June 6, 2025 • 25 mins
BY age 13 ,70% of kids who started at age 6 will have quit organized sports
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Why Johnny Hates Sports is broadcast live Fridays at 11AM ET on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). Why Johnny Hates Sports is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
Why Johnny Hates Sports Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The topics and opinions expressed and the following show are
solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not
those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We
make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services,
or products mentioned on air or on our web. No
liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W FOURCY
Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments
should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for
(00:20):
choosing W FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Why Johnny Hates Sports is a best selling book about
kids in sports. It chronicles why, at a very early age,
children are thrust into organized sports long before they have
the necessary skills to feel successful. Fathers and mothers are
asked to be their coach without having any training on
how to coach, and the leagues in which kids play
(00:49):
are governed by volunteers whose main focus becomes scoreboards, championships,
and all star games. Statistics show that close to seventy
percent of kids will have quit by the age of thirteen.
Most said it ceased to be fun, and that's why
Johnny Hates Sports.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Hey, good morning, everybody, and welcome to why Johnny hate Sports.
This is our nineteenth episode and I'm happy they say
that we got vote our number one person who was
the best on the show, and that happened to be
Ross Smith. So good morning, Ross, and can you tell
everybody just a little bit about your background.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Yeah, of course, good morning again, thanks for having me on.
My background is sports, anything that's brown involved in the ball.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
My first word was ball.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
I grew up playing for all types of sports throughout
the seasons, football, basketball, baseball, and actually ran track. My
mom was a All American basketball player in college and
my dad was same American baseball player in college at
Florida State. So the background is definitely sports and everything
(02:06):
that's involved with it.
Speaker 5 (02:07):
I really enjoy it.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
I went on to play collegiate baseball at Auburn and
then got drafted in two thousand and nine to the
MLB Draft to the Saint Louis Cardinals. So I did
that for a few years and had a good run,
met a lot of good people, and just I worked
in baseball after providing you know, private lessons and camps
and clinics and things of that nature, just trying to
give back to the great sport that helped me, you know,
(02:31):
reach as far as I did.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
So one of the things we wanted to talk about
this this morning, Ross is it is about why Johnny
hates sports, and the question is why does Johnny hate sports?
So I'm going to show you a couple little clips
of video and then we'll talk about it real quick.
The first one one, she did her job. Moron, go home.
Speaker 5 (02:56):
If you don't know how to play the game.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
How many times you've seen anything like that, Ross, when
you're growing up and people in the stands.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
I'll put it this way, I have seen it before.
I've seen it a lot more lately than I did
in previous times.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Why do you think it's different than when you were
growing up?
Speaker 4 (03:20):
I honestly think that the advancements in technology, and more
specifically the phone and iPhone and the access to the internet,
being able to google anything at any given moment right
then and there, seems to make a lot of.
Speaker 5 (03:34):
People what they feel like is.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
Smarter or maybe experts in an area that maybe they
maybe or not. So I feel like they're maybe more
comfortable to voice their opinion now than they did back
in previous years.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Yeah, that's a good point that you made. About the
fact that you know, we have cell phones today and
parents in the stands are a little literally about being
cap with that, but a lot of them don't. They
don't really realize, and they don't even care. I remember
when we did the first video of shooting and trying
to show the same kind of thing there. It was
(04:13):
a soccer game and a woman their kid was maybe
eight or ten years old, and this woman ran from
one end of the field to the other, back and forth,
screaming at the kid. And I guess that's why Robin Roberts,
you remember that name? Have you ever heard that name before?
(04:35):
Not all American? The Hall of Fame, one of the
great pictures with great record of all time. And he
wrote an article called strikeout Little League, and I caught
my attention. I thought, what Robin and Roberts is saying?
Strike out little League? And he went in a whole
bit about talking about, you know, all the things of
(04:59):
What's book, Why Johnny eight Sports? Right, And the one
thing you talked about is the parents don't have the
emotional maturity to be around their kids in the program
like that. So you know, you still have it out there.
And I knew when you grew up in Georgia. What
(05:20):
were the leagues like them?
Speaker 5 (05:23):
The rural, rural kind of countryside that I was in.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
Everybody say he look to Johnny roural countryside that I
grew up in.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
There was only one league, So I mean it revolved
around that.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
You know, almost all year around, people were waiting on
the league to open up because it was a way
to get their kid into sports and to I would say, frankly,
get them out of the house and give them something
to do. But growing up, it was almost a thing
where you you you wanted to be a coach and
you wanted to be on the field to help the
kids because there was nowhere else to turn h And
(05:56):
I think people were a little bit more open to
letting their kid be coached by other people because they
put faith in trust in them to do their job.
