“This is a serious breach of sportsmanlike conduct,” the district attorney said.
To say the least.
Mark Downs, a little league baseball coach, was convicted by a jury in Pennsylvania for asking one of his players to harm a teammate. Downs offered to pay one of his players $25 if he’d bean an autistic player in the head with a baseball to prevent him from being able to play, which is just what happened.
We’re talking about eight- and nine-year-old kids here. And the coach wanted to win so much, he was willing for an autistic child to be harmed to improve their chances. Yes, I’d call that a serious breach of sportsmanlike conduct.
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Here’s a piece my mom has written for her column in the daily newspaper where they live.
This year has been an interesting one. Turning 70 is not quite so much fun as I had anticipated. I had envisioned more travel, leisure time to read, more time with the grandchildren. What I got was more trips to the doctor, aching muscles and less energy.
Along the way we decided we didn’t need all this space – a house big enough for four rowdy kids and six and a half acres to mow. We began the plan. Moving toward a “patio home” or some such arrangement, I began to dig out.
Now, first, you have to realize we moved here in the ‘70s. Secondly, I inherited some of my mother’s habits of “squirreling” things away. It is sufficient to say there is beaucoup stuff to deal with – and that’s putting it mildly.
First, I attacked the books. Somehow, I don’t think I’m going to read them all again. I self-righteously closed my eyes and began to toss books into boxes for the Crowder Friends of the Library Book Sale. Ten boxes full – what a good start!
Then I came back to rearrange the bookshelves – and could not even tell ten boxes of books were missing. This might have been my first clue that I was in real trouble here.
I moved on to the linen closet. I threw away seven scraggly towels and two sets of king-sized sheets, since we have only queen-sized beds now.
The kitchen was not so bad, as we had remodeled it a couple of years ago. When I cleaned out all the cabinets and drawers then, I vowed it was NOT all going back into the new cabinets. My shelves are pleasantly full but there is no room for more “stuff.” In other words, a smaller kitchen might be a problem. I just don’t know what to do with my grandmother’s kraut-cutter, Nanny’s wooden bowl and nut-cutter, or the 13 pie pans – different sizes and styles for different recipes, none of which I make any more.
I did get rid of the three sizes of cheese cake spring pans. Frankly, I hadn’t made cheese cake since Sam’s Club came out with a to-die-for New York style one that satisfies all the “gourmet” eaters in our family. The pans did not, however, take up that much room. They stacked well and fit on top of the 13 pie pans.
I eliminated from the basement two trash bags of “dress-ups,” most of which I can remember our own daughters using back in the 70s for their make-believes and for cat funerals (black dresses and hats).
Then I packed up the Beatrix Potter figurines and books that were my mother’s. There must have been 50 of them. My niece took them when Mother died and got tired of dusting them. She was going to sell them, so I just bought them myself. Now, 10 years later, my niece, now a teacher with a master’s degree and her own home, was becoming a little nostalgic in her decorating. I sent them to her with the words, “They’re yours. I do not want them back.”
My daughter-in-law said, “You haven’t really downsized yet. Believe me, I have done it and you’re not getting close until you get to the point where it hurts.” Well, it had hurt a little but not much.
One day recently, the Runner and I were sitting in the kitchen having a second cup of coffee. We looked down over the neighbor’s hill to the pond. We watched the mama and daddy goose bring their little goslings out for their morning swim.
The Runner said, “I guess they wouldn’t have a view like this at a patio home, would they?”
That was our last discussion of “downsizing.”
I did tell the kids, “Someday, babes, this will all be yours. Enjoy!”
Cheers – I get to keep my Norton Simon Museum post, my Laurel and Hardy figures and the 87 photo albums.
Jeers – I don’t get to be a little mouse in the corner when the next generation has to deal with all this stuff!
I couldn’t believe it when I read about that coach, either. Two consecutive six-to-thirty-six month sentences may not be sufficient to knock the senselessness out of his skull.
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I admire your mom. I’m your age, but I’m already starting to feel the tug of divestiture. “Sell your possessions and give to the poor,” Jesus says in Luke 12. (Not all of them, as he advises the rich young ruler. But some.) I think I’d like to know more about the joy of sacrificial giving. Or at least about the joy of not having so much stuff.
Maybe that’s why God created eBay.
And we wonder where children are learning to solve their problems with mass-violence.
There is a world of good memories in that old stuff.
We call them “pack-rats” and I come from a long line of them! I may only be 32 years old, but I’ve already started a ritual of cleaning out my basement of useless junk, 1 trash bag at a time. It is so freeing!!! And would my kids really want to read my old HS graduation cards anyway???
