Why are we even bothering with the 12-year-olds playing softball?
Let’s skip the silly kids’ games and go straight to the main event: out of shape, middle aged men brawling on a softball field.
Let’s see how their high school blocking skills have held up a few decades after those faded glory days. Also, let’s get Draft Kings involved. I want to get in on the action.
And let’s ensure the fighting is done in front of a group of impressionable young girls so they can soak in the experience and the thrill.
If I can make an assumption, the men involved likely have daughters on the team, so let’s throw a #girldad on this bout!
Last week, this scenario played out after a softball game in Jersey between East Hanover/Florham Park and Little Falls. This was a particularly tense semifinal — one parent was reportedly ejected in the second inning.
When it came to the post-game handshakes, the East Hanover coach, Matthew J. Magaletta, physically attacked the other coach and a scrum of pushing and shoving grown men spilled into the first base line before being broken up.
Magaletta, 54 was charged with assault and banned by the league from coaching.
These fellas aren’t the only ones acting like fools.
The practice has become so ubiquitous, it should be its own sanctioned sport: parents and coaches fighting each other, or going after a referee.
There could be a female category too!
In April, a mother and coach of a U8 softball coach in Georgia was arrested after charging at an opposing coach, because she claimed they were making fun of her daughter. In 2022, a woman in Mississippi, wearing a “Mother of the Year” T-shirt was busted after she allegedly slugged a female umpire at a 12-year-olds’ softball game.
Leagues and politicians have stepped in to throw down real punishments for offenders. In 2023, Deptford Little League in Jersey instituted a rule that poorly behaved spectators will be punished by having to umpire three games.
On Staten Island, a CYO league told parents to be good or be gone, after a group of them tangled at a hoops game over the winter. If folks in the bleachers were ejected once, they were banned for a year. If they did it again, they’d be gone for a lifetime.
“Instead of being responsible adults, they let it go, let it rip. And I just thought, well enough is enough is enough,” Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella said at the time.
Yes, these so-called adults need to be treated as unruly schoolchildren. How pathetic.
Last year, one of the winning submissions of the New York Post Scholars Contest was from a young teen who plays soccer at a very competitive level.
In an essay examining the scourge of bad sports parents, he cited a few examples he’d witnessed, including a fight between parents at a Dallas tournament over a vuvuzela, naturally.
The piece provided a unique perspective from an actual young athlete, underscoring an important but overlooked fact: even the kids think misbehaving adults are complete and total jackasses.
Bad parents have existed since the dawn of youth competition. However, certain factors have turned the temperatures up much higher. For example, the costs for travel sports have ballooned to such insane levels that one might need to sell a kidney to keep their kids in the game.
And there are no longer seasons for sports, just a yearlong loop of weekend eating tournaments. Perhaps these parents are investing all their time and money and are short circuiting.
Or maybe just like some kids don’t have the stuff to compete, some parents don’t have the self-control or temperament to be a good spectator.
Either way, they’re chasing hard working and capable officials away from youth sports, and there continues to be a shortage of referees.
Obviously, threats of bans or criminal prosecution aren’t enough of a deterrent. There are cameras everywhere, and going viral for scuffling at their kids should provide the ultimate shame.
Heck, let’s have a whole channel broadcasting these physical altercations. ESPN should add a segment to SportsCenter.
Anything to keep these hotheads in their place. Remember, youth sports aren’t an outlet for frustrated overbearing adults. They’re for the development of the kids.
Speaking of those kids, they’re all watching. And they’re embarrassed.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
