I'm not my sons baseball coach but I am his football coach. I'm sick of the "good job, you'll get it next time" when these kids totally blow a play. They're 8-10 yr olds and we're 0-8 for the season and you'd think we haven't lost a game the way the coaches congratulate everybody.

If the coaches won't discipline mine, I will. He runs laps after the game for errors. Last game he had 2 dropped balls and an over throw.....3 laps around the outside of the fence while the rest of the team had a party in the dug out for "trying." After the game my wife says I'm known as the a-hole dad by the moms in the stand. I don't yell, my son tries harder than anybody on the team and doesn't complain about running for errors, he just asks how many laps, and takes off. So on the way home I asked him if I'm mean and he says, "no, I know I have to run when I mess up, but I don't understand why the rest of my team doesn't have to run because they mess up more than me." Me too son me too. Lol

I did and I'm not kidding you.

This is exactly why I have a job in this business. All i do is baseball year round, whether it is batting lessons, outdoor practices, or coaching teams on the weekends. It helps that i have a professional playing background, but communication is the key to this. When i started doing this about 9 yrs ago when i retired from playing, i told myself that i have the responsibility to make these kids enjoy and want to play this game. I find it that the yellers and screamers actually know nothing about coaching. They are ego driven and care nothing about development. They are labeled as the win at all cost type coaches. Most of these as well are dads that coach their kid aka "daddy ball"..this is why a lot of parents have chosen to pay quite a bit of money to play for an organization that has paid coaches without a kid on the team. I have a 10yr old son, that i do not coach, but he plays for a guy i know that played minor league ball as well without a kid on the team. There is a fine line with all of this, i coach a 13 year old travel team, and there are a few on the team that i can jump on pretty hard and they respond to it correctly, while others wont. Knowing how to constructively criticize is an art that i am good at, but hadn't mastered it. But at the end of the day for me since i am a coach...ITS NOT ABOUT ME!!!! ITS ALL ABOUT THE KIDS!!!

I coach my 10y/o soccer team and have for the past 3 years. I haven't had a player drop off the team except for 1 that wasn't much of a player. He was scared of the ball and I understand why. I do yell at my players (even the best of them) but I only yell when they are playing grabutt or distracting the others. I think that the parents on my team appreciate that I am taking my time to coach their kids and they agree that they need a COACH to yell at them when the time is right. We have become a team and it is exciting now that we have grown together.

Gooder on 3.

Keep it up - they like you. I always thought it was cool when my parents were the ones yelling because their kid wasn't listening to me or doing what I told them. It is so nice when the parents are on board with you instead of against you. I think when they see you really care for their kids that will happen.

You folks that think baseball is bad, go watch Pop Warner football. I remember when my son was 8 and playing (and he was one of the best on the team) his coach thought he was going to yell and grab him by the face mask and pull a Lou Holtz move on him... That only happened one time. Yelling is one thing, but when you start being physical with 8 yr olds, that's a big problem for me (or rather a big problem for the coach..).

Been a head coach for 2 yrs and asst for 2, never missed a practice, missed a game this year. The point is you don't have to scream and come close to a stroke because a 7yo boy didn't throw out the lead runner. I don't wear loafers.

That's my game, coached the same kids for 3 years now. Last year we went 11/0 with Super Bowl rings to prove it, year before 9/2 and lost in the Super Bowl. At sign ups last week, 30 spots filled within 2 hours, 25 return players. I yell some and jump around a bit, but I keep it positive for the most part, never get "mad" at any of them, and they bust their humps to win. Some of the parents love me and some don't like me but they keep signing up to play on the same team.

Funnest part of my life being able to coach my son as he was growing up......I yelled loudest at him, but always had the positive reinforcement to back it up.

plus hold 'em back in the 5th grade
so they will gain a year for football

Kindergarten. We enrolled my some at the correct age, half the kids in his class are a year older. Lol

Actually, loafers, by definition, do not have laces. Other than that, I agree with your post. I was fortunate during my coaching years to have nearly all good parents. One exception was a mom that wanted to talk to me in the middle of our third game of the season because I was using the same two pitchers I used in the first two games (alternating starts) and her son was not one of them. I told her I would talk to her after the game was over. Then, I informed her that because we had a double header the next weekend her son (who was about number five on my pitching depth chart) would be pitching at some point. She was not happy, because she had to be somewhere else that weekend, but then she showed up anyway. True to my word I let her son pitch, a little longer than I normally would have because he was getting lit up. He was relieved (literally) when I walked out to the mound to take the ball. He never pitched again that season and his mom never complained.

yeah

Rings? Seriously?