I feel the most indignant when I’m in the stands watching my kid languishing on the bench in a youth baseball game or playing the wrong position, because I don’t have a close enough relationship with the coach.
At the end of the day, coaches don’t want to alienate the parents and starts schisms on the tea. They’ll eventually come around if you’re willing to be persistent and stand your ground.
If you find yourself in this situation, here are some effective ways to respond.
1. Respect the 24-Hour Rule Before Raising Issue with Your Kid’s Coach over Playing Time
A lot of coaches have an official policy that you can’t question any decision on the field until exactly one day after the game ends: “the 24-hour rule.” The rule sucks, and was obviously designed so that the upset parent would cool off or even reconsider their complaint. In reality, the parent just stews for a full day and then shoots off an impulsive angry email.
Yet, if you don’t follow the rule, and text the coach say 18-hours after the game, look out. You’re sure to get lectured by the coach about not complying with the rule. Then they’ll use your non-compliance as an excuse not to address your complaint and possibly kick your kid off the team.
So take some sleeping pills, and wait the 24 hours.
And if you can’t wait the 24-hours, check out my blog post on what to do if your kid is kicked off a team.
2. Become the Coach of Your Kid’s Baseball Team
“If you’re that unhappy, then why don’t you coach?” is a popular refrain from prickly coaches when you question their moves.
Call their bluff. And even if you do wind up coaching, chances are you’re at least as qualified as they are. One article even noted that kids are dropping out of sports at an alarming rate partially due to woeful coaching at the youth ranks.
My son’s 8U travel team had been run by an affable jockish guy who regularly put his lefty son, who couldn’t catch the ball, at first base,. He similarly favored other kids whose dads he was close with. He let my son, Sam, pitch, mainly because they didn’t have any other pitchers. However, when Sam wasn’t on the mound, he was either buried on the bench or marooned in the outfield.
Determined not to have a repeat of that situation, I contemplated starting my own travel team. It was a quixotic pipe dream, and I almost surely would never have followed through. But the one dad I had mentioned it to let it slip to some other baseball dads that I was considering breaking off. Before I knew it, a “sit down” was scheduled at our town’s local bar.
They sat us all in a snug booth, and the travel team coach reported how they had had similar problems in his older son’s year. He said that sadly they wound up having two teams, with both squads trying to poach kids from the other team.
“As far as I’m concerned,” the coach said, “you can coach the team next year.”
“Okay,” I said, shocked I was being handed so much power.
“Wait a second,” John, who had been an assistant coach on the travel team, said from the other side of the booth. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
3. Exploit the Assistant Coach’s Disagreement with the Main Coach
In all likelihood, the dads in control of your team are not totally on the same page. Thus, by by speaking out you can become useful to some of them. With Sam’s travel team, it became obvious to me that John, a successful builder with a palatial house and grumpy wife, wanted to overthrow the travel coach and manage the team himself. He, though, didn’t have the balls to directly confront him.
However, he jumped on the opportunity to use me—and my threat of starting a separate team—to achieve his goal.
“We need to stick together,” he said to me, “because all these other dads have older kids and have already formed alliances.”
“Like the World War I alliances?” I asked, joking.
“Very much like that,” he said, not joking.
“As far as I’m concerned,” he also said, “Sam is the best kid on the team. He’s going to play shortstop when he’s not pitching, because that’s where the best kid plays.”
I knew I wasn’t really qualified to be a travel coach, unlike John who had played competitive high school baseball in Southern California. John was also so into the sport he had been a member of our town’s Little League board for 10 years before he even became a dad. So I was happy when John was given the travel team for the spring and he made me his assistant coach.
4. Remember Your Kid’s Playing Time is Your Priority
You always need to remind yourself that it’s about your kid and not you. I realized as the travel season went along that my baseball coaching judgment wasn’t what it should be. I was especially bad a judging whether runners should take an extra base. During a playoff game, I was coaching first base, and a ball was hit to the outfield, and I didn’t send the runner to second. He would have totally been safe if I had sent him, and we lost the game partially because that runner got stranded.
“You should have sent him,” John mumbled under his breath as we walked off the field.
So when John looked to replace me as assistant for the summer season with a burly dad with a Boston Red Sox beard who had played D1 baseball on scholarship, I thought it was the right move.
I was still in the inner circle, receiving all the secret texts (almost every single message ending in “LOL”) and being asked for my input. John was also playing my kid in the prime positions and batting him third. What was there to worry about?
I could just sit back and obsess over what bat to buy my kid for the upcoming season.
Do you have any strategies for dealing with favoritism? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments!
For more information about the emotional side of baseball, see:
- How to Manage Your Kid’s Baseball Tantrums and Meltdowns
- Anger Management and Youth Baseball: How to Calm Down
- How to Stop Being a Crazy Baseball Dad
- 5 Ways Youth Baseball Teams Cheat, and How to Respond
- How to Be a Good Baseball Dad in the Backyard
- How to Deal with Umpires in Youth Baseball
- Is It Now Fashionable to Hate On Baseball Dads?
For information on hitting, see:
- How to Get Out of a Hitting Slump
- 4 Best Baseball Batting Aids (No. 3 is Free)
- 4 Hitting Drills You Need to Do Before Every Game
- 4 Old School Baseball Drills You Need to Be Using
For information on pitching, see:
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