Andy Young: The Best and Worst Thing

By Andy Young

Sometimes the hardest thing about writing for a weekly publication is having a deadline.

If something newsworthy happens on a Tuesday night, it’s too late to write a thoughtful commentary in time for the Wednesday morning deadline. And by the time the next week’s paper is published and hits the newsstand the following Friday, some 10 days have elapsed. That means whatever relevance the event may have had has long since vanished.

Here’s an example: earlier this month the United States Women’s National Soccer team was unexpectedly bounced from the World Cup tournament. After a grueling two-hour match that included two 15-minute overtime sessions, the USWNT lost to Sweden on penalty kicks.

Winners of four of the previous eight World Cups (including the two most recent), the USWNT had never failed to reach the final four, so their underperforming in the group stage and one-game-and-out demise in the knockout round was definitely worthy of comment. What I had in mind was equal parts critical and gleeful. National pride aside, no one who roots for the underdog should have been unhappy. The team’s quick exit brought back memories of a line uttered by long-ago comedian Joe E. Lewis, who declared of major league baseball’s perennial champions, “Rooting for the {New York} Yankees is like rooting for U. S. Steel.”

The modern equivalent of that statement regarding women’s soccer: rooting for the USWNT is like rooting for Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls, the Brady/Belichick New England Patriots, or the Dallas Cowboys (no matter who’s in charge). What fun is it pulling for a team that’s expected to win?

However, given that the deadline would render any critique on the USWNT irrelevant by the time it was published, I moved on to other subjects.

The tournament continued, and even without the American women there were some terrific games. It also turned out there was no need for me to criticize the U. S. women’s underperformance. Plenty of others lined up to take published shots at them. This included both legitimate journalists who know far more about soccer than I do, and commentators who in the past played the game at an extremely high level themselves.

But, the vast majority of the condemnation of the USWNT and the women who comprise it came from people who quite clearly don’t know if a soccer ball is filled with air or stuffed with feathers. For days after the team’s loss handsomely compensated talking heads competed for the title of whose fault-finding could be the snidest, and much of it was inappropriately personal. There was criticism of the appearance of some team members, denunciation of the amount of compensation they received for their less-than-stellar performance, and vitriolic disparagement of their real and/or perceived individual beliefs.

The sources of all the irrational criticism were all too predictable: craven internet commenters who hide behind aliases, and preening politicians whose remarks were, as usual, aimed at arousing the ire of their perpetually angry, willfully obtuse followers. Such diatribes reveal far more about the petty, ignorant ranters than they do about their targets.

Having an unmeetable deadline gave me time to put the USWNT’s defeat in its proper perspective. I'm glad I didn’t write the critical piece I had intended to after the team’s early elimination.

I hope Spain enjoys being World Cup champion for the next four years. But they’d better watch out in 2027, because a talented, determined, underdog United States team will be on a mission, and the defending champion Spanish will be squarely in their sights.

Sometimes the best thing about writing for a weekly publication is having a deadline. <

Andy Young: A sobering epiphany

By Andy Young

It’s hard to imagine where I’d be today without having had America’s nominal national pastime in my life.

I learned to read thanks to the baseball cards on the backs of Post cereal boxes. I played the game well enough to make the local Little League and Babe Ruth League all-star teams, before hard throwing, curve-balling pitchers led to my playing days ending at age 16 or so. But my involvement with the game went on at the high school, college, and professional levels as a coach, writer, radio announcer and publicist for another three decades or so and continues today as a Little League umpire.

Baseball helped me develop self-confidence, determination, social skills, and a strong work ethic. It also aided me in finding ways to deal with life’s periodic setbacks, and hastened my understanding of what makes a good teammate, both inside and outside of athletics.

That established, watching the game’s declining status at the youth level both locally and nationally has led me to an unhappy realization, which is that if I were a teenager today I’d have long since put baseball in my rearview mirror, assuming I had even bothered to get involved with it in the first place.

I started playing baseball for the same reasons I subsequently took up football and basketball: because virtually every other boy my age was doing it. Playing outside was an integral part of growing up in pre-cable TV, pre-Internet, pre-Smartphone days, a sort of informal socialization for pre-teenagers.

Today’s kids want to fit in with their peers just as much as my childhood friends and I did. But given the easy accessibility of instant-gratification-providing electronic devices, it’s no surprise that many of today’s athletic-minded youth consider baseball far too devoid of action. Lacrosse and ultimate frisbee are two sports on the rise that involve more movement and exertion, and for the disturbingly growing number of one-sport athletes, there’s spring soccer and basketball to contend with as well.

