Sorry HSBBW, winning DOES matter...

Winning is a function of a process. The process includes development, learning the concept of team and a passion to compete. Both teams can't win. Kids have to learn winning is also about coming off the field knowing they gave their best effort. If winning was that important I would have quit baseball after three last place finishes in LL. My team was probably the model for the mercy rule. We once lost 27-0. What I remember about LL was those three years made rolling the league and winning the championship the fourth year awesome.

 

The biggest difference the last year was getting rid of a former AAA player as head coach and replacing him with a guy who thought we should relax and have fun.

cabbagedad,

 

I agree with you.  Winning does matter (a lot), but not at the expense of development.  Development for the sake of development is no good either.  Winning and development have to work together, and that is the secret sauce for good coaching IMHO whether you are talking about a LL season or a 4 year college program.

I agree with all the points above about winning and development.  If winning doesn't matter, then why keep score?  I also think it is equally important to fail.  That may sound crazy on the surface, but failure is a part of life and a BIG part of baseball specifically.  It's not if you are going to fail, but how you handle failure.  Are you going to be crushed or get up, brush the dirt off and get back at it.  I personally think this is one of the most important life lessons sports in general and baseball specifically teaches kids.  I know for me personally I reflect fondly on my son's mental maturity through his baseball career.  He started out as a little kid that stomped his feet or pouted when he struck out to now handling a strike out or a great play made by the defensive player to steal a base hit with dignity and respect for the game.  I just think it's a little easier to have a teaching moment with failure, and you can't have failure unless there is a winner and a loser.

I can agree that winning does matter, but I will argue that winning is not always marked by the "W" that goes in the column at the end of the game.  I refer to RJM's post, as that the last couple of season when I coached a JR division LL team, we used to get pounded.  We did not have a lot of talent, and I emphasized fundamentals.  I taught the kids the the game is a War, and there are many, many skirmishes within the war.  The kids learned that while you may not end up with the "W", you can walk away with many victories, both personally and as a team.  

 

I also agree with younggun in that the kids need to lose.  They need to learn how to prosper from adversity and turn it in to motivation to succeed.

While winning is important, I think it needs to be kept in perspective. When you have winning as the only focus, things go off the rails.

 

I'm coaching an 8U team this season, and I have told my team parents that there are things I just will not do in the pursuit of winning games. The antics at this age get ridiculous, and my team won't partake in that type of gameplay.

 

One of the biggest issues in youth sports is that there are far too many coaches that derive some sort of self worth out of their team's successes and failures.

 

Winning should matter to the kids, not the adults.

 

 

Well said! The main focus of youth baseball (Pre HS) should be development where winning is a nice outcome but should also be kept in perspective. Everyone likes to win but a lot can be gained in the long run from losing. As they get older the focus on winning increases.

I think most people play baseball for fun.....and for a lot of those people, there is nothing more fun than winning. For me too.

 

Maybe it is semantics, but I am not sure the issue is about winning or not winning. Could be it is about immediate or deferred gratification.

 

Tilting the balance toward "development" over winning, early in a career or early in a season, could lead to more wins later. So I don't think an emphasis on development is necessarily tantamount to devaluation of the concept of winning.

When I coached rec baseball and basketball I had some (ultimately) good teams start 1-3 or 2-2. I wanted kids to learn the game properly, not win with tricks. I enjoyed the end of year complaints my teams were stacked. The truth was over the season the team learned how to play properly.

I don’t mean to get all-metaphysical, but what does ‘winning’ mean?  … In a game where no official score is kept, 9 year olds know who won the game.   Doesn’t that count as winning?

 

On the other hand, do you think 9 year olds comprehend the intricacies of a 10 team double-elimination tournament?   If the 9 year olds win their first game, but lose their second, do you think they know how many more games they need to win to take the championship?

 

If there’s no scoreboard, do you think a 10 year old or an 8 year old doesn’t count their first home run?  After the kid runs the bases, does an adult sit them down in the dug-out and explain:   “You need to erase that from your memory, it doesn’t count.”

If Little (Uncoordinated) Johnny drops the fly ball that allows the ‘winning’ run to score in a game that doesn’t ‘count’, does that failure burn any less?  Or if LUJ is only marginally engaged to begin with – hopping activity to activity with the seasons – does a scoreboard somehow force him to focus on what he otherwise wouldn’t have?

