Though the World Cup is a fading memory, Liga MX and our Xolos are just three games into their new season, English Premier League football begins next weekend and professional soccer leagues in other countries start their season later this month, I can’t help but think about baseball fans.
Specifically Little League baseball fans. Even more specifically Little League baseball fans who are parents.
For years some of the baggage associated with watching professional soccer was the well worn observation that a vast majority of futbol fans were hooligans —thick-faced ruffians who used a team’s stadium as their own literal stomping ground all in the name of team support.
Nevermind that the majority of fans who watched the games were peaceful — though vociferously enthusiastic — the image of the European hooligan lingered in the minds of the uneducated.
Though the majority of brawl-loving futbol fans have been chased out of stadiums by astronomical ticket prices, I’d still rather take my chances of rubbing them the wrong way than another class of fans: parents at their child’s baseball (or football or soccer or basketball) games.
Those people are maniacs.
Not all parents, of course. But just as there were enough bad apples stoking trouble at Serie A and EPL games to sully the image of soccer fans abroad, so too are there enough bad actors playing irate moms and dads at their child’s weekend pastime to ruin it for everybody.
Most anyone who has attended a youth competition has witnessed a mom or a dad lose their mind when an official —usually an unpaid volunteer or a high school kid learning to navigate the real world — blows a call or makes a decision that goes against the prodigy’s team. There can be more invective and bulging forehead veins from adults than at a Trump rally bashing CNN.
But recently scary parental involvement meandered into a new and interesting level of crazy. Recently there were reports of Little League parents hiring a private investigator to check up on their rivals.
The Union-Tribune recently published a story detailing the actions of an anonymous group of Eastlake Little League parents who hired a private investigator to examine residency records of players on the Park View Little League team. League rules stipulate that players must live within certain boundaries in order to compete on a given team. In this case three players’ eligibility was called into question. Little League’s home office ultimately decided there was no foul play.
That parents or team officials would fudge birth certificates, address cards or other forms of eligibility is nothing new. The practice as old as it is an indication of questionable ethics.
But hiring investigators to explore whether kids on the opposing team are eligible to play in a Little League baseball game? That’s some next level crazy. Give me a shaved headed hooligan with an angry right cross any day.
