Were They That Much Better?

Those good old days...



Do you remember your childhood? Perhaps you look back fondly on it now. If you are a Boomer, you may recall playing baseball in the sandlot with your friends, hearing the Beatles for the first time, and being more afraid of your parents than outside threats. X'ers like me maybe remember playing tackle football on the nearest field, thinking Danny Zuko was the coolest, and having a lot of time to hang out with friends.



Kids today will have different memories.



Everything is structured for children now. There are leagues for kids as young as five where "back in the day" we played in our yards or at the playground at that age. Outside threats seem far more real today -- kids need to worry about guns in schools and gangs and stuff we didn't have to worry about.



Things seemed so much better then.



But were they really?



I don't know.



My son has played in little league since he was five and a half. He's been taking Tae Kwon Do even longer. He's in camp this week. He'll be in two more camps later this summer. His entire life is structured and organized for him.



I didn't have that structure. Neither did most of the kids in my generation. Sure we had fun -- playing pickup games and hanging out and stuff. But you know what? Kids today also have so much fun. That it's for a league and not on a sandlot is irrelevant.



I listen to my father tell stories about all the street gangs New York had when he grew up. Perhaps there weren't guns, but there sure was trouble. Gangs had died by the time I was a kid. We had something far worse. We had drugs. And we had the free time to take them, too.



True, there are serious problems today's kids face and will have to face in the near future. That doesn't make the old days better. Times have changed. The information we have at our fingertips wasn't available to our parents or grandparents. If it was, the outside world would have seemed as dangerous to them as it does to us as parents today. Maybe even worse.



The old days weren't necessarily good. They're just old.

An Awful Shame

Saturday morning I went to see some tournament baseball games in Wolcott, CT. Two games played by 8 year olds going on simultaneously -- what a dream for a lover of the game. One game pitted Pearl River, NY, against the tournament hosts from Wolcott. It was a close game won by Pearl River by a score of 3-1.

I was really there for the other game, however. Staten Island's team was playing the Cheshire Reds. The Reds are the 8-and-under state champions in Connecticut. My friend's nephew is one of their players.

In that game, the Reds came out swinging. They quickly had an 8 run lead. But the team from Staten Island showed a lot of heart. With one strike away from losing due to the mercy rule, they started their comeback. Next thing any of us knew, the 8 run lead had turned to a 3 run deficit. The S.I. fans were cheering loudly. The Reds fans needed something -- anything -- to give them hope.

Enter my friend's nephew.

They handed him the ball and asked him to pitch. He then struck out the opponent's best hitter to end the inning. Thanks to him the bleeding had stopped. The Reds still had work to do and managed to get two runners on base with two outs. Sure enough, my friend's nephew came to the plate.

When the ball hit the bat, everyone knew. The question wasn't whether it would be a home run, it was how far over the fence it would land. It was by far the farthest ball I've ever seen hit by a kid that age. And he did it at such a clutch moment. Tears came to my eyes.

As we cheered for the little hero, the worst thing I have ever experienced in sport happened. The Staten Island manager protested the home run. A six-year-old -- the nephew's neighbor -- stepped on to the field as the hero neared homeplate. The manager wanted the home run recalled because of fan interference.

Instead of being allowed to savor this finest of moments, an eight-year-old boy was left to cry in the dugout because an adult chose to shame himself, his team and the game. I have seen many questionable things in sports. I have fallen victim personally to unsportsmanlike behavior. Nothing topped this.

The umpires did the right thing and allowed the home run, but the damage was done. The Reds were deflated. Staten Island won the game in extra innings.

There is a happy ending to this story, however. Staten Island then had to play Wolcott for the chance to play Pearl River in the tournament championship. Wolcott soundly trounced the team from Staten Island. Even the manager's unethical behavior couldn't stop the inevitable. Wolcott went on to win the tournament and moves on to a larger tournament in Georgia. The manager has asked our hero to join his team for that tournament. His heroics were not forgotten.

When Freedom Mattered

As we attempt to celebrate the birth of a nation, let's review the very words our Founding Fathers had written 231 years ago:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms:

Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.