Too good to be 9?

I honestly can believe that this has finally happened, a 9-year-old is so much better than the rest of his piers that he must be banned from baseball. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=3553475 Let’s not pretend that we couldn’t see this coming. You see, it all started with those stupid participation ribbons they started handing out to all the kids on each team even though they did nothing to deserve recognition. I was absolutely stunned to find this out several years ago when I enrolled my own son for baseball. His team won just a few games, only but one or two kids stood out by their play, yet at the end of the season all the parents were hit up for a $20 bill to pay for trophies and prizes. I of course had the temerity to ask, “why?” After all, back in the day, there was one trophy handed out at the end of the season, and that trophy went to the first place team, and the coach was the one who got to keep it. What was funny about that was, no one cared, rather, they all knew that was the way it was supposed to be. Fast forward a few years (okay, many, many more years) and imagine my surprise at having to fork over an extra $20 for participation awards for all the players on a bottom of the league team! What I failed to notice, was that this was the way of the “new generation.” The children of today apparently are all suffering from low self-esteem and they are in need of constant affirmation that they are “special” and deserving of awards for things they never worked hard to earn.

So now you see my point, right? We got here at this point where we are penalizing 9-year-olds because of superiority by making a practice of rewarding mediocrity. It started by telling all the kids they were good even if they were not, telling them they were valuable to the team even if they didn’t spend a moment outside of practice and games working to get better, and affirming their effort whether they played hard or not during the game. Once mediocrity is the norm, excellence will always end up being penalized, because as soon as someone stands out above everyone else, then he will be made to be a villain because he is damaging the self-esteem of all the other kids.

This unfortunate story ought to be a national wake-up call. We are rearing a generation of cry-babies and underachievers who are bloated with self-esteem while mediocre in performance. Don’t tell me that this mentality won’t spill out into other areas of life either, because it will. We are currently undergoing a cultural revolution in the work place and academy due to the effects of this “awards for all participants” mentality that has been practiced now for the last 15—20 years in this country. So, I for one am hopeful that this embarrassing national story over penalizing an overachiever will finally shame us into our senses and cause us to realize that the only way we will get better as a nation is if we only reward excellence in achievement and effort in order to motivate people to move out of mediocrity.

I say, let little Jericho play. So what if he strikes out every 9-year-old in his league. Maybe that will cause the rest of those kids to try harder so they can hit him next year when they are 10. In the mean time, as they make that long lonely walk from home plate to the dugout with a bat on their shoulder after striking out, they will learn an important lesson in life, that hard work and sharpened skill acquired through drilling the mechanics of a good swing, will not only help them get that bat on the ball, but will also be a lesson on how to get ahead in life.