Little League--A New Trend In Children's Play

Maybe there is more than one way to build character. 

Little League baseball was founded in 1939 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, the year I was born, and has grown to become a worldwide phenomenon, with 98 employees at its headquarters in Williamsport alone. 

I don’t recall whether there were any such organized teams in the rural farm community in which I grew up. In any case it would have never occurred to us, even for the pick up softball teams we formed at family get togethers or the ones we played over lunch or at recess at school, that we would require any adults to organize, coach or referee our games.

Peter Marty, in a July 2022 editorial in the Christian Century, titled “Playing Freely,” laments the fact that children as young as the fourth grade are now competing in club sports tournaments as many as 25 weekends a year, often involving multi-state travel and the investment of significant amounts of family time and money. 

Marty describes growing up where he and his peers “designed their own games, made up and enforced their own rules and mediated their own conflicts,” without the outside interference of parents, referees or umpires. He cites an 2015 essay by economist Steven Horowitz in which he suggests that parent-free play of children is invaluable in teaching social skills needed for good citizenship. In other words, through self-designed play, children “develop empathy, learn tolerance for risk, meet the discomfort of failure, practice compromise, solve problems together and acquire fundamental skills for living cooperatively with others,” according to Horowitz. 

Marty agrees, and believes becoming good citizens in our communities and congregations develops “one sandlot touchdown, one frustrating strikeout, and one playground argument at a time.”

As one who was often one of the last to be chosen when teams were being formed, I can testify that it has a way of building character as well.

At least that's what I've come to believe.😏