Varsity Black & Blues

Who among us doesn't have a horror story or two about a little league coach? Doesn't matter if you're male or female, tall or short, young or old. It doesn't matter if you played like Mays, and it doesn't matter if, as a baseball player, you were a hell of a science fair competitor. Most of us have dealt with the insanity of some overzealous baseball freak who fancies himself the reincarnation of Casey Stengal, or at least watched others deal with him. Even at the T-Ball level.

Yes, the T-Ball level. That's where coach Mark R. Downs, Jr., of Dunsbar, Pennsylvania plied his trade, coaching a rag-tag bunch of 8 year olds toward greatness and glory... and the title.

Wait, no, that's not right. He just coached 8 year olds swinging at a stationary baseball sitting on a post in front of them. It's how you prepare kids for little league, and it's supposed to be fun. But apparently Downs managed to turn even this assignment into fantasy baseball when he paid one of his players to injure another player so he couldn't play and bring down the quality of the lineup. According to a report on Sports Illustrated's web site, SI.com, Downs...

"...allegedly paid one of his players $25 to hurt an 8-year-old mentally disabled teammate so he wouldn't have to put the boy in the game, police said Friday.

Mark R. Downs Jr., 27, of Dunbar, is accused of offering one of his players the money to hit the boy in the head with a baseball, police said. Witnesses told police Downs didn't want the boy to play in the game because of his disability.

Police said the boy was hit in the head and in the groin with a baseball just before a game, and didn't play, police said.

Just how evil do you have to be to do something like that? It's not just the major news stories like this that make me wonder why there isn't extensive psychological testing required of anyone applying to coach children. Just go to a few games at your local field and in no time at all you'll find yourself cringing at the behavior of a coach. This far over the top? Not likely, but careful screening for the more common "Stengal Syndrome" would probably catch a creep like this guy. You've gotta love the understatement by the police officer in the case, by the way.

"The coach was very competitive," state police Trooper Thomas B. Broadwater said. "He wanted to win."

Downs has an unpublished telephone number and couldn't immediately be reached for comment Friday.

I'm pretty sure that's 666. And I didn't even need a phonebook for that.

Here's the kicker. If convicted, the mandatory penalty within the T-Ball league is a year-long ban from coaching. Call me a reactionary if you must, but if I had the job of coming up with mandatory punishments for the league, mine would be much simpler. Mine would be a blanket law stating that anyone convicted of any sort of abuse of their position as a coach would never, ever be allowed to look at the kids again, let alone coach them.