Where I think that's that might have shifted here recently
because again, like I said, the access to the internet
and everybody's just a exerting the screen all.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah. One of the things that Russ different I think
the Georgia and around the country is that people look
and say, oh, those fields that are out there that
are run by the recreation department and direct department. Uh,
you know is responsible for everything that happens. But that's
not the case. And I don't know how it was
(06:39):
where you were, but in most of the places of
the country, you see the ball see the ball fields
that are out there, you know, wherever it is, Northwest Park,
Southwest Park and East Park whatever, and who uses those
fields are a group of parents this next video and
(07:00):
think you to see what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
I'm just saying we need to be more strategic here
to Bouzomo gas right.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
They I agree the last game was not our best.
See that. The thing is that those are guys. They
are living in a neighborhood and they're out there running
the program and they're plumbers, truck drivers, pharmacis, who cares
whatever they are, but they're the ones that are organizing
(07:31):
in the administry and sports for kids. Was it like
that in your hometown?
Speaker 5 (07:36):
Absolutely it was.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
We would have teachers, bus drivers, sheriff's deputies, anybody that
you know. I grew up in a small town, a
small community where everybody was involved. So you gave well,
I guess I should say that like the overall expectation
wasn't really like I would say to win, because everybody
(07:58):
wanted to win, but like it wasn't about really getting
the championship. It was, you know, just making sure that
it was organized fun for the kids to go out
there and enjoy, you know, a couple hours on the field,
and you do learn structure and you do learn team
concepts of that nature. But the main idea was that,
you know, make sure Jimmy, Johnny, whoever it was, was
out there on time and having fun.
Speaker 5 (08:20):
You know, we weren't.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
It wasn't cutthroat, It wasn't like we have to win.
It was fun first and organization kind of right with that,
and winning was a little bit more down the line,
which I think again that that has since shifted in
today's world too. If you're not a winner, you're not anything,
and that's that's sad.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Yeah, that's interesting that you say that because there are
so many leagues that are you know, run by that
kind of parent group that it differs between sports and
you've played all the different sports, and you know, most
of the time we find in football there's a whole
different mentality of the people that are unning the leagues
(09:01):
and it is about winning at all costs and you know,
people are betting money on kids that are twelve years old,
who's gonna win the game? Did you see anything like
that in a football program.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
I would definitely agree with you and say that football
mentality and mantras is different. It was a little bit
more upfront, a little bit rougher, so to speak. I
didn't necessarily see any you know, betting or bets going on.
I do know the parents had a little bit of
riff raft between each other, especially the opposing people. Again,
(09:36):
in the small community I'm from, a lot of people
knew people at different schools, in different areas, different communities.
So anytime that you know, the two communities met on
the field and got to play, the parents were definitely,
you know, full of words with the other team.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (09:49):
But I don't know. I never saw much myself. I
was so focused on playing.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
I was always out there on the field, so I
didn't really I didn't see anything.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Yeah, well that's good. Let's look at this next one.
And uh, I'm anxious to see what your thoughts are
about this one.
Speaker 5 (10:02):
You got it.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
It doesn't have any voice whether but you could see
the fact that there's a guy that just got home
from work, and he's I'm sure you saw a lot
of that.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
M hmm.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
That's kind of like the viral clip meme of a
guy that works in the mine or coal shaft or
whatever it may be. And he was still in full uniform,
had dirt and grid all over his face, and took
his kid to like a course eyed NBA basketball game.
It was similar to that all the time where I
grew up, where he had hard working we called good
(10:41):
old folk that would do their job, and then your
responsibility was to, you know, look after your children and
take care of your kids. So they were they're never late,
never not there. They were always present. They just might
still be on their work clothes, just trying to help
out and you know, give back to the community.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Yeah, that's so interesting because you know people say, well,
where are these coaches come from, and yeah, that's who
it is. You know, that's the dad. And many times
now moms are out there coaching their kids. But you know,
people say, well, how how did that happen? Well, what
(11:20):
I call Billy Jones's father, he goes and signs Billy
up at six years old, and they say, yeah, okay,
uh no, get in that line over there to the right,
it's what's that about. Well, let's just sign up and
get your information about, you know, for coaching. And he said,
(11:41):
I got a job here, I got I got a
lot to do, and I got time to be out
coaching my kid. They said, well, then I guess you'll
have to take your kid's name off the list. What
I take now, because if you don't coach, we don't
have any coaches, and we don't have any coaches, were
don't have any program. So that's that's how so many
(12:04):
coaches get out there. And what happens is too often
you don't even know who these people are. Criminals, they
could be drug pushers, anything like that.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (12:19):
Yes, Unfortunately it did.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
In the small town, like I said, where royal community
that I grew up in, we did have people in
that category that were come out later in life that
uh you know, they had a little bit of a
rap sheet against them. And I never physically, you know,
saw anything visibly with my own eyes that was detrimental.
