Krause: You can’t make rules to cover all of sports’ inequities

Last Friday, and again today, letters appeared in The Item on what has been, apparently, a long-simmering dispute between parents of the Saugus Babe Ruth all-stars and the managers of the team.Six members of that team have left it, for various reasons, since it was picked in June. Some had commitments that precluded them from going on, as the boys won the state championship last week and competed this past weekend in the New England regionals in Westfield.Others merely left because they weren’t playing enough. Their parents – as you can see from the letter that appears in today’s paper – are loath to say the kids quit, but that’s basically what has happened here. They weren’t getting enough playing time, so they quit the team. Calling it anything else might be dressing it up, and it might put a kinder, gentler face on the situation. But it doesn’t change the facts.I will admit that we’re dealing in some minute parsing and semantics here, but quitting a team for personal reasons doesn’t make you a bad person. And it doesn’t make you a “quitter” in the Manny Ramirez sense of the word (which says that, since the Red Sox are playing hardball with my contract, I’m going to lie down on them to get revenge).Youth sports are full of these conflicts, and we’re always going to have them if you’re picking 14 boys to play on a team, and there are only nine available spots at a time. Do the math!The situation always seems tougher in baseball, as there are substitution rules not present in any other sport, where you can pretty much shuffle people in and out of the game freely.In baseball, only starters can re-enter. Subs cannot. So if the manager of your team decides to pinch-hit you for another player in the second inning, you’re done for the day. If the score ends up being 15-2, you’re still done for the day.It’s worth noting that Saugus Babe Ruth has amended its rules so that there are playing requirements for its teams during tournaments. It’s a very noble idea, but it’s basically unenforceable, as the organization itself has no such rule (unless, of course, it adopts one during the off-season). This means that Saugus will go into tournaments saddled with a rule other teams do not have to follow. I can’t see that as being a good thing.And anyone who thinks this rule is a panacea is badly mistaken.I can remember being down in Bristol, Conn., two years ago at the New England Regional Little League tournament when a coach discovered he’d run afoul of the rule that says all players must bat once and play three consecutive outs in the field. We were treated to the spectacle of the winning coach trying to blow his team’s lead so that the game could go into extra innings; and the losing coach, knowing the penalty for violating the rule was a forfeit, ordering his kids to strike out so that the game wouldn’t go past the sixth inning.You people want this?The nature of competitive sports is unfair. Freaky things happen, and teams win games they’re supposed to lose. A ball bounces a foot fair, as opposed to a foot foul, and all of a sudden certain victory turns into excruciating defeat.The coach gets so wrapped up in the game, and in trying to win it (and please excuse me for not condemning any coach who wants to win, since that IS the objective), that he or she forgets that Johnny hasn’t played yet.And once in a while, Johnny may run across a coach or a manager who just doesn’t care. He’s not required to worry about who plays and who doesn’t, and by gosh, he doesn’t. He plays his best kids, and the subs fight for table scraps.You’d like to be able to count on a manager’s sense of fairness in these matters, because making rules to cover up all of sports’ inequities is basically a fool’s errand. There are so many of them that the rulebook will be thicker than “War and Peace.”But, you know, everything is a learning experience. When Johnny gets into high school, and makes the baseball team, there’s no guarantee he’ll ever see the field ? and there sh