 

And isn’t ‘winning’ – in the highest meaning of the word - a by-product of preparation and execution?  Everybody on this board knows how to win at the youth level:  Give me the two most coordinate kids in the draft, I’ll bat 9 while you bat the whole team, I have one SS, a catcher and a 2 man pitching rotation, the rest of the team just wears the uniform.

 

The only truism is that adults can mess things up.  But be honest, it’s hard learning how to be a parent; there are no practice runs, everybody is learning how to do it in real-time.  If the game has no score kept and the kids walk off the field talking about how much the won by, can a parent ruin a moment by trying to explain immediately that the score doesn’t count?  Certainly.  Can a friendly-match deteriorate to ‘opposing’ parents yelling at each other about how this doesn’t count:  Of course.  But you’ll see different flavors of the same behavior in equal doses at a Sunday afternoon, uber-major youth  championship.                                                                                                                                   Here in Southern California, High School age Scout Teams will play in the 2013 Under Armour So-Cal Classic this fall.  The second bullet point on the tournament home page:  NO SCORES KEPT.  Do you think those young men are going to lack for motivation?

 

 

 

Sure winning is important because it’s the whole reason for playing the game. But anyone who watched the LLWS or has had any REAL experiences with both winning and losing at the amateur baseball level knows, winning or losing is something that has the most impact at the moment of game finality. The winners are happy and the losers are sad. But, the skills and lessons that are learned last forever.

 

Did anyone see the kids from Mexico having a ball not 4 hours after they lost to Japan, or the kids from Cn doing the same thing after getting eliminated by Ca? In my experience, the kids would cry when they lost an “important” game, but as soon as they got a cupcake, some pizza, or a soda, it wasn’t very long before the frowns went away. And the same thing happened when they won. Winning and losing is a momentary thing and very fleeting. But what’s learned really does last forever, and that’s why development is so much more important.

As stats said, Winning matters at the time but can be fleeting. My son was on some bad teams, they lost a lot but still had some good wins.

 

Today in College he looks back and only 3 wins Matter.

1. A win against an arch rival in 18 innings (night delayed) win to move on to districts.

2. Winning districts as a junior.

3. Winning the championship in his summer league this last summer. He pitched in one of the two.

 

While winning is very important to him in the moment, it is fleeting. If his team ever wins his conference or wins in the NCAA those will be added to the list above. But all these wins came well after youth baqeball.

In the long run... Whether a game is won or lost really doesn't matter that much.

 

However, playing the game to win is a critical part of development.  IMO, you can't learn the game completely without caring whether you win or lose.

 

Where winning can often get in the way is when winning becomes the only thing and everything else is secondary.  That is when you see the more talented pitchers being over used.  It's also a reason that many never get a good opportunity to develop because of a lack of playing time.

 

So winning is very important, but it is not the same at every level.  Typically the older a player gets the more important winning becomes. At the very young ages it is important to play the game to win in order to learn the game properly.  But win at all cost is going overboard IMO.

 

So much of baseball involves a players feel and knowledge of the game. It involves the different situations based on inning and score, number of outs, etc.  when do you take the extra base, when do you tag up, where do you throw the ball, where you position yourself. Dumb players stick out like a sore thumb as do those that understand and have a good feel for the game.  To me this is a scouting area and without keeping score you are going to miss some important things. There are millions who "Play Baseball"  but not  that many true "Baseball Players".  Without keeping score those "Baseball Players" are harder to find.

Certainly winning is important.  But it is how you win that matters.  Do you overuse your "stud" pitcher?  Do you pigeonhole young kids into 1 position?  Do you bring in players not regularly on the team to win a tournament?  Do you look for the easy fix?  Etc.

 

Or:  Do you out work you competition?  Put kids in positions to succeed and fail, even though you might loose?  Develop their talent over time -- i.e.; several seasons?  Do you go from a team that is less than .500 to a team over .800 in a few years? 

 

What is the old saying:  Everyone has the will to win.  Not many have the will to prepare to win.   

Lots of good perspective from many.  Certainly, I am huge on the development side as well as the life lessons aspect, even at the HS V level.  And I no longer have younger kids or coach younger kids, so I don't have a direct agenda, trying to rationalize winning at the youth level.  The reason for my OP is just an effort to keep some balance to the equation here. 

