Pretzel Logic
It is Monday evening and as usual I am at the ballpark at Seventh and Bigler, coaching a very spirited bunch of 5- and 6-year-olds.
It is a very cold night for the first week of June, and the South East Youth Athletic Association’s (SEYAA) Yankees and Marlins shiver in the stiff wind under a foreboding sky.
Standing with me on the field, across Route 76 from the lovely South Philadelphia professional sports complex, are my fellow coaches of the SEYAA Yankees: John Sacco, Teddy Furia, Mark Casasanto and Jimmy Waters. Like me, they are steadying up the troops, yelling out way-to-go’s and get-off-the-ground’s. And talking about how good it has been to see kids grasp some of the finer elements of the grand game of baseball.
It is the top of the fourth, the beginning of the last inning for this group, who have hung in there despite the hour and the elements.
My son Zack, who is convinced (brainwashed, my wife says) he will play for the Mets one day, bounces around the outfield, waiting for a ball to be hit his way.
Watching him, I think of the joy I’ve felt teaching the sport. I love that I get to be a kid again, running around, chasing and hitting the ball.
But it’s more than just child’s play for me, a 40-year-old man still absolutely obsessed with baseball.
I cannot deny that I, ever the delusional baseball father, have conjured up images of the day one of my kids breaks into the majors.
I used to joke that one day, I’d be one of their agents, negotiating contracts, getting their fair slice of the enormous revenue pie.
But I was only kidding.
The same cannot be said for Bonnie and Carl.
Leaders of the Lindros Gang.
Public Enemies No. 1 in Philadelphia for mollycoddling their boy Eric. A 6-4, 236-pound hockey player who, in between concussions, earns millions every year to skate up and down the ice, hitting people and trying to score goals.
By now, the ballad of Bonnie and Carl is familiar.
Boy gets hurt. Dad and Mom complain. Dad steps in and blames the Flyers.
Watching the kids play so close to the FU, the likely soon-to-be-former business address of Eric Lindros, the ballad of Bonnie and Carl reminds me how bad an idea being an agent for my own kid would be.
It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for parents who love their child to listen to people talk crap about their offspring. But that is exactly what big-time contract negotiating is all about.
Ed Snider is one of sport’s smartest owners, his team nearly always a serious contender for the Stanley Cup. He’s willing to do what it takes to win, but that does not mean he is going to continue to employ people who will toss buckets of money out the window.
So, as with any contract negotiations in any sport, the drill is that the general manager (in this case Bobby Clarke) tells the agent (Big Daddy Carl) that golden boy (Eric) is far from what he’s cracked up to be. And sometimes, specially made videos are made to show just how badly golden boy has stunk the place up.
The agent, who wants to make the best deal he can, works to counter the argument. It’s business.
But what dad could stand to hear such things?
The upshot was that Big Daddy Carl couldn’t. And the dynamic was creating tsuris for everybody involved.
Especially Eric.
Any father who dreams of representing his child is asking for disaster.
Which is pretty much what you have with the Lindros family and the Flyers now.
All season, and into the playoffs, the Lindros-Flyers feud simmered, boiling over when Bonnie and Carl accused the Flyers of mistreating their son’s injuries.
It was ugly. And altogether preventable.
With Clarke’s complaints about Bonnie and Carl’s meddling now public, Lindros may never return to the Flyers.
Being the father of little athletes, being the idiot with the loud mouth yelling words of encouragement and instruction to my kids, I totally understand the Lindros family wanting the best for their son.
Too bad they don’t understand that to get it, they’re going to have to let go.
Speaking of bad examples, good to see John Rocker sent down to the minors. I was not happy with baseball commissioner Bud Selig’s original suspension of Rocker when the big, dumb reliever opened his sewer of a mouth to Sports Illustrated’s Jeff Pearlman and complained about blacks, gays and Asians.
The Constitution protects Rocker’s right to be a braying ass.
It does not protect his right to threaten others, as he allegedly did to Pearlman after running into him at a recent game. So kudos to the Braves, even if the incident with Pearlman had nothing to do with it, as they claim.
Just like me, my children are now more confident in all aspects of life because of learning to overcome adversity on the ballfield. My daughter especially likes to hear about how daddy was so bad at sports at her age that he had to attend a double session of spaz class. But the gym teacher, Sam Baumgarten, taught me to believe in myself, after which I became a pretty good ballplayer. Any success I’ve had in life is largely a result of that lesson.
Fortunately for my own children, there are guys like John and Mark and Teddy and Jimmy and my daughter’s coaches Angelo, Eric and Steve around to teach children that there is far more to sports than Lindros or Rocker.