But you hear of stories all the time where uh,
(12:44):
Jimmy or Johnny whoever it is you know, comes out
and gets caught with police or by the law doing
something that they shouldn't do, and they was sure enough,
we're in a position of power or at least out
there in the rec department community, you know, given back, and.
Speaker 5 (13:00):
Whether they ment it or not, you.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Know, if they're deep down not the best person, I
don't think that they should be allowed to be out
there around you know, sets of kids there's or anybody else's.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
So what do you think your parents would have thought
they found out one of your coaches was a pedophile.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
I definitely don't think I would have been in that
league anymore.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
I certainly wouldn't have been on that team anymore. But well,
I mean, I we can I can say I can
say a personal story ken I Yeah, uh, well I was.
I had a certain coach in high school that he
(13:47):
I think is still incarcerated to this day because of.
Speaker 5 (13:53):
He fit that mold, that category.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
And it came out later that he had done some
things with some under age kids and they obviously weren't comfortable,
weren't okay after and got you know, kind of read
it out later and that man got in trouble and
he's in jail.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Yeah, that's funny, not funny. We talk about it and
the fact that you never know who's out there coaching
your kid. I mean, my sport in high school college
was was wrestling, and they found out that my high
school coach was a pedophile. And they found out when
(14:33):
I was in college that the assistant coach was a pedophile.
And I'm thinking, man, how many are out there that
people don't know? And so today with our organization, the
National Alliance for Youth Sports, what is part of it
is a background check. So today I have to go
(14:54):
through a background check to find out, you know, obviously,
what their background is, and that's way to get rid
of them.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
I knew that it caught me off guard when I
first moved down to South Florida and got into the
you know, travel baseball world as far as business side
and coaching myself. That I was kind of caught off
guard that I had to go through background checks because
it was something that when I, like I said, growing up,
wasn't wasn't around.
Speaker 5 (15:16):
It's never heard of. So caught me off guard.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
But is very pleasing to know that steps like that
are being taken to kind of safeguard kids against you know,
peedos and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Yeah, well let's look at this next one here and
I'm anxious to see your response.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
Okay, hey, four eyes, get.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Some new classes.
Speaker 5 (15:40):
Keep quiet.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Okay, who I know you've seen that kind of behavior before.
What is the worst thing that you think you've ever seen?
Speaker 5 (15:55):
I mean seen a lot.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
I think one of the most embarrassed. I mean, that's
that's just the word. It's embarrassing that one of the
parents think that they have to act that way, and
then two, once they act that way, how they don't
resent what they did or what they said or how
they acted, and they don't feel embarrassed for not only
their actions, but how they represent the kid that's out there.
(16:20):
There's been a couple of instances like that throughout my
playing days where kind of look around at teammates and
you feel like, man, I'm I'm glad that's not my
dad or I'm not you know, associated or affiliated with
that person, because it's just flat out it's embarrassing. It's
there's no space for that in the sport, in any sport.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Yeah, Yeah, that's that's awful to be thinking that you're
a kid and I have to hear your parent do that.
I saw a parent believer or not. The umpire made
a call and yeah, a parent is sitting in this stand,
team ran over and grabbed a baseball bat out of
the rack, ran out on a field and put them
right on an umpire. So yeah, like you said, you know,
(17:02):
it's what an embarrassment it must be if you're a
kid and sitting there and everybody's looking at it. Say,
you look at Billy's dad what he did? So, oh yeah,
well that's a lot to add to that point.
Speaker 5 (17:15):
Fred.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
I unfortunately have encounter times where it's been filtered down
to the kid, you know, and the kid thinks that
it's okay to work that way or act that way
because the parent does it.
Speaker 5 (17:24):
You know.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
I know of an instance where had a set of brothers.
One was a pitcher and one was the catcher at
the time, and they were playing on a field where
the umpire apparently was not in agreement with where the
way they were I don't know, but they basically set
up the umpire where they called fastball for a pitch
(17:44):
and uh, the catcher went down to act like blocking
the ball when the ball was thrown directly at the
umpire's face and it hit him right in the face
mask and knocked him out cold. And they tried to
cover up and say that it was an accident and
this and that, when it was blatantly clear as day
something that was premeditated to get, you know, a shot
at the empire.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
We're getting into the real action about watching hate sports,
but all of those things. But you know, as I've
said to people so many times on this show, you know,
it's not really the Johnny hates sports. You know, the
overwhelming majority of kids that play and come up like
you did, they have a great learning, wonderful experience of
(18:27):
while they're playing sports. So you know, those are the
things that happened, and I'm sure that to you.
Speaker 5 (18:33):
Yeah, I mean, it's just it's sad. It's a shame that, you.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
Know, we have these stories that we're talking about because
the sport is so beautiful, so to get it diluted
the way it has been, it takes away the kind
of the history and the respect in each sport to
where people look at it differently than they used to.