Your mother & her writings are priceless! My eyebrows did arch up just a little when she said she had to buy back her own mother’s Beatrix Potter figurines from her niece!
I have so enjoyed getting to know her better at all the various conferences we’ve attended in the last two or three years. She has been through so much, & she is such an example of a “spirit-filled” woman—-HE is shown in her life. I’m inspired by her.
When the coach left the courtroom after the hearing, he muttered “I didn’t do nothing.”
Hopefully he can be corrected while in prison and not just babysat.
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And I’m with your mom. Boo on moving for sure…
It sadeness me but doesn’t suprise me about he coach. He will definately learn his lesson in prison. I preached in the prisons and the inmates have their own form of justice especially to those who harm helpless children. Even in the jails where I ministered they have this mentality. So, this coach by the time he gets out will have definately have learned his lesson.
When Steve and I married, I found out he was a “packrat” for books and I am for everything else. It was two households combining in one medium ranch house. Things are still in boxes that I mean to get too, but never do. I am considering a booth in an Antique store or ebay. We have started to just buy edible things when we travel and postcards to lessen the rubble.
We’re going the opposite direction of your Mom. Ten years ago, we sold the four-bedroom house in which we had raised our family and bought a tiny two-bedroom condo. We threw out or gave away over half our stuff. Now, with our first grandbaby on the way, we’re in the market for a “grandma house.” We have little furniture, no lawn mower, very few tools and landscaping implements. I don’t know which is harder: divestiture or reacquisition.
We’ve moved a lot over the years and I’ve found it to be very helpful for keeping the stuff to a minimum. You can definitely clarify your thinking on an item by trying to decide if it’s worth packing up and shipping to another part of the world.
I think in some measure this is the by-product of competative sports. Kids are playing 50 and 60 baseball games a year, and that leaves precious little time for anything else, much less church. When I started seeing competative teeball I just about lost it. I think with a lot of these coaches they are just pretending they are coaching in the pros and living their lost dreams through these little kids. When I was a kid we played a dozen games and when for ice cream after the game, win or loose. That was fun.
I live in a small town in central Arkansas just north (about an hour) of Little Rock. Each time I go to watch youth baseball in this town, stories like the one you mentioned surprise me less and less.
I actually don’t see a problem with competative teeball. It teaches children about winning and losing the right way. Competition is healthy.
Well it is easy to see where your talent for writing came from. Loved you Mom’s story.
With my life-long moving history I’ve learned to love the stuff while I’m here and not missing the stuff when I get to a new ‘here’.
It really is just stuff, except - the pack rat in me won’t let me throw out a card, letter, note from loved ones. I drown in a flood of paper everywhere I go, but am proud to say that since I downsized to this wee Hobbit-sized home that I dearly love, I’ve reduced the number of file cabinets and drawers from 4 of the former to 1 and from 8 of the latter to 4 and I’m still sorting, tossing and shredding. My goal is to reach ONE file cabinet with only TWO drawers. Prayers would help. LOL
About the “coach” - I have no comment other than may he never ever be around young children again in a mentoring venue. I guess evil knows no boundries nor has any ‘hands off’ areas.
What was the actual charge on this guy? Was it child endangerment, assault, or many others I can probably justify or even a combination of them all? Just curious. Either way, I worry about his influence on kids that were not necessarily physically harmed, too; like his own kids.
I must say, the “This is why kids should not play sports” argument is almost as tired as “Religion is such a mess that I refuse to follow God.” Perhaps things like this are the very reason good people should be involved in sports. It is not that sports are of great importance in and of themselves but lessons can be taught very effectively in such environments.
Always remember the old saying: Sports do not build character, they reveal it!
That is a very sad coach’s story. Thanks for following it up with your mom’s article. That was great!
I’m the mother of a child with autism. Had that been MY son on the receiving end of that ball, justice would have been immediately administered, MOM-STYLE!!
The shredders, tossers, and downsizers among all you good folks might be gently urged to contact your local historical archive before consigning all your memories to the atoms. Whereas most libraries in the developed world already have all the books you have in your home library, a church directory from 1965 might be the only remnant,(a hoof, and a piece of an ear) something that would bring tears of joy to an archivist’s eyes. How about a handbill from one of the two Dallas citywide campaigns featuring the preaching of Jimmy Allen? What an artifact to find! A Pat Boone ‘45 recording? an issue of the Gospel Echo before 1938? Going…going…
Speaking of a breach in sports conduct, did you see the fight in the Miami game last night? What are those guys thinking? That was just disgusting to see.