How You Play The Game

This whole "not keeping score / everyone gets a trophy" concept of entry-level kids' sports has always torn me both ways. Sure, it's nice to protect our children for as long as possible from the reality that losing is a real kick in the ol' castanets but it always makes think back to that line in The Incredibles where Mr. Incredible complains about how society keeps "creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity."

I think about this often now that I am a youth sports coach. Partially because all the kids seem to know the score anyway, so I'm always wondering why am I pretending it doesn't exist, but mostly because this concept allegedly encourages some children's continued participation in physical activity. Unfortunately, these are usually the clueless spazzes who should get a leg up on being IT analysts and fashion designers.

Sorry. I meant to say, it is preventing our children from comprehending the life lessons of teamwork, competition and dedicating oneself to self-improvement even if that self-improvement is for the sole purpose of kicking an opponent's butt. That's what our capitalist American society is all about, right?

Now, me -- I learned how to cope with losing individually and as a team early on in sports. My second year in Little League, for example, our team went 3-17, in no small part to its starting first baseman (ahem) who batted a neat .128.

That winter of my baseball failure, we had our annual dinner. The championship team's players received these cool blue warm-up jackets with their names embroidered on the chest.

The All Stars got their marble-based trophies with the golden-like statue of God as a 12-year-old batter swinging oh-so-sweetly atop.

The rest of us got nothing to wash down our lukewarm helping of baked ziti but a couple of pints of envy and self-loathing.

If that wasn't motivation enough to make you either give up or hit the batting cages, amid all the evening's glorious ode to excellence and victory was the night's speaker: Ed Kranepool.

Ed had just finished his 18th and final year with the New York Mets. This dated from the team's comically inept 1962 inaugural (featuring a still record worst 120 losses out of 160 games) to its 1969 World Series-winning "Miracle Mets" then right back down to the pitifully ugly cellar dwellers of 1979. His nickname "Steady Eddie" came about not so much for his prowess as a pinch hitter but because he continued to show up despite the regular beatings.

That night, Ed discussed how crappy the Mets were and how awful it was playing on a consistently bad team. A strange talk to give a group of baseball-crazed, gung-ho kids but damned if I ever wanted to be Ed Kranepool after that -- miserable and mediocre.

I enjoyed several good-to-great seasons of baseball after that. Then I discovered girls, rock music and under-age drinking and my priorities changed, which is neither here nor there. But I still felt I owed Ed Kranepool his due.

A few months ago, more than 30 years after that fateful night, I again came face-to-face with Steady Eddie. He was at the Mets' new ballpark, propped up against a waist-high table, pretty much alone. I walked up, introduced myself and asked for an autograph. As he signed, I told him about that Little League banquet.

"Did I hand you a trophy?" he asked.

"No. But you did make a speech. Mostly about how awful the Mets were that season."

"Well," he said, "you can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit. Enjoy the game."

Now that's wisdom worth passing on to beleaguered youth sports coaches and players alike.

Of course, for the kids, I'll change a word in there. I doubt any of them like chicken salad.