Speaker 5 (18:50):
And that's a shame.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Yeah, you know, people are asking me all the time,
whatever got even to do this? And I'd say, well,
first of all of seven kids, and all the kids,
every one of them played sports and every one of them.
We come home with some kind of story. My daughters coach,
can you believe this? The coach was getting the kids
(19:15):
after a softball game to go into drug store and
steal stuff from me? Yeah, can you believe that? I mean,
story after story like that. But I know you got
to get rush for time. But I think we got
one more, one more on our list of what you
just see, Let's do it. What this is all about,
(19:40):
Ross is one of the things that I talk about
is really kind of almost a fallacy of kids playing
sports below the age of ten. You see, kids, what
happens is maturing wise, you can have a kid that's
seven years old that can have a body of an
(20:04):
eleven year old. He can have the same thing and
the same kid as you saw in that picture. He
could be seven and have the body of a four
year old. So now the first fallacy of that is
if you're coaching that team and who you're going to
have is your picture a bigger kid, Yeah, a bigger kid,
(20:25):
but he's still seven years old. So the sad part
about it is that when you get the four year old,
batuation wise, they don't have the ability for tracking skills
to be able to watch evolved. We did a study
in Cincinnati with six to eight year old and fifty
(20:48):
one percent of the kids out of thirteen hundred did
not have the necessary skills of catching, throwing, and hitting. Therefore,
what happens is they can't succeed. They can't have fun
at that age fifty one percent of them, So no
wonder by age thirteen, seventy percent of them will quit,
(21:10):
which is fun. So yeah, I mean it's you know,
if you get a football program with that same thing
that's seven year old, that the coach automatically thinks, oh,
that big kid, he's gonna make it. He can be
our best running back or maybe it'll be our quarterback.
But whatever position we put, that's because he's the biggest
(21:33):
kid out there. And is you know, is that it's fine.
He may be big, all the kids telling him that
and he's still a seven year old.
Speaker 5 (21:45):
You ever see that, Oh, I see it all the time.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
Play with a guy that we were sixteen years old,
and he was already six foot four or two hundred
and thirty pounds. He was a big, right handed pitcher
from the state of Texas, and.
Speaker 5 (21:59):
He he didn't really like baseball.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
But there was you know, he was he threw the
ball the hardest on the team, you know, like he
was the biggest on the team. He threw the hardest
on the team, and we won a lot of games
because of him. But if I were to ask him,
you know, at any given point, do you like the sport?
Speaker 5 (22:16):
I think that he would say no.
Speaker 4 (22:18):
But he did it because he knew that, like, at
least for the time being, that he was going to
be successful at it.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Yeah. Well, listen, I really want to appreciate it. Thank
you for being on. I appreciated with all your comments
and things. I'm gonna let the audience know though that
what we talked about is we're going to do a
new feature with Ross and myself and it's gonna be
called Extra Innings. That can be not gonna be topics
(22:44):
about white Johnny hate sports. It's gonna be talking about
different things that happened in baseball. As an example, you
know what we think about the Pete Rose Deeel going
into the Hall of Fame. You know, you know a
lot of other different stories that are out there. We're
going to take a couple of minutes to do that,
(23:04):
and then Ross is going to talk about some of
the different people that I've had a chance to meet
over the years. So we're looking forward to be exciting.
And I'm so happy that Ross has agreed to be
on because it's tough for him, you know, with his job.
In there. You see people coming in saying, hey, where's
my golf clubs? It's rock people say where's my tea
(23:27):
times and I'm sure in the other room they're saying,
where's Ross getting back in here?
Speaker 5 (23:31):
Yeah, yeah, I know, thank you.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
Thanks for having me on, Fred. I really appreciate and
enjoy the time. I look forward to it.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Well it's like I say, it's been great, and you're
the number one person out there after eighteen people. The
people said we got to get him back on. So
we got you back on. We'll see you next week.
Speaker 5 (23:52):
You got it.
Speaker 4 (23:54):
You let me know, all right, Ross, see you know,
take care, guys.
Speaker 6 (24:00):
In this best selling book, a child, while failing to
live up to his father's expectations, is shamed and humiliated
beyond belief. He vows to never allow his own son
to face the same.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Well that's the end of the show. But in addition
to what we're going to do next week with Ross
called Extra Innings is people have asked me about the
book why you Know Billy Jones's Father, and then I said,
maybe what we could do is we could play the
(24:38):
book like a chapter at a time. So we're going
to take the end of next year. Next next week,
we're going to start with a chapter each week for
about maybe five six minutes so that you can hear
the story. And then the following week we'll let you
know what's about to happen that week and on and on.
(24:59):
So in addition to our regular Why Johnny eight Sports,
we're gonna have a little excerpt the audio from Billy
Jones's Father, and then Extra Innings with Ross and Me.
So we'll look forward to seeing you next Friday morning
at eleven o'clock. And thanks again for joining us today.
