Invisible Runner On Second (Part I)

This year when I coached softball, I had students run through second base and get tagged out (looking surprised) despite the fact they'd been told on several occasions that the only bases you can do that with are first and home. Players regularly forgot to run to first on a dropped third strike and essentially follow the complicated but basic rules of the game at all.

When I was growing up, the invisible man on second didn't advance until I hit another double or extra bases on top of that. He didn't take a lead and then forget to tag up, and he only scored if I hit the ball into an area past some pre-determined mark. Not only did we have to understand the general rules of the game, but also the somewhat esoteric addenda depending on whose backyard we were playing in. Over the trees and into the neighbors' yard was an automatic homerun at our house, but not down the street at the DiDomenico's, and anything in the street at the Prutsalis' house was not only a foul, but often the end of the game because they lived on the main road.

Kids don't seem to understand rules the way they used to, and it's because they don't play the same way we did when I was a kid. If you are even able to break the rules on a video game, you just die and hit restart -- and you're generally not playing against someone else in a manner that requires interaction. "Play Dates" are set up by well-meaning parents who intend to grow their children up instead of letting it happen naturally. This occurs until they are old enough to be put in managed sports where the rules and competition are unimportant as long as everyone feels good about themselves. Everyone gets a recognition certificate; MVP makes everyone who didn't get it feel bad; and there was no one who stood out with athletic prowess or knowledge of the game because it was just a blob running up and down the field after the ball or some kids who don't know what position they like to play because they never get more than one inning in any spot.

As Dash put it so succinctly in The Incredibles, "If everyone is a winner, no one is." In this great society where we want everyone to feel good about themselves, we've solved nothing with this lackadaisical approach to rules and competition. People are still competitive, that's imprinted on our DNA, but they find rules difficult to comprehend and follow because they are being grown up in a society that imposes rules incrementally and sometimes whimsically. Instead of forcing kids to make up a new rule for an in-the-park homerun at the Smiths' house, they don't know the Smith kids at all because Mommy never set up a play date.