First of all, I’ll acknowledge that I had no clue how to coach baseball to these 5th-grade kids. I didn’t want to coach; when we signed up my kid, I said I’d be an assistant coach but not enough people volunteered, I guess, because the league came back to me twice asking if I’d coach before I finally gave in.

I tried pretty hard, but most kids hadn’t ever played before. We lost every game.

I had fun and I thought the kids had fun, but the parents could be rough. There was one other parent that volunteered to help, but she had never coached, either. We just kind of did our best.

At first I narrowed it down to having two or three kids at every position, kind of rotating them. But I got tons of comments from parents asking why I wouldn’t let kids try every position they wanted at any time. So when I tried letting them all get chances to do what they wanted, I got complaints saying that I should stick to more consistent playing positions so that they could “master” a position. So I went back to my original approach.

I got complaints that the kids sucked at hitting. My guess is that the ten minutes a week of individual batting practice I was able to give them was probably 10 minutes more than they got at home.

I got complaints that they sucked at pitching. I mean, I tried to teach what little I know. But maybe they thought I had some major league pedigree or something.

I tried to reach them fielding and despite drill after drill after drill after drill, they only got a bit better. Some couldn’t hardly catch the ball. Again, I got texts asking why they weren’t getting better. I responded saying that we were trying but what I WANTED to ask is if they went outside and actually played catch with their son. My kid was the only one who could reliably catch a ball thrown his way, and I’m assuming it’s because for years we’ve played catch every once in a while in our yard.

I got complaints that there weren’t treats at every game. I’m not sure at what age kids don’t need treats anymore, but I did hand out a physical list of treat assignments for each game, and I emailed it to them. So whatever.

I got complaints that I was giving kids more at-bats than others, even though I literally kept the exact same batting order the entire season and would start the next game where it left off from the previous game. And I got complaints when a kid was last in the batting order. I don’t know what to say. Somebody has got to bat last in the order.

I had a dad complain that I didn’t play his son at catcher every game, even though he sucked at catching and complained every time I told him to catch. At one point I put him in the outfield and the dad complained that I put him in the outfield.

My wife said there were constant complaints between parents in the stands about how I was managing the team, some of which was outright rude and inappropriate, personally against me. Of course, they would never say that stuff to my face.

I got a text complaining that their son lost his cap and that I didn’t replace it. I don’t know, they have as much access to Amazon as I do, right?

Finally I got a text from one parent that said thank you for the fun season. It made it all worth it. (Sarcasm).

I don’t know what the problem is with parents. The kids seemed to have fun, I tried to make practices fun, I was overly positive and encouraging and never criticized a kid.

But the stupid parents make it impossible. It’s also why I quit refereeing youth basketball, too. They think that the $60 fee they spend to enroll their kid into a season should automatically make their kid develop into an elite player or something. I don’t get it.