Jenny Nguyen’s Legal Blog

It never ceases to amaze me how much we seem to punish excellence and reward mediocrity.  Today’s latest installment involves a 9-year old baseball pitcher in Connecticut who is being disqualified because he is too good. 

It seems as though league officials feel that Jericho Scott, baseball phenom, is so fast and accurate, that he is scaring the other kids.  Cue the parental bickering.  I heard something similarly ridiculous recently when certain schools changed their P.E. policy whereby kids would not be chosen for teams by other kids, but randomly, as to not hurt the kids’ feelings.  If Little Timmy is picked last for dodgeball, oh well, he must really be bad at dodgeball.  But, you know, he may be the captain of the Math Gymnastics Club and can shed his judgment on another kid’s ability in a different arena.  No one complains when you take a stupid kid off the Math Team, why keep Little Timmy on your dodgeball team?  The good news is, Little Timmy might be an exceptional physician one day because he sucked at dodgeball.  Who knows.

Here’s the deal.  Life is difficult.  There will be times when you are not as good as the other person and you will lose, badly.  Get over it.  While it stings, it is not permanent.

It is ok for them to lose.  It will not hurt their fragile little psyches.  When these kids grow up, if they haven’t tasted failure, then they haven’t truly tasted success.  They will be clueless as to how to deal with failure as adults.  The world is competitive.  You compete for jobs, spouses (just to clarify, not for other people’s spouses – for your own) and virtually everything else.  In my profession, I do not have the luxury of saying that opposing counsel is better than me  - foremost, because it’s not true ; ), then go to the judge and ask him/her if we can have a trial, but not declare a winner.  At no point are proceedings going to be held up because the other attorney is too good. Let this kid play.  Don’t punish him for being good at something.  That sends such a horrible message.  They should be writing stories about this kid because he is an excellent pitcher, not because he may scare the other kids and won’t be allowed to play.

And for those of you who doubt, this is considered a legal blog because every party involved with this baseball fiasco has contacted an attorney.