Youth Basketball: Big Dreams

My daughter is a 10 year old basketball player. Earlier this year, she heard about the amazing UCONN women's team and began watching them play on TV. She went to the UCONN women's basketball website to learn the names and heights of all of the players. At 4' 7' in 4th grade, she is worried that she will not be tall enough to play for UCONN. She was comforted to learn that there are some shorter girls playing for the team. Lorin Dixon is listed at 5' 4" and Bria Hartley is listed at 5' 7". Both of these UCONN players are shorter than the tallest girl (5' 9") on her 4th AAU team.

This past weekend, I took my daughter to see the UCONN girls play live versus in Cincinnati. My daughter could not wait to see Maya Moore (the best women's NCAA basketball player) and Tiffany Hayes in action up close. Neither disappointed. Maya scored 23 points and had 5 rebounds and 6 assists. Tiffany Hayes scored 16 with 5 rebounds and 5 assists. My daughter was grinning from ear to ear during the game as UCONN beat the University of Cincinnati by 35 points.

After the game, as we were driving from the stadium to the gym where she would play her games, my daughter CC reconfirmed that she wants to go to UCONN to play basketball.

Games 26 and 27



CC's 4th Grade AAU team ran into some very tough 5th graders in game one and lost big. Then they played a 6th grade team. They lost that game too but it was a close game. The coach plays older teams to prepare the team for the AAU championships. CC was the smallest on the court.  During the 6th grade game, CC was run over by a 6th grade girl as she was trying to complete a fastbreak. CC was lucky that her elbow did not get a fast break.  It turned black and blue and swollen, but she is ok. Undeterred and unintimidated, she went back into the game to play. She will have to be tough to play for UCONN. Those women play a very tough brand of basketball.

The Main Point

Let your kids dream big. Help them understand what it takes to get to the top. Dreaming big and working hard to make dreams happen will benefit my daughter even if she never suits up for UCONN.

Sports mom, JBMThinks, illustrated just how hard it is to earn a roster spot on a Division 1 college sport team in a recent post. Only 3% for HS basketball players will earn that distinction.

Youth Sports: Lebron James Bumped Off His Pedestal

I grew up watching the NBA. I loved watching the '70's Knicks / Lakers rivalry. I once drew a life size picture of Wilt Chamberlain that I cut out and hung on my wall. It was the first FatHead ever. Unfortunately, at 8 years old I did not see the huge business opportunity.


I became a 76ers fan when my dad bought Sixers season tickets in 1976, Dr. J's first year with the team. We had 14th row center-court seats from 1976 to 1990. Over the years, I saw the circus act shots of Dr. J, I witnessed Michael Jordan score his 10,000 point and his 15,000 point and I was awed as a shattered backboard rained down on Darryl Dawkins. 


I watched some great professional basketball over the years and loved it. Sadly, I do not watch NBA basketball anymore. I don't like the prima donnas or overly tattooed thugs who play the game now. And I am glad to say, my kids do not watch NBA basketball either.


On November 27, 2010, Lebron James, arguably the best player in the world, gave me just another reason to avoid the NBA when he intentionally bumped into his coach Eric Spoelstra. It was a bush league, disrespectful move. But perhaps the worst thing about the incident was that the coach did nothing about it. He down played it in interviews after the fact. You can tell in the video he was pissed off until he turned around and saw who bumped him, the supposed best player in the game who cannot win a championship. 


Crazy Youth Sports Coach Series


I see this all the time on youth sports fields and courts. The best players get away with disrespectful behavior much more readily than the bench players. Coaches put winning ahead of discipline. Coaches want to keep their stars happy to keep them from bolting to another team. Ironically, it is the lack of discipline and poor team chemistry that leads to losing and nothing makes a star leave a team more than losing. 



The Main Point

I agree with Charles Barkley who famously said that he was not a role model. Barkley wanted parents and teachers to quit looking to him to raise their kids and instead be role models themselves. As a former fan of Pete Rose, Roger Clemons and Brett Farve, I could not agree more. Add Lebron to the mix. I had already added him to the list this summer for the way he handled his free agency. And lets add Eric Spoelstra to the list of coaches we do not want to emulate. He is toast.

