Tom Knott: In interest of fair play, no one ever should fail

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By Tom Knott

The adults in New Haven, Conn., have barred 9-year-old Jericho Scott from pitching in their youth league in the interest of fair play.

This is fair to everyone but the mini-flamethrower with the 40 mph fastball. This is a curious lesson to impart to children. When the going gets tough, the tough ban the one deemed too dominant.

Yet no one should be surprised by the inept response of the youth-league officials. Perhaps they hand out trophies to the more than 100 players in the league because everyone is a winner on the field and, ultimately, in life.

This is utter gibberish, of course, but we the people are trending in this direction.

We buy McMansions that we cannot afford, and politicians cry in our behalf and blame "predatory" lenders. Just like that, personal accountability is removed from the home-buying equation.

The tykes in the New Haven league cannot hit the tyke on the mound. You do not instruct the hitters to practice with greater conviction. Instead, you take personal accountability out of the competition equation and order the pitcher to play second base.

This is in the family of those youth leagues moving in the egalitarian direction. Some do not keep scores and team records out of the fear that losing would hurt Johnny's precious self-esteem.

We have run across a number of products of the self-esteem industry that has been championed in the education system. And it is amusing to hear these twenty-somethings, with their self-esteem firmly intact, wax philosophically on anything that pops into their relatively blank slates.

They are experts in foreign policy, the military, economics, business, the environment and alternative energies, to name a few of their disciplines.

They are all-knowing and all-seeing but do not have two dollars to rub together. They have it all figured out, except the part about being able to provide for yourself.