Baseball Part II

As I mentioned in a previous post, baseball in Ark City has been quite dissapointing for Andy and I. The boys aren't old enough to really understand how things are being run here yet.

Initially we knew we would be dissapointed in the facilities. We have been blessed to have played years past in Winfield where the boys were truly lucky to have such great fields to play on. In Ark City we play at Sleeth, home of the sewage treatment plant...right next to the field Wyatt plays on...seriously. A great hit would literally end up floating around with the Baby Ruths! Uggh.

It didn't take long to learn that raw waste is not the only thing that stinks around there. Cole's first scrimmage was last week. He scrimmaged the Association President's team. It was a slaughter! Because it was picture night for the traveling teams, we found out really quickly that the Pres has stacked his team with traveling team players. Cole's league is the 7 and 8 year old league though there were two boys that played on Wyatt's third grade football team last fall. So they are basically stacked with third graders and stud 7 and 8 year olds and are absolutely rolling over every other team in the league. Last weekend we had a tournament and had to play them again right out of the gate and were run ruled as was everyone else!

The irony of all this was that we noticed that the same snotty little klick that we had to endure during football just happened to be the parents of the kids on the President's team! We found it hard to believe that they just accidentally ended up with all their kids on the same team. You see most towns rank their players and then spread the higher ranked kids throughout the teams for a couple reasons. They don't want any one team to be too strong, but also, it's good for weaker players to play with stronger players. Stronger players are a good teaching tool.

Andy mentioned what we had noticed to Wyatt's coach and he explained to us that in Ark City, President suggested that kids that hang out together and who's parents socialize together should get to play together. Well I guess the other coaches agreed without realizing what his plan was. Basically he wanted to be able to stack his team and he wanted to make sure that their kids don't have to play with kids that the parents don't socialize with. The same guy coaches a team in Wyatt's league too and he has basically done the same thing with less success though. His team did beat Wyatt's team last weekend, but not without a fight. They barely pulled it off.

It is very dissapointing that we live in a town that places status in a klick above the love of the game of baseball. But as we learn more and more, it seems that this klick in Ark City is pretty much the foundation of life here. These same parents put their kids in the same schools even though they don't reside in the designated area. It just so happens that is the school our kids go to. And the same parents run the show there too.

My whole life Ark City people have talked about Winfield people like Ark City people are more down to earth and Winfield people are snotty but having lived in both places, we both agree that Ark City is a tough town to live in because of this klicky crap. And the sad part is that the people who are in this group are not of high social standing. They don't have great jobs for the most part or come from good families or even have fabulous houses. Many are big partiers. But they have this idea that they are a desireable group to run with. We certainly don't agree.

As Wyatt's coach put it, "The good thing about letting them have their own little team is that you don't have to deal with those bunch of parents on your team. Thank goodness for small favors.