God Loves Baseball

My son came into the world on a rainy day in June 1997 at 3:15pm. My wife and I enjoyed our son's first couple of hours with him until a nurse came into the room to take our son for a quick routine check up before bedtime.  She did not return quickly.

Eventually, a big doctor with a German accent came into our room and said that our son had a serious heart defect. He then told us that he was sorry. The kind of sorry that lacked any glimmer of hope at all. He then informed us that our son needed to be rushed to the Children's Hospital.

The transport staff wheeled my son's incubator into our room so my wife could say goodbye. It seemed like a final goodbye. After a tough labor, my wife was in no condition to follow her new son, so I followed my new born son alone. It was tough to leave my wife when she needed me most, but I needed to go.  As I was walking out the door, my wife struggled to say words I will never forget. She said, "He will never get to play baseball." Tears filled my eyes as those words echoed in my head.

Twenty weeks into the pregnancy, we found out that we are having a boy. From that moment on, I could not wait to teach my son how to play baseball, my favorite sport. I repeatedly told my wife that I planned to make our new son a lefty hitter even if he was right handed. That dream seemed to be shattered.

I left my wife's side and walked in silence down empty hospital hallways toward the exit. I found my car and fumbled to put the keys in the ignition. Through teary eyes, I struggled to see the directional signs that would lead me out of the parking labyrinth.  I found the ambulance that was ready to take my son away. I sat there in silence waiting for the journey to Children's Hospital to start. At 2 a.m., it was eerily dark and quiet. The ambulance started to roll. The red lights flashed but there were no sirens. I could hear my heart beating. I reached for the radio knob and turned on the classic rock station, to kill the depressing silence.

And then it happened. God talked to me through the radio and He told me everything was going to be all right. Yep, believe it or not, the song on the radio was John Fogerty's baseball song titled “Centerfield”...  (Link to the song below)

Well, beat the drum and hold the phone - the sun came out today!  
We're born again, there's new grass on the field.  
A-roundin' third, and headed for home, it's a brown-eyed handsome man;
Anyone can understand the way I feel.
Oh, put me in, Coach - I'm ready to play today;  
Put me in, Coach - I'm ready to play today;  
Look at me, I can be Centerfield...

How many songs are on a classic rock's play list? What are the odds of hearing that song at that moment in time? I think that the odds are low, unless, of course, God is the disc jockey. I got to the hospital in a great mood. God convinced me that everything was ok. I filled out the paperwork and followed my son to the ICU. I waited for about an hour for the official diagnosis. My son had Transposition of the Great Arteries. Basically, my son's aorta was connected to the place were the pulmonary artery was suppose to be connected and vice versa. His heart was pumping great, but he had blood going from his heart to his lungs to get oxygen - and back to his heart. On the other side of his heart he was pumping blood to his body and brain and then back to his heart. This loop never went through his lungs to get much needed oxygen. He was suffocating.

Despite the bad diagnosis, I was somewhat upbeat. I called my wife and told her with absolute confidence that our son was going to be OK. My wife said me, "That's great. Did our doctor read the situation wrong?" "No," I said, "But God talked to me and told me everything was going to be OK. In fact, our son is going to play baseball." A sense of calm came over my wife, too, as I recounted the story about the song.

My son had a major open heart surgery four days later. The surgery was performed by the skilled Dr. Peter Manning of Cincinnanti Children's Hospital. Four weeks after that, my brown eyed boy rounded third and headed for home. I did make him a lefty as planned. And baseball happens to be his favorite sport. He currently plays on an elite baseball team, a team that beat the Panama and Puerto Rican national teams en route to a second place finish in the CABA World Series. He was named to the All Tournament Team.  Here is a picture when he was eight. He hit this ball off the fence about 190 feet, and the reactions of the dads in the background tell the story. If they only knew he has a heart condition, they would really be amazed.

The Main Point

God spoke directly to me. God loves baseball. I would be willing to bet that God loves apple pie and America, too.

Youth Baseball: Not a Perfect Game, but a Perfect Teaching Moment

Armando Galarraga was a surprise Rookie of the Year candidate in 2008 posting a 13-7 record with a 3.73 ERA. His career started out just perfectly.

