203 Comments

My bigger point is that putting this pressure on kids to specialize and making them think sports are a viable career path is not a good thing. Let them play and stop with the travel team bs at age 8 or 9.

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Thanks for the great Clay Travis piece...my older son played several seasons of little league baseball and two occurrences bookend your points about the purpose and context of little league sports. I was a sometime amateur second base umpire, and, because I was out of position (as an untrained ump) I called the coach's son out when in fact the opposing player missed the tag by several inches...not a peep of screaming or whining, not even an exasperated gesture from either the player or his dad. This classy self control gave me the opportunity to realize my error and, although I couldn't reverse the call, I could at least apologize for missing it.

On another occasion, I watched the volunteer home plate ump misidentify one ball and strike after another partly due to lack of training and partly due to fairly obvious evidence that he had been freely consuming adult beverages before the game. I couldn't prove the latter and couldn't complain about the former so I too, held my tongue

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Half the reason I subscribe to the Bulwark is the content is well thought out, practical

and in line with my beliefs. The other half is the people behind it seem genuinely to be good people with the goal to make things just a little bit better. The more people that can behave iwith that goal, the better we will leave this place. Treating those “working” for you with respect is a good place to start.

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My son is a 13 year old umpire of LL games for 11 year olds. In hyper-competitive NoVA, even being a teenager doesn’t deter the kind of behavior you describe. That said, it is still generally met by opprobrium among the other parents.

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Dammit, JVL. Now you've forced me to write in defense of the jackass Clay Travis.

I have essentially no experience with being a parent in youth baseball, but I have plenty of experience with youth soccer, as my son played at various clubs for 11 years. In that time, I recall seeing three parents ejected from games (none of whom were me). Each time, it was the ref's fault.

Unfortunately, a significant portion of the people in this world are petty tyrants. When you give them an opportunity to exercise authority over others, they cannot wait to abuse it. Such was the case with all three of the referees in the games that I mentioned. In response to relatively mild criticism, they overreacted massively. I specifically recall one spittle-inflected tantrum addressed to an entire sideline of parents, daring someone to challenge him, in the same way that Eric Cartman might object to someone questioning his "auth-or-itah!"

The opportunity to tell people what to do is, unfortunately, something that attracts some people to police work, with sometimes tragic consequences. And, with far milder consequences, for its abuse, it seems to attract some people to opportunities to be a referee.

Most referees are not like that, just like most police officers are not like that, but a significant fraction are. Based upon your description of this case involving Clay Travis, the umpire in question is likely to have been one of those. And, regardless of how deplorable Travis may be, that doesn't make it cool for the ump to abuse his authority.

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I'm a dedicated sports official in five sports. If it ends in ball, I officiate it. There is an enormous shortage of officials for sports all over the country for two primary reasons: Pay and respect. If there was more respect, the pay might not be as important in my view. I've seen the behavior you reference many times. But I'm a seasoned veteran (sounds better than old fart) at this and it really doesn't bother me. I just get disgusted with people but fortunately the kids are still there to make the job fun. Catchers are almost always good to us for example.

Where it is killing officiating is that Mr. Travis's actions are repeated with kids trying to make a few summer bucks and newer officials and it's driving them out. 4 out of 5 new officials have stopped doing it by their third year. The age of those of us working keeps rising because there is very little new blood sticking. And some games don't get covered because there is no one to work. HS are moving Friday night football to other nights because there aren't enough people. It's a shame.

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founding

Clay Travis is a buffoon and always has been. However, it appears being a buffoon or buffoonish is a requirement to obtaining a TV and/or Radio deal. I mean how else does one explain Stephen A Smith, Skip Bayless, Chris Russo, or to some extent, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson? The louder and more cartoonish you are the better ratings and thus more money you get.