Speaker 6 (25:22):
So this program is sponsored by Sirdarf Publishing in the
interest for better sports for kids, better kids for life.
The topics and opinions expressed and the following show are
solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not
those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We
make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services,
or products mentioned on air or on our web. No
liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W FOURCY
Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments
should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for
(00:20):
choosing W FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Why Johnny Hates Sports is a best selling book about
kids in sports. It chronicles why, at a very early age,
children are thrust into organized sports long before they have
the necessary skills to feel successful. Fathers and mothers are
asked to be their coach without having any training on
how to coach, and the leagues in which kids play
(00:49):
are governed by volunteers whose main focus becomes scoreboards, championships,
and all star games. Statistics show that close to seventy
percent of kids will have quit by the age of thirteen.
Most said it ceased to be fun, and that's why
Johnny Hates Sports.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Hey, good morning, everybody, and welcome to why Johnny hate Sports.
This is our nineteenth episode and I'm happy they say
that we got vote our number one person who was
the best on the show, and that happened to be
Ross Smith. So good morning, Ross, and can you tell
everybody just a little bit about your background.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Yeah, of course, good morning again, thanks for having me on.
My background is sports, anything that's brown involved in the ball.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
My first word was ball.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
I grew up playing for all types of sports throughout
the seasons, football, basketball, baseball, and actually ran track. My
mom was a All American basketball player in college and
my dad was same American baseball player in college at
Florida State. So the background is definitely sports and everything
(02:06):
that's involved with it.
Speaker 5 (02:07):
I really enjoy it.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
I went on to play collegiate baseball at Auburn and
then got drafted in two thousand and nine to the
MLB Draft to the Saint Louis Cardinals. So I did
that for a few years and had a good run,
met a lot of good people, and just I worked
in baseball after providing you know, private lessons and camps
and clinics and things of that nature, just trying to
give back to the great sport that helped me, you know,
(02:31):
reach as far as I did.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
So one of the things we wanted to talk about
this this morning, Ross is it is about why Johnny
hates sports, and the question is why does Johnny hate sports?
So I'm going to show you a couple little clips
of video and then we'll talk about it real quick.
The first one one, she did her job. Moron, go home.
Speaker 5 (02:56):
If you don't know how to play the game.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
How many times you've seen anything like that, Ross, when
you're growing up and people in the stands.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
I'll put it this way, I have seen it before.
I've seen it a lot more lately than I did
in previous times.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Why do you think it's different than when you were
growing up?
Speaker 4 (03:20):
I honestly think that the advancements in technology, and more
specifically the phone and iPhone and the access to the internet,
being able to google anything at any given moment right
then and there, seems to make a lot of.
Speaker 5 (03:34):
People what they feel like is.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
Smarter or maybe experts in an area that maybe they
maybe or not. So I feel like they're maybe more
comfortable to voice their opinion now than they did back
in previous years.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Yeah, that's a good point that you made. About the
fact that you know, we have cell phones today and
parents in the stands are a little literally about being
cap with that, but a lot of them don't. They
don't really realize, and they don't even care. I remember
when we did the first video of shooting and trying
to show the same kind of thing there. It was
(04:13):
a soccer game and a woman their kid was maybe
eight or ten years old, and this woman ran from
one end of the field to the other, back and forth,
screaming at the kid. And I guess that's why Robin Roberts,
you remember that name? Have you ever heard that name before?
(04:35):
Not all American? The Hall of Fame, one of the
great pictures with great record of all time. And he
wrote an article called strikeout Little League, and I caught
my attention. I thought, what Robin and Roberts is saying?
Strike out little League? And he went in a whole
bit about talking about, you know, all the things of
(04:59):
What's book, Why Johnny eight Sports? Right, And the one
thing you talked about is the parents don't have the
emotional maturity to be around their kids in the program
like that. So you know, you still have it out there.
And I knew when you grew up in Georgia. What
(05:20):
were the leagues like them?
Speaker 5 (05:23):
The rural, rural kind of countryside that I was in.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
Everybody say he look to Johnny roural countryside that I
grew up in.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
There was only one league, So I mean it revolved
around that.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
You know, almost all year around, people were waiting on
the league to open up because it was a way
to get their kid into sports and to I would say, frankly,
get them out of the house and give them something
to do. But growing up, it was almost a thing
where you you you wanted to be a coach and
you wanted to be on the field to help the
kids because there was nowhere else to turn h And
(05:56):
I think people were a little bit more open to
letting their kid be coached by other people because they
put faith in trust in them to do their job.