Galarraga's star faded after a disappointing 2009 sophomore campaign, when Galarraga fell to 6-10 with a 5.64 ERA. In March, Galarraga was relegated to the Tiger's minors after a disappointing spring training.

Galarraga was recently promoted to the Tiger's starting rotation again. Yesterday, he took the mound and was absolutely perfect. Unfortunately umpire Jim Joyce was not. On what should have been the last play of a perfect game, Jim Joyce wrongly called the 27th hitter safe at first. The perfect game was erased from the record books. Although there have been two perfect games pitched this year, there have only been 20 perfect games in the entire history of Major League Baseball, so Jim Joyce's blown call was historic.

Did Armando Galarraga get upset, yell and cry about the injustice? Did he pick up the first base bag and throw it like the childish Lou Piniella? Did he spit in the face of the umpire like Roberto Alomar? No, he smiled in disbelief and went back to the mound and recorded the final out.

Jim Joyce, who looks like a steal worker, cried as he apologized to Galarraga, to the Tiger fans and to the game he loves, baseball.

Today, the day after the blown call, Jim Joyce took the field and the Tiger fans were gracious. Armando Galarraga took the line-up card to Jim Joyce and shook his hand. Jim had tears in his eyes again. All was forgiven. All was forgotten, expect how Galarraga and Joyce handled the unfortunate situation perfectly.

The Main Point

The non-perfect game was more perfect than a perfect game. It provided the perfect teaching moment for dads, moms and coaches alike. The are ups and downs in baseball as Gallaraga's short career illustrates, but Gallaraga did not take an up moment, winning a game with a 1 hitter, and make it into a down moment. And in the process he gained the respect of baseball fans world wide, more so than if he had pitched a perfect game. His star has never been brighter.

Craig Heimbuch wrote a convincing post on the teaching moment Galarraga gave the baseball world on ManoftheHouse.com

The Best Role Model for Kids is an Active Parent

This week in Augusta, Georgia, Augusta National chairman Billy Payne expressed his disappointment with Tiger Woods.

In his annual media address prior to the opening round of the Master's, Payne acknowledged the greatness of Woods, the four time Green Jacket winner, but then went on to criticize Tiger rather harshly.

"We are not unaware of the significance of this week to a very special player, Tiger Woods," Payne said. "A man who in a brief 13 years clearly and emphatically proclaimed and proved his game to be worthy of the likes of Bobby Jones, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. As he ascended in our ranking of the world's great golfers, he became an example to our kids that success is directly attributable to hard work and effort. But as he now says himself, he forgot in the process to remember that with fame and fortune comes responsibility, not invisibility. It is not simply the degree of his conduct that is so egregious here. It is the fact that he disappointed all of us, and more importantly, our kids and our grandkids. Our hero did not live up to the expectations of the role model we saw for our children."

For the record, I have always appreciated Tiger Woods for his work ethic, his competitiveness and for his commitment to excellence, but I never liked him. The intensity that makes him great was a turn off to me. The perfectly controlled, scripted and boring interviews, the yelling at fans or photographers for making noise, the use of profanity that accompanied some bad shots and the ignoring of fellow players showed me that he was not someone to totally revere.

My childhood hero growing up was Charlie Hustle (Pete Rose). Yep my childhood hero was an amphetamine popping, gambling addict, liar.

I also revered the great Roger Clemens. Yep, the one and only ex-future-hall-of-fame pitcher who took steroids, threw his own wife under the steriod bus and lied to congress to save his reputation.

I decided that the best role model for my kids is a dead role model. They can never disappoint you. Lou Gehrig, the Iron Horse, is the player I talk to my son about most. I never saw Lou Gehrig play, but I have read a lot about his legendary commitment to the game.


The Main Point:

I guess kids need heroes to emulate. Sports superstars show what is possible with hard work and dedication, but many fall short of hero status. Be your son's or daughter's hero by never saying no when they want to have a catch or shoot hoops. And make sure that you are in the stands to make eye contact with them when they do something special on the field or when they fail.