Sorry, no Hall of Famers here
Probably you've heard about the guy in Massachusetts who killed the other guy at their kids' hockey practice. Another black mark for youth sports, etc., etc., etc.

The problem with organized youth sports is simple: They exist.

When I was growing up in Anytown, I played football, baseball, basketball and four-square with the kids in the neighborhood. We played on a vacant lot at Elm and 7th Avenue, behind the South Side Baptist Church. We changed sports with the seasons, just like the pros. That was about the only similarity.

On a given day, we'd have anywhere from 10 to 14 kids playing, both boys and girls. No coaches. No refs. No fights -- rare even was the occasional pushy-pushy over a hard tackle (yeah, we were playing tackle football, with no pads) or an argument over a call. We called our own penalties and fouls and balls and strikes.

After we were in junior high, those of us who had any athletic skill at all (and that wasn't very many of us) went on to the organized-sports thing. Not being a very big kid, I ended up on the track team, as a distance runner. I knew I wasn't any good, and I lived up to that. I was just participating in a sport just to participate in a sport. My parents weren't living vicariously through me; hell, they never even came to the meets. I was just a kid having a good time.

Now, having a good time isn't allowed. My daughter couldn't round up 10 kids in the neighborhood to play anything; they're all too busy with their scheduled activities.

It's all about trying to get scholarships and/or show up the other kids out here in White Plastic Suburbia. I spent my Saturday afternoons last spring umpiring youth baseball, kids 7 to 10. I didn't see any real egregious incidents; there were a few instances of bitchy parents and over-intense coaches, but nothing terribly out of line. I was struck by two things: 1/the kids were extremely well-behaved and 2/very few of them appeared to be having any fun at all.

Here's the thing, parents: I saw probably 100 kids play baseball last spring. Maybe one of them has a shot at pro ball -- probably that left-handed pitcher who was smoking 65-mph strikes past befuddled fellow 10-year-olds. He might have a shot at making money playing baseball someday And by that, I mean a year or two in Class A, making $1,200 a month in Port St. Lucie or Oneonta or Appleton.

What many people don't understand about professional sports is that hard work is really incredibly secondary to having natural talent. The last man on every NBA roster was at least all-state in high school; the stories of average kids making it big in pro sports are very, very few and far between. I could have busted my ass shooting free throws and 3-pointers and doing ballhandling drills till my hands bled, and all it would have gotten me was bloody hands. It was never going to overcome the fact that I was going to be 5-foot-7 for the rest of my life. That's the fate to which my children are most likely doomed, and it's probably the fate that your kid faces, too, no matter how much you scream at him or her on the soccer field.

If I live vicariously through my children -- and I'm not saying for a second I would -- it's not going to be on the ball field. It's going to be making sure they do their homework, and making sure they use more than 40 percent of their brains on their schoolwork, making sure they fill out their college applications on time. Not that I feel like an abject failure, but I do have that nagging feeling at times that I'm not fully exploiting whatever potential I have. That's what I'd like to save my kids from.

Your kid will not be a professional athlete. He just won't. So lighten up and for Christ's sake, let him play. Even better: Stay home. And take the coaches and refs with you.