Where I think that's that might have shifted here recently
because again, like I said, the access to the internet
and everybody's just a exerting the screen all.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah. One of the things that Russ different I think
the Georgia and around the country is that people look
and say, oh, those fields that are out there that
are run by the recreation department and direct department. Uh,
you know is responsible for everything that happens. But that's
not the case. And I don't know how it was
(06:39):
where you were, but in most of the places of
the country, you see the ball see the ball fields
that are out there, you know, wherever it is, Northwest Park,
Southwest Park and East Park whatever, and who uses those
fields are a group of parents this next video and
(07:00):
think you to see what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
I'm just saying we need to be more strategic here
to Bouzomo gas right.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
They I agree the last game was not our best.
See that. The thing is that those are guys. They
are living in a neighborhood and they're out there running
the program and they're plumbers, truck drivers, pharmacis, who cares
whatever they are, but they're the ones that are organizing
(07:31):
in the administry and sports for kids. Was it like
that in your hometown?
Speaker 5 (07:36):
Absolutely it was.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
We would have teachers, bus drivers, sheriff's deputies, anybody that
you know. I grew up in a small town, a
small community where everybody was involved. So you gave well,
I guess I should say that like the overall expectation
wasn't really like I would say to win, because everybody
(07:58):
wanted to win, but like it wasn't about really getting
the championship. It was, you know, just making sure that
it was organized fun for the kids to go out
there and enjoy, you know, a couple hours on the field,
and you do learn structure and you do learn team
concepts of that nature. But the main idea was that,
you know, make sure Jimmy, Johnny, whoever it was, was
out there on time and having fun.
Speaker 5 (08:20):
You know, we weren't.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
It wasn't cutthroat, It wasn't like we have to win.
It was fun first and organization kind of right with that,
and winning was a little bit more down the line,
which I think again that that has since shifted in
today's world too. If you're not a winner, you're not anything,
and that's that's sad.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Yeah, that's interesting that you say that because there are
so many leagues that are you know, run by that
kind of parent group that it differs between sports and
you've played all the different sports, and you know, most
of the time we find in football there's a whole
different mentality of the people that are unning the leagues
(09:01):
and it is about winning at all costs and you know,
people are betting money on kids that are twelve years old,
who's gonna win the game? Did you see anything like
that in a football program.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
I would definitely agree with you and say that football
mentality and mantras is different. It was a little bit
more upfront, a little bit rougher, so to speak. I
didn't necessarily see any you know, betting or bets going on.
I do know the parents had a little bit of
riff raft between each other, especially the opposing people. Again,
(09:36):
in the small community I'm from, a lot of people
knew people at different schools, in different areas, different communities.
So anytime that you know, the two communities met on
the field and got to play, the parents were definitely,
you know, full of words with the other team.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (09:49):
But I don't know. I never saw much myself. I
was so focused on playing.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
I was always out there on the field, so I
didn't really I didn't see anything.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Yeah, well that's good. Let's look at this next one.
And uh, I'm anxious to see what your thoughts are
about this one.
Speaker 5 (10:02):
You got it.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
It doesn't have any voice whether but you could see
the fact that there's a guy that just got home
from work, and he's I'm sure you saw a lot
of that.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
M hmm.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
That's kind of like the viral clip meme of a
guy that works in the mine or coal shaft or
whatever it may be. And he was still in full uniform,
had dirt and grid all over his face, and took
his kid to like a course eyed NBA basketball game.
It was similar to that all the time where I
grew up, where he had hard working we called good
(10:41):
old folk that would do their job, and then your
responsibility was to, you know, look after your children and
take care of your kids. So they were they're never late,
never not there. They were always present. They just might
still be on their work clothes, just trying to help
out and you know, give back to the community.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Yeah, that's so interesting because you know people say, well,
where are these coaches come from, and yeah, that's who
it is. You know, that's the dad. And many times
now moms are out there coaching their kids. But you know,
people say, well, how how did that happen? Well, what
(11:20):
I call Billy Jones's father, he goes and signs Billy
up at six years old, and they say, yeah, okay,
uh no, get in that line over there to the right,
it's what's that about. Well, let's just sign up and
get your information about, you know, for coaching. And he said,
(11:41):
I got a job here, I got I got a
lot to do, and I got time to be out
coaching my kid. They said, well, then I guess you'll
have to take your kid's name off the list. What
I take now, because if you don't coach, we don't
have any coaches, and we don't have any coaches, were
don't have any program. So that's that's how so many
(12:04):
coaches get out there. And what happens is too often
you don't even know who these people are. Criminals, they
could be drug pushers, anything like that.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (12:19):
Yes, Unfortunately it did.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
In the small town, like I said, where royal community
that I grew up in, we did have people in
that category that were come out later in life that
uh you know, they had a little bit of a
rap sheet against them. And I never physically, you know,
saw anything visibly with my own eyes that was detrimental.
But you hear of stories all the time where uh,
(12:44):
Jimmy or Johnny whoever it is you know, comes out
and gets caught with police or by the law doing
something that they shouldn't do, and they was sure enough,
we're in a position of power or at least out
there in the rec department community, you know, given back, and.