I think, given our typical audience, we tend to think all youth ball is purely developmental.  We just have to remember that this is not the case in the mind of the young players.  ( I know it's not the case in the mind of many of the parents as well but I'm addressing this topic purely from the kids standpoint).

Great points and discussions from everyone and it's probably funny in that we all will never agree with what "winning" is but probably still recognize the same things as being good.

 

My two cents is that the meaning behind winning grows as the kid grows.  Winning is important no matter the age but I think it comes down to the bounce back factor from a loss.  When in little league they know when they lose and fail in situations which causes losses but I really don't want to see a 11 year old kid still feeling the loss after an hour.  He's a kid and I hope he moves on and doesn't dwell on things too long.  But as they grow older, skills get better, practice gets tougher, competition is stronger then that loss needs to burn a little longer.  Now while all this is going on the development aspect of the game should still be going on. You have to develop players and not rely strictly on the one or two studs.

 

I think some people just don't get it and want to protect kids from feeling bad from losing a game.  I just don't understand this mentality because it's still just a game and feeling a little bad isn't going to hurt anyone.  It's ok to feel bad over some things it's healthy.

PG,Check your dialogs.

Winning is certainly important.  Kids keep score, even at the earlierst T-ball level.  I remember my son coming home from a T-ball game and he KNEW the score.  It is important because kids are naturally competitive and the desire to win is ingrained in almost all of us from an early age.

 

The problem is when the desire to win becomes pathological.  When coaches and parents care more about the score of a game than the kids do, then there is a problem.  When a team intentionally plays in a lower division or bracket so that they can dominate and win games, then that is a problem.  When poor sportsmanship and poor gamesmanship prevail on teams then that, to me, is a problem.

 

Teams should always play to win.  The BS about everybody is a winner and no one should feel bad about losing because it hurts their 'self esteem' is exactly that, BS.  Nothing builds character like winning a hard fought game except maybe losing a hard fought game. 

 

But win or lose it is still the game that brings kids back to play again and again.  Winning and losing are very important but awesome, close, knuckle biting games make the kids want to play it again and again. 

Very nice post PG.

 

You can be a winner without necessarily winning the championship or the tournament or what not.  Craig Biggio to name but one example, was a winner and he never won a ring.  Winning is about playing with heart and determination and doing everything you can to help the team win. 

 

My son left the field in tears as a junior in the State Championship game - the first appearance in the history of his school.  He made two errors on the same play early in the game that led to a six run inning and we lost 6-2.  The starter in the game for the opposing team was a 3rd round pick of the Giants and has already pitched in the big leagues.  The closer was 6'10" and a first round pick of the Yankees.  My son blamed himself for the loss and I'll be honest, that game almost ended his career because he was so distraught about letting his team down. 

 

The following year after he thankfully got his spirit back, he was the only returning player on the team and nobody expected anything from them - except him.  The team was formed around low-velocity pitch-to-contact pitchers with great defense and timely hitting mixed in.  That team, with no expectations on them, a bunch of raga-muffins playing as a unified group, made a run and unbelievably went back to the State Championship round with only four teams remaining.  They lost to the eventual State Champions that day and my son was still in tears which of course brought tears to my eyes.  I told him there was nothing more either he or his team could have achieved that year.  Every player and coach walked off the field big winners that day for they had achieved something that nobody could have expected.  

One of the things that we taught our LL team is to not to pay attention to the scoreboard, play the game the right way; (hustle, play smart, know what you are going to do, etc) the scoreboard will take care of itself. We were lucky that all our parents bought into this and we were very successfull.  We started as a rec team in 3rd grade and by the time the boys finished 8th grade we had moved up to a USSSA Major/AAA travel team.

What a great post!  Playing to win is essential and it is a part of the game at the lowest levels.  Winning at all costs is a dangerous and foolish way to develop young men.  At the end of the day the vast majority of kids will be trying to win at something else for a living.  Teaching them to compete in an ethical way translate to bigger life lessons.

 

It makes sense to me that developing ball players will lead to wins.

 

I think the LL pledge captures this well: 

 

"I trust in God
I love my country
And will respect its laws
I will play fair
And strive to win
But win or lose
I will always do my best"

 

Striving to win is at the heart of baseball.