Another often-overlooked cause of youth baseball’s decline is the troubling upsurge (and continuing expansion) of the youth sports industry. While those wealthy enough to afford travel baseball generally get better schooling in the game than what’s provided by the community volunteers who staff Little League teams, ultimately “travel ball” quickly widens the gap between skilled and unskilled players. And while it may eventually produce a few more elite level high school players, it also drives many potential late bloomers away from the game.

Another disservice youth sports entrepreneurs provide is urging promising youthful athletes to play their chosen sport year-round. This does no one any favors, least of all the children themselves. There’s no way to estimate how many young people swear off other sports because some handsomely compensated youth coach recommends (or insists) their young charges focus solely on soccer, basketball, hockey, tennis, or whatever athletic activity their benefactors have chosen to sink their money into.

Rational people understand there are few future professional athletes in Maine, and the number who’ll ultimately be offered a Division I athletic scholarship is tiny as well. But while the majority of those involved in for-profit youth sports have enough integrity to not promise professional careers or college athletic scholarships to prospective clients, there’s no shortage of those who won’t bother to actively discourage any well-heeled parents with the preconceived notion that their particular youngster is potentially one of the chosen few.

So is baseball declining because of societal changes, misplaced priorities, greed, electronic diversions, unrealistic parental expectations, or the availability of other more attractive athletic options?

Sadly, the simple, accurate answer to that question is “Yes.” <

Andy Young: The Making of a Soccer Coach

By Andy Young

Several decades ago, the athletic director at my alma mater was so desperate for assistant coaches for the high school’s fall sports teams that he recruited me to be one of them.

I was probably viewed as a viable candidate because I had previously coached boys’ freshman basketball there without abusing any referees, inappropriately interacting with students, or offending any hyper-competitive parents. I also had extensive baseball coaching experience. However, most importantly I was between jobs at the time, meaning I was available immediately.

I loved (and excelled at) basketball, but my qualifications for coaching either soccer or football were virtually nil. However, that didn’t appear to bother either sport’s head coach, each of whom seemed unusually eager to have me join his staff.

The football mentor made his pitch first, and even though I confessed I hadn’t played the game since a knee to my helmetless head had rendered me unconscious in a backyard game several years earlier, his ardor for me was palpable. “You’ll be great!” he said, assuring me he’d teach me everything necessary to coach the wide receivers and defensive backs.

While my football knowledge was limited, it was vast compared to what I knew about soccer. The only game I’d ever seen was one my father had taken me to before I was old enough to object. It was boring, bitterly cold, and as I could best recall every player on both teams (the Bridgeport Portuguese and the Bridgeport Puerto Ricans) was under 5-feet-6 and didn’t speak English.

The soccer coach, a notoriously straight shooter and former goalkeeper for the Bridgeport Italians, wasn’t deterred by my obvious inexperience. “Number one, you know enough for JV,” he said. “Number two, whatever you don’t know, I’ll teach you. Number three, you’ll be done October 15th.” Then he added, “By the way: football season goes until Thanksgiving. But hey, if you’d rather freeze every afternoon for the next six weeks after the JV soccer season’s over, go right ahead.”

What he didn’t say, presumably because he was confident, I already knew it, was the soccer team was likely to contend for the league title and state championship, while the undermanned footballers would probably lose more games that September than his soccer squad would in the next two or three seasons combined. He closed the sale by declaring, “Oh, and I don’t have anyone else, so I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The rest is history. The JV soccer team won close to 90 percent of their games over my six seasons as their coach, while the varsity took home a pair of state titles during that same period. Even better, I began actually playing the game, both outdoors in the summer and indoors in the winter, and to my delight found being the biggest and fastest person on the field was nearly enough to compensate for an utter lack of basic foot skills.

Even better, after just a few years on the job people in the community, basing their judgment entirely on the JV team’s stellar record every fall, began assuming I was a brilliant mentor for their boys.

There was one downside, however. One late autumn evening at a local grocery store I overheard two parents in the next aisle who, apparently unaware of my presence, were critiquing my coaching performance during the just-completed season.

“He really did a great job with the kids!” the first one exulted. “Yeah,” responded his friend. “But he should stick to what he knows. Sure, the guy can coach soccer, but it’s obvious he doesn’t know the first thing about baseball or basketball!” <