Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Some advice on kids’ sports. This is really good advice. As usual, someone else gave it to me.

Major league baseball is concluding yet another season. The Little League baseball national and international tournaments just concluded (putting all those kids’ games on national TV live was a horrible mistake). What’s one to do with another?

Less than a tenth of one percent of kids playing ball make it to “the big leagues.” Yet, parents conduct the sports as if their kid is in that tiny group.

I played softball and baseball from second grade through high school. I was pretty good sometimes and not really good at all most of the time. While doing this, I played with several fellows who later played football in the NFL. None of my friends made it to major league baseball, but the NFL has its tiny share of kids as well.

Those kids who made it to the NFL were not like the rest of us kids. There were stars playing with me as a kid who never made it past high school. I saw college sports teams where no one made it to the next level.

It just doesn’t happen.

The advice I learned as a parent was, encourage your kids to play enough ball while growing up so that they won’t be embarrassed to join in at the company picnic. If the folks at the company picnic have a game of pick up basketball, my kids would join in and have fun and while not starring in any way, would participate and have fun. Same goes with company picnic softball, soccer, volleyball, Frisbee, and even tether ball (the all-American backyard game).

Help your kids play enough ball to enjoy the company picnic.

Help your kids sing enough to enjoy the company picnic.

Help your kids draw and paint enough to enjoy the company picnic.

The same goes for sewing, quilting, cooking, dancing, and a much longer list than I can recall at this time.