Sunday was Father’s Day and a dad dropped by my front porch for a chat. He’s got a couple kids and like a good dad, he coaches some of their sports teams and shows up at games for the other sports. (It seems there are few single-sport athletes among the 8 and 10-year-old set in Vermont.)

Good Dad believes exercise is good for his kids, he believes sports improves coordination and helps their physical development, improves their discipline and their ability to concentrate. As important, sports improves his children’s ability to cooperate with other team members and gives them a chance to learn to be “good sports,” foundations of civic life, especially in a Vermont town, where the 8-year-old one encounters on a baseball diamond may some day be the 38-year-old one encounters at town meeting.

Good Dad was dismayed by what he’s seen on the field of play – not among the children, but among the adults, acting like children. At a one game, he saw a soccer dad encouraging his 8-year-old son to “talk trash” on the pitch. “Get out of my way. You suck. You’re no good.” Charmless words in the mouth of any child, these insults are worse still when they’re put there with a parent’s encouragement. Good Dad confronted Bad Dad (let’s call him what he is) and Bad Dad’s excuse was that he wants his son to have the advantage – “the edge” – Bad Dad thinks talking trash can give him.

Message to 8-year-old soccer player: winning is more important than anything, so anything you do to win is OK. By the way son, your father doesn’t think you have the skills to win a fair competition.

Another day, another field and Good Dad sees the best player on his son’s Little League team strike out. The child, groomed only for success, throws his bat and curses at the umpire. Apparently, he’s already learned to blame others for his failings. The coach immediately sits the little prima donna on the bench.

In the bottom of the final inning, however, right out of the sports movie script, the game is tied, the home team has runners on base, two outs and a weak hitter on deck. The coach, subordinating ethics to results, sends Spoiled Brat in to pinch hit. Sure enough, the kid connects, brings home the winning run and is awarded the game ball as the hero of the day.

Message to 8-year-old ballplayers: winning is more important than anything and social rules do not apply to winners. Rules are for losers.

If these are the messages we – our generation – are sending to children, can we really pretend to be shocked by wars based on lies or torture or stolen elections?

Today’s New York Times reports that in Colorado, white high school athletes who were not satisfied with the playing time they got from their African American coach began displaying Confederate flags and posting photos of themselves on the Internet giving the Nazi salute, guns in hand.

Although Good Dad had no horror stories to relate from his daughter’s teams, his wife – Good Mom – plays sports in her town’s adult leagues and reports that the on-field behavior of soccer-playing Soccer Moms is as reprehensible as the behavior the Bad Dads are foisting on their sons.

Having a set of values means not giving ourselves exceptions “just this once” – and the next once and the once after that. If we do that, we wind up with sham values that we talk about after church and before elections, but that we never incorporate into our lives at uncomfortable moments.

While George Bush and his corrupt cadre in the White House may be the most extreme examples of this mentality, they wouldn’t be in the White House if most Americans didn’t – at some level – trade their principles for getting what we want in the short term.

I want my kid to have a winning season, so I’ll encourage him to talk trash and while I try to intimidate the ref from the sidelines. The gas-guzzling SUV “just feels safer,” so to hell with the climate. I know the workers at Wal-Mart are forced to work unpaid overtime, but the prices are so low!

It’s not just you, it’s me too – not every time, but more often than I should. Maybe it’s time we all go back to the playground and learn the lessons we missed the first time around.

© Mark Floegel, 2007