by Rabi

Created on: June 03, 2007   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

Competition can be a wonderful thing. It can also be hell incarnate. In today's society, sports and competition have some parents so tightly wound, the games at hand seem to matter more to them than their children. Simply put: Children love playing. Whether it's a makeup game, an actual sport, with their friends, or by themselves. They love to play. Up to a certain age, they couldn't care less about the score at the end. They come off the field up a few or down a lot, and it never matters. All they care about is telling mom and dad how awesome they did. All of the "Did you see me do that!?" talk.

Enter in the parents. Now, I know everyone loves to see their children succeed. It's great when your child is responsible for some amazing play that won the game, or for being the strong silent one that they couldn't have won without. Everyone feels equally as bad for their children when that big game doesn't go their way or when the child feels at fault for the loss. As a parent, you should be encouraging and supportive and proud of the child. It doesn't matter if they won or lost.

Parents have grown to a point of being bloodthirsty. No matter what game, no matter what age group. I've seen it in hockey, baseball, football, basketball, pretty much any competitive sport you have parents in the stands for.

My worst experiences have certainly been with baseball and hockey parents. Keeping with the topic, I'll focus on baseball.

Fortunately for me, my parents aren't like the crazy ones. They signed me up for a t-ball league. Pulled me three weeks in because of the behavior of the parents. Now, I'm sure everyone sees "little league parents from hell" and jumps right to the image of the drunk father screaming insults towards the other team during a game. No, not even close. The drunk father would be at PRACTICE. Mind you, this is t-ball. Pre-pitching machine,pre-pitching. The age group where the T is taller than most of the players, the bat is about as much weight as any can lift, the ball is bigger than both of their hands, and most of the participants would rather kick dirt or pick weeds than actually focus on the game.

Forget about having the guy yelling at the opponents and their parents, he's on the case of his kid and the rest of the team. Screaming about bad hitting, bad catching, bad throwing, not enough intensity, blah blah blah. They're like four years old for god's sake, but that doesn't matter. If another parent says "hey, come on" or tries to make any attempt to

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