Here’s yet ANOTHER INSTANCE of adults who get so carried away with sublimating when it comes to kids’ sports that they should be kept as far away from it as possible…and this time an allegation involving a kids’ COACH:
NORTH UNION TOWNSHIP, Pa. — A T-ball coach seeking to keep a player with a mental disability off the he field allegedly asked another player to hurt the boy, state police said Friday.
The alleged incident happened June 27 at R.W. Clark Little League Field in North Union Township, Fayette County, police said.
During pre-game warmups, Mark Reed Downs Jr. offered one of his players $25 to hit the 8-year-old boy in the head with a baseball, according to a police news release.
After speaking with Downs, the second player hit the victim near his left ear and in the groin area, leaving him unable to play in that night’s game, state police said.
Isn’t that nice? If this proves to be true, it begs the question: is he related to Tanya Harding? And the Pittsburg Channel’s report gets even more troubling:
“The coach seemed to find excuses not to play this child because he wasn’t that talented,” Trooper Thomas Broadwater told Channel 4 Action News. “On the 27th, the child was basically beaned in the head with a baseball.”
The injured boy’s mother was suspicious, so she approached the player who threw the ball and he told her about the payment offer, Broadwater said.
Downs, 27, of Dunbar, was charged Friday with criminal solicitation to commit aggravated assault, corruption of minors and reckless endangerment. He is free on bond and faces a preliminary hearing on July 28.
Hey: kids’ baseball is a KIDS GAME, not a must-win for adults. We would say “get a life” but it sounds as if Downs may have an unhappy one now, with the TV publicity in Pittsburg — and the local follow up stories that will likely follow.
PS TO ADULTS: If you can’t let kids be kids, avoid their game and go do something productive, like gamble at an Indian reservation…or check The Moderate Voice 12 times a day for new posts.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.