Cleats and Chaos: Finding Meaning Beyond the Scoreboard

The Best and Worst of Little League

Volunteering as a Little League coach, umpire, board member, and eventually president was one of the most meaningful and most chaotic experiences of my life. At its best, it was pure joy: being on the field, working directly with my children and their teammates, teaching the game, and watching them grow in confidence and character. At its worst, it was a front-row seat to adult egos run amok, with the scoreboard too often overshadowing the scoreboard of life lessons that really matter.

The heart of Little League is, and should always be, the kids. Coaching them was a privilege. Whether it was watching a timid player finally connect for their first hit, seeing teammates encourage one another after a tough inning, or simply enjoying the chaos and laughter of practice, those moments were the reason I signed up. There’s a unique magic in youth sports that exists far beyond wins and losses. It’s about learning, developing resilience, discovering joy in effort, and being part of something bigger than yourself.

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't a perfect coach by any stretch of the imagination. There was the time my son was pitching, and he had given up a home run and a couple of walks. I called time to pay a mound visit when my son tried to wave (or shoo) me back to the dugout, I told him to "Get your head out of your @##." We were both frustrated before I got to the mound, so my words weren't helpful (and not my best parenting or coaching moment either). In another pitching "incident," I allowed a young player to come in as a relief pitcher. He had begged me at every practice and game for weeks to allow him to pitch. I knew he wasn't ready... I sent him out to the pitching mound anyway, hoping for the best. After he walked 6 batters in a row (without throwing a strike), I went to the mound and relegated him to right field... In hindsight, I wish I had worked with him more so that he was better prepared (and that I hadn't caved to his request).

Looking back, I know I wasn’t immune to poor judgment or pressure. But those moments, embarrassing as they were, taught me that humility and growth are far more important than winning any game. But all too often, that lesson gets drowned out by the noise from the sidelines.

As president of our league, I faced the unfortunate reality that some adults put their own egos ahead of the kids. I dealt with parents trying to relive their own athletic glory through their children, pushing too hard, criticizing too loudly, and forgetting that this game was supposed to be fun. I witnessed others attempting to bend or break the rules just to gain an edge on the scoreboard, as if youth baseball was a stepping stone to some professional dream, rather than a stage for growth and camaraderie.

Some used their roles as volunteers or administrators to seek advantages for their child’s team, subtle manipulations that eroded trust and undermined the spirit of fair play. That was the most disheartening part of leading the league: managing the politics and misplaced priorities of adults who had forgotten that youth sports are not about them.

Our "competitive Tee Ball" division was one of those areas where there were already problems. What was intended to be a lighthearted, developmental experience for five-, six-, and seven-year-olds had become a proving ground for adults who had lost sight of the purpose of youth sports. Parents shouted at umpires over calls that didn't matter. Coaches argued with each other, lobbied to stack teams with older, stronger players, and instructed their players to make fundamentally unsound plays to take advantage of Byzantine rule loopholes. The joy and discovery that should define tee ball were often replaced by pressure, frustration, and confusion for the children on the field.

Rather than addressing the root causes of the dysfunction, unchecked competitiveness, and misplaced priorities, league administrators leaned into the problem. They formalized standings, hosted all-star games, and implemented a playoff bracket for six-year-olds. These rules weren’t built to foster teamwork, teach fundamentals, or help kids fall in love with the game. They were crafted to validate adult egos. The result was a structure that encouraged adults to treat a child's first exposure to baseball as if it were the Little League World Series. In trying to legitimize their own competitiveness, the adults inadvertently undermined the very growth and joy the league was meant to nurture.

And as any adult who has participated in youth sports knows, these problems don't just go away as the kids progress. The kids get older and they move up levels... and their parents come with them, with all the bad habits and animosities they learned at the previous levels.

I was lucky that we moved into this league after my son was too old for Tee Ball. He played in a developmental league when he was five years old, Tee Ball in the first half of the season, and "coach pitch" in the second. When he moved up a level at seven years old, it was coach pitch the first half of the season and "kid pitch" the second.  By the time he was eight- and nine-years-old, he was ready to compete with kids his own age, and we were doubly lucky that he mainly played on teams with good coaches and managers (me notwithstanding).