Speaker 5 (13:00):
Whether they ment it or not, you.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Know, if they're deep down not the best person, I
don't think that they should be allowed to be out
there around you know, sets of kids there's or anybody else's.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
So what do you think your parents would have thought
they found out one of your coaches was a pedophile.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
I definitely don't think I would have been in that
league anymore.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
I certainly wouldn't have been on that team anymore. But well,
I mean, I we can I can say I can
say a personal story ken I Yeah, uh, well I was.
I had a certain coach in high school that he
(13:47):
I think is still incarcerated to this day because of.
Speaker 5 (13:53):
He fit that mold, that category.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
And it came out later that he had done some
things with some under age kids and they obviously weren't comfortable,
weren't okay after and got you know, kind of read
it out later and that man got in trouble and
he's in jail.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Yeah, that's funny, not funny. We talk about it and
the fact that you never know who's out there coaching
your kid. I mean, my sport in high school college
was was wrestling, and they found out that my high
school coach was a pedophile. And they found out when
(14:33):
I was in college that the assistant coach was a pedophile.
And I'm thinking, man, how many are out there that
people don't know? And so today with our organization, the
National Alliance for Youth Sports, what is part of it
is a background check. So today I have to go
(14:54):
through a background check to find out, you know, obviously,
what their background is, and that's way to get rid
of them.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
I knew that it caught me off guard when I
first moved down to South Florida and got into the
you know, travel baseball world as far as business side
and coaching myself. That I was kind of caught off
guard that I had to go through background checks because
it was something that when I, like I said, growing up,
wasn't wasn't around.
Speaker 5 (15:16):
It's never heard of. So caught me off guard.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
But is very pleasing to know that steps like that
are being taken to kind of safeguard kids against you know,
peedos and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Yeah, well let's look at this next one here and
I'm anxious to see your response.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
Okay, hey, four eyes, get.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Some new classes.
Speaker 5 (15:40):
Keep quiet.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Okay, who I know you've seen that kind of behavior before.
What is the worst thing that you think you've ever seen?
Speaker 5 (15:55):
I mean seen a lot.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
I think one of the most embarrassed. I mean, that's
that's just the word. It's embarrassing that one of the
parents think that they have to act that way, and
then two, once they act that way, how they don't
resent what they did or what they said or how
they acted, and they don't feel embarrassed for not only
their actions, but how they represent the kid that's out there.
(16:20):
There's been a couple of instances like that throughout my
playing days where kind of look around at teammates and
you feel like, man, I'm I'm glad that's not my
dad or I'm not you know, associated or affiliated with
that person, because it's just flat out it's embarrassing. It's
there's no space for that in the sport, in any sport.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Yeah, Yeah, that's that's awful to be thinking that you're
a kid and I have to hear your parent do that.
I saw a parent believer or not. The umpire made
a call and yeah, a parent is sitting in this stand,
team ran over and grabbed a baseball bat out of
the rack, ran out on a field and put them
right on an umpire. So yeah, like you said, you know,
(17:02):
it's what an embarrassment it must be if you're a
kid and sitting there and everybody's looking at it. Say,
you look at Billy's dad what he did? So, oh yeah,
well that's a lot to add to that point.
Speaker 5 (17:15):
Fred.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
I unfortunately have encounter times where it's been filtered down
to the kid, you know, and the kid thinks that
it's okay to work that way or act that way
because the parent does it.
Speaker 5 (17:24):
You know.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
I know of an instance where had a set of brothers.
One was a pitcher and one was the catcher at
the time, and they were playing on a field where
the umpire apparently was not in agreement with where the
way they were I don't know, but they basically set
up the umpire where they called fastball for a pitch
(17:44):
and uh, the catcher went down to act like blocking
the ball when the ball was thrown directly at the
umpire's face and it hit him right in the face
mask and knocked him out cold. And they tried to
cover up and say that it was an accident and
this and that, when it was blatantly clear as day
something that was premeditated to get, you know, a shot
at the empire.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
We're getting into the real action about watching hate sports,
but all of those things. But you know, as I've
said to people so many times on this show, you know,
it's not really the Johnny hates sports. You know, the
overwhelming majority of kids that play and come up like
you did, they have a great learning, wonderful experience of
(18:27):
while they're playing sports. So you know, those are the
things that happened, and I'm sure that to you.
Speaker 5 (18:33):
Yeah, I mean, it's just it's sad. It's a shame that, you.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
Know, we have these stories that we're talking about because
the sport is so beautiful, so to get it diluted
the way it has been, it takes away the kind
of the history and the respect in each sport to
where people look at it differently than they used to.
Speaker 5 (18:50):
And that's a shame.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Yeah, you know, people are asking me all the time,
whatever got even to do this? And I'd say, well,
first of all of seven kids, and all the kids,
every one of them played sports and every one of them.