To JVLs broader point, I think what we are seeing is that the stratification of our media is matching the stratification of our society. It reminds me a few years ago when I was having a conversation with a work colleague on the NBA and sky rocketing salaries. How do they (and baseball as well) make so much money compared the NFL, which everyone watches (not true of course)? He seemed perplexed since he himself did not watch the NBA. I explained to him that the NBA did not need him to watch; they made so much money from their loyal fan base, both here and globally, that the NBA owners and the league made money hand over fist and could easily afford the salaries. The skyrocketing values of the average NBA franchise proves this.

Now apply it to the rest of the media: Fox does not care if 70 - 80 percent of the country finds Tucker repugnant; that 20-30 percent that love him are willing to pay to keep him on the air. Same for UFC, Netflix, HULU whatever.

There are fewer and fewer things of interest which truly unite the country's citizenry. As has been discussed ad nauseum, its clearly not religion and definitely not politics. There used to be a central tenet of our values that revered the Constitution and the Declaration, but that is fading as the RW only loves those documents to the extent that they can use them as cudgels to impugn or injure their political opponents. The NFL is probably the only one I can think of that comes close, but some right-wingers no longer watch the NFL because of the kneeling situation. Some have even stopped watching(or threatening to) college football because of NIL and the transfer portal.

As has been said repeatedly by me and others, a country cannot continue to exist if its people are so divided on cultural issues that they cannot even agree on the facts. In such situations, people only act on a transactional basis because they don't want to get to know you. They assume they know you and therefore determine the level of relationship they wish to have with you based on cues: what type of car you drive, race, language, ethnicity, the things you like on social media, what you do for a living, where you go to church (or if you even go to church), bumper sticks on your car, etc. I have seen and experienced it first hand.

Considering how things are going, this will get much worse before it gets better.

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The only retail job I ever had was at a big box store that rhymes with Maples. We were beholden to having 5 surveys a week (as if we could control if people filled them out or not!) and I can't tell you how many times I got surveys that said something like "He was so nice and did everything I asked. Unfortunately you don't carry widgets in yellow. Zero stars!" And my job performance suffered. What a joke. So glad I got out of there ASAP but it was a valuable look into life in the trenches.

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All I can say is THANK YOU!

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Thanks for your thoughts about the Social Contract and its demeaning in modern times, from discourtesy to a barista to yelling at an umpire. The coarseness of modern society is more and more evident — and offensive — to me each day.

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That fifth bullet point on parental responsibility responsibilities during little league games…I’m sad to say that’s probably far from universal. It certainly doesn’t seem to be a big part of Travis ride home ritual:( the world might be quite different if it had

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Jun 2, 2022Liked by Jonathan V. Last

"...people only afford value to, and respect the dignity of, others if they get what they want from them."

This is such a concise way to describe a phenomenon that I see so often, but have struggled to describe clearly. It captures a lot that is wrong with our culture, but also offers a roadmap towards a solution.

If we frame our challenge as valuing each other even when we don't get what we want, we have a handy and simple guide for navigating many different frustrating situations.

Or maybe I'm just not used to someone suggesting we should act with integrity and high character (they're in such short supply after all)...

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founding

I take the Starbucks customer satisfaction surveys on occasion. One question is something to the effect of “did your barista make an effort to get to know you.” Not sure how that could happen when I use the app to place my order and then I’m in and out of the store in 3 seconds.

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Jun 2, 2022Liked by Jonathan V. Last

Spot on and I know the genesis of what ails us.

It's the Libertarian impulse. It represents the atomization of the community into 'what's in it for me and mine?' The hell with whatever contributes to civility, or even modeling how one behaves when one is disappointed with an outcome.

What's most galling is the smug, self-satisfied posturing who have arrived and who fail to see all the structural advantages that support all of us that came through sacrifice and commitment. Thank you Ayn Rand.

The Communitarian ideals on which our society was based prospered are at risk. I don't have an answer except seeing the value in every human being and how that is a way back.

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JVL is right again! Clay Travis is a selfish asshole… he doesn’t care about anyone but himself as evidenced by his stance on masking. His entire schtick is built on being a jerk… owning the libs… it’s a well crafted act…

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