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Always looked at it this way...
Left the baseball, the mechanice to those who knew the game better than I did, but I was not about the leave their brains, and their emotions to others, to MTV, or to chance...without some real influence
My function as a dad was not to create a world class baseball players, but world class human beings...a solid functioning human beings who could look at options, consider alternatives, work their way through situations and take responsibility for their actions on the field, but more importantly off. Baseball was the perfect labratory for that. We could work and did work through the challenges and options together.
Without experience, myopic, self centered it is hard for young men to see options, choices consequences, and long term. Frankly most coaches didn't know my son's brains as well as I did, didn't know their background, their tendancies, their developmental curve like I did. And frankly most didn't have the time or the inclination or the patience to help mold his thought process like I did. I was not there to solve their problems but to help them with perspective and options. And let them make the decisions, including mistakes and failure as they learned from that. IMO that is the most important role that we as parents have.
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