piece of equipment my son had let her child borrow. She said, “Thanks bud, that was really kind of you to share with him.” And I realized, wait, isn’t that better? To have a child who is kind? Isn’t that what’s important here? Not hitting a grand slam. Raise a kind kid. That’s the goal. Let the grand slam dreams go, Mom.
Maybe I need to learn some sportsmanship.
