My 6-year-old son goes through phases, but he always comes back to numbers. Whether it's the number of miles to his cousin's house in Rochester, or Tyler Myers' plus-minus rating, it's all about the numbers.
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Adults act childishly over a scoreboard
10th Mar, 2023
Because of his love of numbers, I was pleased to be able to come home from an early season baseball meeting and share with him the good news. The league would be putting up new scoreboards.
If you're familiar with the big blue water tower, then you know where my son and 700 of his friends play ball.
We teach the kids how to hold the bat, how to throw and catch. While we're teaching the specifics, we can only hope that something more important is sinking in, things like respect, how to treat others, what it means to be a good sport and the importance of always giving your best.
A wiser man once said that the years teach much that the days never know. In baseball, a successful season imparts a wisdom that escapes the outs and the innings.
Driving home from the game the other night, just as we entered one of those new traffic circles on Harlem Road, my son asked a question I can't answer. "Why are the new scoreboards still in the shed?"
While I don't know all the nuances of why the town required the league to take down the sponsorship signage, and why the league has not put up the new scoreboards, it begins to make some of us associated with the league feel like we're teaching the kids one set of lessons, while the town plays by, and unfortunately teaches, another.
In this age of funding cuts, one might think that a league that takes responsibility for its needs would be thanked by elected officials, not scolded for over-performing. If it's a matter of degree, then one would think some common ground could be met (signage scaled back, not removed altogether).
The old scoreboards date back to my days on these diamonds, back in the summer that followed the Blizzard of '77. The scoreboards served their time, and Coke certainly got its money's worth in advertising on it.
As I understand it, some of the new sponsorship money was intended for new bathrooms. We've had families leave games and return. Can't say as I blame them when on a hot day, the blue port-a-potties become something approaching road kill on the pleasantness scale.
I know at least one 6-year-old who could do the math, that 700 families should be able to bring a couple thousand votes to the polls. In baseball terms that's a purpose pitch, and while it's not a suitable lesson for kids under 12, it seems like an appropriate response to the unprovoked high and tight brush back pitch thrown by the town at our kids.
It all seems a bit odd. Old scoreboards that don't work, new scoreboards (paid in full) not using a single taxpayer dollar, not allowed to work. Why is some bureaucrat or politician making a stand, or a decision, and for whom? What constituency in Amherst benefits by keeping a set of new scoreboards locked away in a dusty shed?
Let them be uncrated, put up and let some proud parent push a button as the first undersized foot slides across home plate. Let's put up the scoreboards, not so much so we know the score, but so the kids know we're all playing by the same set of rules.