I agree with @cabbagedad. Proper conditioning is an essential part of playing any sport. Baseball is no different. And players have complained about the methods of conditioning that are imposed on them since the beginning of time. Especially when conditioning is combined with punishment. That’s just the way it is.
But what I have noticed is that the leaders among the team don’t complain. They accept the consequences and hold their teammates accountable to do the same. That is a very important part of building a winning team. Which is a critical part of a college coach’s job and a huge difference between HS and college.
IMO what this thread is about is some people don’t approve of the way a coach decided to exercise a teaching moment during the course of doing his job. Nobody was actually there other than the coach and the team. Chances are that the coach made his decision based on more things than we know. And he probably had good reason(s). In college kids don’t get coddled anymore and parents don’t have weekly booster club meetings where they get to give input about what they think (about anything).
Kids are going to endure some hardship over the course of a season. Some fair and some not. Being in good physical and strong mental condition allows a team a chance to overcome hardship. As parents you don’t get to decide for the coach how he applies training to try and achieve the team goals that maintaining his job depends on. If a HC has a history of being consistently over the top with his methods (and many of them are) you should have learned about that during the recruiting process. That kind of information is not hard to find. If a player finds himself in a really bad situation that there was no way to predict then a hard decision needs to be made. No player should have to tolerate abuse. But sometimes there is a fine line between hard coaching and verbal abuse and a lot of people don’t know the difference. It’s easy for good hard coaching to seem abrasive to anyone that’s never seen it before. And a lot haven’t. But that doesn’t make it wrong. Part of the maturing process of every player is learning how to accept being coached hard while also knowing how not to tolerate abuse. This goes for parents as well. They need to accept that their kid may be coached hard and be okay with it. But not allow their son to stay in an abusive environment. It can be tricky at times. But the information is out there if you ask. One thing is for sure. College players and their parents don’t get to sit in their safe space, have a discussion about how the program should be run, and then go the the AD with their opinions. You either get on board or find a new ship.