So, when I became president of the league, once my son started middle school, I truly wasn't ready for the craziness to come. I thought stepping into a leadership role would mean organizing schedules, ordering uniforms, and maybe handing out trophies at the end of the season. Instead, I often found myself less like a league president and more like a crisis manager for adults. Week after week, I mediated shouting matches between coaches, issued warnings to parents berating umpires, and fielded emergency calls over sideline confrontations that escalated far beyond what any Saturday youth game should entail.

When I moved from the dugout to the boardroom, the stakes changed. Suddenly, I wasn’t just a coach trying to help a group of kids; I was the one responsible for keeping the league itself from unraveling.

Some of the biggest challenges came from coaches who embodied a “win at all costs” mentality. These weren’t just competitive people; they were adults who treated every youth game like Game 7 of the World Series. They ran up scores, manipulated lineups, and bent rules not for the kids, but for the scoreboard. And while I’ll be the first to admit I love winning and hate losing, that mindset robs the kids of something essential. 

The most surreal part was dealing with parents of 10-year-olds convinced that their child’s future athletic scholarship was on the line because they only played three innings instead of four. These weren't one-off concerns; they came bundled in long emails, accusations of favoritism, and ultimatums about pulling kids from the league. And the coaches? Some couldn’t even pretend to get along, letting old grudges play out through passive-aggressive lineup decisions or loud confrontations in front of the kids. It stopped being about teaching the game and started to feel like a proxy war for adult egos. What should have been a community effort to build confidence and camaraderie in children too often became a theater of insecurity and misplaced ambition.

CVLL President Joseph Boeke, presenting the 2011 Grace Chase Sportsmanship Award to Jason Crosthwaite.

Still, for all the drama, there were moments that reminded me why I stayed. Opening Day was always a favorite: kids in fresh uniforms buzzing with excitement, running the bases in skills competitions, their parents actually cheering (instead of complaining), and everyone enjoying the simple thrill of baseball. I loved the closing ceremonies too, awards, all-star announcements, and the sense that, despite everything, we’d created something meaningful.

And I kept coaching. I kept showing up for practices and games, especially when my daughter was on the field. Every time I laced up my cleats and walked onto the diamond, the noise of the adult world faded just a little. There was something grounding in helping a kid make their first catch or watching a team cheer each other on after a tough inning.

I remember sitting near the dugout during one of my daughter’s games, listening to the girls shout their chants and rhymes while their team was up to bat. That dugout energy was pure magic, supportive, silly, loud, and full of joy. One of their cheers stuck with me:

Do it again, we liked it, we liked it. 

Do it again, We liked it, We liked it.

Faith playing softball for her Kiwanis Club team in 2011.

It was a reminder that these kids understood something many adults seemed to forget: the value of simply showing up for each other. The girls had the most fun when they stopped making it about themselves and focused on their teammates, win or lose.

Youth sports are supposed to be where kids learn teamwork, resilience, and sportsmanship, not where they become pawns in an adult’s quest for validation. When the focus shifts from development to domination, the kids lose more than a game; they lose a chance to discover joy, teamwork, and the quiet confidence that comes from simply being allowed to grow.

Don’t get me wrong, I value many of the adult friendships I made during my time in the league, even the complicated ones. By the time my son reached his freshman year of high school baseball, I had only managed to see him play two or three times. Running the league had slowly replaced watching my own son play the game we both loved. Mediating adult conflicts became work. Watching kids play was joy. So I stepped away, not from baseball, but from the chaos, and returned to my favorite title: Dad. Not a dad trying to outcoach or outmaneuver other dads. Just a dad in the stands, cheering his kids on.

In the end, what Little League gave me wasn't just a front-row seat to my children's growth it gave me a deeper understanding of my own. It reminded me that youth sports aren't about crafting champions; they’re about building character. They're not about polishing résumés for future scholarships; they're about teaching kids how to fail, try again, and love the game anyway. And maybe, if we’re lucky, they teach us grown-ups a little something too about humility, patience, and the importance of knowing when to step back and let the kids lead the way. What mattered most wasn’t the final scores or standings. It was watching my kids and so many others learn how to stand tall after a strikeout, celebrate a teammate’s success, and fall in love with a game that gives far more than it ever takes. That’s the meaning I found beyond the scoreboard. And that’s what I’ll carry with me long after the chaos has faded.