We come home with some kind of story. My daughters coach,
can you believe this? The coach was getting the kids
(19:15):
after a softball game to go into drug store and
steal stuff from me? Yeah, can you believe that? I mean,
story after story like that. But I know you got
to get rush for time. But I think we got
one more, one more on our list of what you
just see, Let's do it. What this is all about,
(19:40):
Ross is one of the things that I talk about
is really kind of almost a fallacy of kids playing
sports below the age of ten. You see, kids, what
happens is maturing wise, you can have a kid that's
seven years old that can have a body of an
(20:04):
eleven year old. He can have the same thing and
the same kid as you saw in that picture. He
could be seven and have the body of a four
year old. So now the first fallacy of that is
if you're coaching that team and who you're going to
have is your picture a bigger kid, Yeah, a bigger kid,
(20:25):
but he's still seven years old. So the sad part
about it is that when you get the four year old,
batuation wise, they don't have the ability for tracking skills
to be able to watch evolved. We did a study
in Cincinnati with six to eight year old and fifty
(20:48):
one percent of the kids out of thirteen hundred did
not have the necessary skills of catching, throwing, and hitting. Therefore,
what happens is they can't succeed. They can't have fun
at that age fifty one percent of them, So no
wonder by age thirteen, seventy percent of them will quit,
(21:10):
which is fun. So yeah, I mean it's you know,
if you get a football program with that same thing
that's seven year old, that the coach automatically thinks, oh,
that big kid, he's gonna make it. He can be
our best running back or maybe it'll be our quarterback.
But whatever position we put, that's because he's the biggest
(21:33):
kid out there. And is you know, is that it's fine.
He may be big, all the kids telling him that
and he's still a seven year old.
Speaker 5 (21:45):
You ever see that, Oh, I see it all the time.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
Play with a guy that we were sixteen years old,
and he was already six foot four or two hundred
and thirty pounds. He was a big, right handed pitcher
from the state of Texas, and.
Speaker 5 (21:59):
He he didn't really like baseball.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
But there was you know, he was he threw the
ball the hardest on the team, you know, like he
was the biggest on the team. He threw the hardest
on the team, and we won a lot of games
because of him. But if I were to ask him,
you know, at any given point, do you like the sport?
Speaker 5 (22:16):
I think that he would say no.
Speaker 4 (22:18):
But he did it because he knew that, like, at
least for the time being, that he was going to
be successful at it.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Yeah. Well, listen, I really want to appreciate it. Thank
you for being on. I appreciated with all your comments
and things. I'm gonna let the audience know though that
what we talked about is we're going to do a
new feature with Ross and myself and it's gonna be
called Extra Innings. That can be not gonna be topics
(22:44):
about white Johnny hate sports. It's gonna be talking about
different things that happened in baseball. As an example, you
know what we think about the Pete Rose Deeel going
into the Hall of Fame. You know, you know a
lot of other different stories that are out there. We're
going to take a couple of minutes to do that,
(23:04):
and then Ross is going to talk about some of
the different people that I've had a chance to meet
over the years. So we're looking forward to be exciting.
And I'm so happy that Ross has agreed to be
on because it's tough for him, you know, with his job.
In there. You see people coming in saying, hey, where's
my golf clubs? It's rock people say where's my tea
(23:27):
times and I'm sure in the other room they're saying,
where's Ross getting back in here?
Speaker 5 (23:31):
Yeah, yeah, I know, thank you.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
Thanks for having me on, Fred. I really appreciate and
enjoy the time. I look forward to it.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Well it's like I say, it's been great, and you're
the number one person out there after eighteen people. The
people said we got to get him back on. So
we got you back on. We'll see you next week.
Speaker 5 (23:52):
You got it.
Speaker 4 (23:54):
You let me know, all right, Ross, see you know,
take care, guys.
Speaker 6 (24:00):
In this best selling book, a child, while failing to
live up to his father's expectations, is shamed and humiliated
beyond belief. He vows to never allow his own son
to face the same.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Well that's the end of the show. But in addition
to what we're going to do next week with Ross
called Extra Innings is people have asked me about the
book why you Know Billy Jones's Father, and then I said,
maybe what we could do is we could play the
(24:38):
book like a chapter at a time. So we're going
to take the end of next year. Next next week,
we're going to start with a chapter each week for
about maybe five six minutes so that you can hear
the story. And then the following week we'll let you
know what's about to happen that week and on and on.
(24:59):
So in addition to our regular Why Johnny eight Sports,
we're gonna have a little excerpt the audio from Billy
Jones's Father, and then Extra Innings with Ross and Me.
So we'll look forward to seeing you next Friday morning
at eleven o'clock. And thanks again for joining us today.
Speaker 6 (25:22):
So this program is sponsored by Sirdarf Publishing in the
interest for better sports for kids, better kids for life.
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