B-Rant

- submitted by Linda Keenan on 04/14/2008

  

Crazed Sports Parents Not So Crazy After All?

By Linda Keenan

It is my contention that the most dangerous spot in America may well be the space between Larry King and his kid's little league umpire. This is not idle conjecture. The New York Observer reported recently that King, the team coach, had a bit of a run in with his kid's ump, in which, the source said, King was told to "regroup" and generally simma' down now.

Mothers might describe this as giving Coach King a time-out to calm his body. Larry King may throw soft-balls at Zsa Zsa Gabor at night on TV (and shouldn't she be getting tougher questions, I ask?), but come game-time, he is apparently Daddy Mad-Dog.

This story was occupying a tiny part of my brain when I walked into a playground with my son and heard a woman screech "that was CRAP!" I looked over and saw a mother "coaching" her son in baseball. I put coaching in quotes because my first reaction was to glare at this harridan.

It takes a lot for me to glare. As a classic passive-aggressive with years of expert training by pinched Catholic nuns, I'm much rather lambast someone to as many strangers as possible (like, say, here) rather than actually confront the person face-to-face. I wanted to tell her, "if you want to yell at your kid, fine, but not in shouting distance of my kid."

Furthermore, I wanted to knock some sense into her and say, "you know you are getting all torqued out about some stupid game, and by the way you are probably condemning your poor sweet child to a lifetime of therapy. Good job, Mom."

I should also say, without question, that I looked down on this woman. I am not a sports person, nor is my husband, and getting that crazed about a 10-year-old's baseball prowess just seems silly at best, tacky at worst.

And then my moment came, when one of my many long-standing judgments about life gets flattened on its ass.

I actually looked at the kid, closely. He was not in the least bit unhappy by what I perceived as anger or petty harassment by his mom. And when he did better on his next play, and she shouted, "good job!", the boy had that look of glowing pride that 10-year-olds want desperately to hide but can't. Instantly, I remembered myself as a child the joy I felt on those few days, and they were very few, when my wonderful, overworked, sports-hating mother came to watch me swim at the pool, or play tennis.

And that's when I began to view this mother through a very different lens. This was a mom who was focused intently on something that her child clearly loved: playing baseball. She was passionate about it. She was there, surrounded by kids with their bored-stiff nannies, playing one-on-one with him.

I feel like most of the people I know, including myself, look for opportunities to shuttle their kids to an activity, drop them off, and leave it at that for a few precious Me-minutes. I freely admit that during these activities, I start reading the New York Times, Ward Cleaver-style, and you'd have to use a lacrosse stick to poke through my protective newspaper tent just to get my attention.

So was this woman one of these frothing crazies who comes to the game like she's been bitten by a rabid raccoon? Does she withhold love if her son doesn't perform to her liking? Maybe. Maybe the boy wasn't reacting to the anger because she's a Mommy Mad Dog all the time. But I did see them leave the park, chatting happily to each other. I'll never really know, of course. Larry King is probably the only person who could get to the bottom of it. If Coach King can keep his cool.

Linda Keenan is a contributing writer at Burbia. Linda worked 7 years as a head writer/senior producer for various programs on CNN. Before that she worked as a writer/producer for Bloomberg TV. She now writes satire, primarily about parenting culture, at Thoroughly Modern Mommy..........read more rants