 

Winnning at all cost for the reasons of boosting your coaching ego/rep at the expense of players health/development very bad.

 

Is winning important? Sure it is. However it is almost never, in any contest of any kind, the MOST important thing. If it were, then you would do anything to win. Cheat, lie, steal, kill.

 

I can think of only one endeavor in which winning is the single most important thing: war, and even that has rules.

 

That said, in baseball games, we all want to win, and I think it is important to try very hard to win games within certain boundaries. Those boundaries change as the kids get older.

 

In earlier ages, one of those boundaries is properly developing players. Last night I went to a short season A game. You think the objective of these ballclubs is to win no matter what? No, they have another purpose, to create players skilled enough to advance. That means getting certain players reps who might not be the hottest bat or most effective pitcher at the moment.

 

So the point is, yes, winning is important, but the objective of winning in baseball must always be kept within the always shifting constraints.

 

As a humerous aside, when my kid was in youth baseball and football, I coached alongside my son's best friend's dad, who was an all-pro NFL QB. He used to tell the parents in the pre-season parents meeting:

 

"It's not about winning. It's about having fun. Losing isn't fun." 

Winning will always be important to ball players and no matter how much people try to not keep score in games, the kids will ALWAYS know who won and who lost.  I agree with what everyone is saying here.  Always play to win, but, especially at the younger ages, do not go for the win at the detriment of your players.  Whether that be overusing stud pitchers or sitting kids on the bench to the detriment of their development.  The players on the field should ALWAYS play to win.  The coach should not always, in all circumstances, coach to win.  Hope that makes sense.

 

Another point that I think is being overlooked here is the context which most HSBBWers talk about winning not being important.  Many of us have older kids.  Either HS Varsity, college and even in the pros.  When we hear parents of younger kids getting riled up about a ruling or situation that caused their team to lose, we say, "no one is going to care whether you won or lost that game".  I think the context of most "no one cares about winning" comments come from the perspective that when you go to try out for the HS team, the HS coach doesn't care about what games or tournaments your kid won.  When you are getting recruited by colleges, the college coach doesn't care about whether or not your team won the state championship.  And pro scouts don't really care about whether a team won anything in particular.  All these coaches and scouts care about is skills and/or projectability. 

 

Of course everyone wants to win.  If you don't want to win, you shouldn't be on the field.  But in terms of the big picture and what the next level is looking at (regardless of the level) are the skills of the player.  And I think that is what most HSBBWers are talking about.  Not to speak for everyone, but that's the way I see it.

I do believe that everyone wants to win. However everyone doesn't prepare the same way. Learning how to play "winning" baseball is a good thing. So is learning how to deal with failure.

 

The TV show "Wide World of Sports" would mention this many times... "The Thrill of victory and the agony of defeat"

 

IMO the youngest age groups should concentrate on things in this order.

1. Have Fun

2. Learn how to act

3. Learn the game

4. Develop talent

5. Win

Nothing else really matters if kids aren't having fun. Then again... Winning is more fun than losing.

When my son was going from 8th grade to HS, he was taking pitching lessons from a guy that was the pitching coach for the Red Sox AA team.  Talking to him, I said I would like to see my son play JV position and pitch varsity.  His response was "If he doesn't pitch varsity, those guys are idiots and I hope he pitches varsity and gets shelled".  I was like "Hope he gets shelled, what are you talking about?".  He told me that he doesn't care who you are, when you get to that level, you will get hit.  The biggest problem with guys in AA ball was that they were so used to winning and winning easily that when they do have a bad outing, they just can't handle it mentally.  They would lose their confidence and just not be able to come back.  He said he would rather have that happen to my son at an early age so that he would be prepared for that eventuality.

 

Well, forward to the baseball season.  He did wind up being a varsity starter.  Did pretty well, until one game.  Got shelled giving up something like 7 runs in 3 1/3 innings.  After the game we talked about it and I told him you can either say to yourself that you just stink, or you can say I stunk today and go out and get 'em next game.  Well, next start he threw a complete game in a 3-1 win giving up 1 unearned run (71 pitches in 7 innings-I know I'm bragging there, but I was proud).  Definitely came back and didn't let the bad outing get to him.  I think it was a very valuable lesson to learn.  It sucks when you lose, but use it to learn something.