One Year - In Memory of Bill Peters

A year ago today, Bill Peters passed away.

I have thought about that sentence a hundred times since last spring, trying to find a way to write it that does justice to what the man meant to this community and to me. There is no such way. So I will start simply and work from there.

Bill was 72 years old and had spent nearly four decades at Crescenta Valley Little League, first because his son Matt played tee ball in 1971, then because his son Greg played, and then because he could not stop. The league became part of who he was. When I first joined the CVLL board, Bill was already the institutional memory, the keeper of the records, the person whose phone you called when you did not know the answer and did not want to guess. He had spent years at JPL helping to put Surveyor, Voyager, and Mariner into the sky, and he brought that same precision to keeping score on a folding chair at Montrose Park.

He was the one who put together the Rally Tally.

If you were a player in this league during those years, you remember it. Bill assembled the Rally Tally every week — a detailed account of every team, every game, every hit, every run, every player who did something worth noting. Families waited for it. Kids who tore past it on the way to the field would double back when they thought no one was watching, just to see if their name was in print. Bill knew that. He was counting on it. What he never did was use it to criticize a player. Not once. He knew these were children trying their best, and he refused to discourage even one of them. That was not an oversight. It was a decision he made every single week.

He also kept something else: the long record of players who had been part of CVLL every year of their Little League careers, from tee ball through Majors and Juniors. He tracked them quietly, the way he did most things, because he believed that kind of loyalty deserved to be recognized. After Bill died, the league named its legacy award in his honor. It goes each year to the players who stayed the full distance. His name is called at closing ceremonies now, and it will be called for as long as the league runs.

Shortly after Bill's passing, CVLL nominated him for the Glendale Unified School District's Character and Ethics Award. His widow, Collette, and their children accepted it on his behalf. I was glad we did it, though the timing felt backward, that a man this decent needed a formal committee to recognize what anyone who sat next to him at a game already knew.

When I was elected president of CVLL, the election was not without friction. The politics of a youth baseball league can be surprisingly fierce, and I stepped into the role with some opposition still simmering. I was underprepared. I knew the game. I did not fully know the job. Bill steadied me. He answered the questions I was embarrassed to ask publicly. He sent quick emails when something needed doing and made sure it got done, usually by doing it himself. He helped me understand not just the rules and the history but the spirit the league was built on. He was in his seventies and had no obligation to do any of it.

I have had mentors in my life, but they tend to show up in professional settings with formal titles attached. Bill was nothing like that. He was the league dad, not managing me, not reporting to me, just showing up, knowing more than I did, and making sure I did not embarrass myself or the kids in my care. When something needed doing, and I did not know how, he already had the answer. When the pressure of that first year threatened to get ahead of me, he had a way of making the next right step obvious without making me feel small for not seeing it. I thought about my own father often during those months. The steadiness was the same.

This spring, I have been doing Bill's work. Some of it I knew he did. More of it I am discovering only now. The program book. The website. The follow-up calls. The things that hold together when someone tends them and fall apart the moment they stop. It has not been easy, and there are moments when I reach for the phone to call him, only to catch myself.

My son Ted was a freshman at Crescenta Valley High School last year. Bill knew what my commitment to the league presidency was costing me. He encouraged me to get to Ted's games, and when I could not, he understood, but he also made clear he thought I was missing something I could not get back. After Bill died, I felt the need to fill the gaps he left behind, and they were considerable. I missed almost all of Ted's freshman season. This past year, with Ted a sophomore, I made a conscious decision to pull back and let other parents and families carry the league forward. I saw more games. I am glad I did. Bill would have told me to do it sooner.

He used to keep score at games long after his sons were finished playing. He would sit in the stands with his scorecard and his pencil and follow the game the way a person follows something they love, closely and without agenda. I sat next to him a few times in my first year on the board, and those were the best conversations I had that season. We talked about the kids on the field and about the kids who had played years before. He remembered them all. Not the statistics. The kids.

Bill gave his time to something long after anyone expected him to. He made himself useful without being asked. He understood that the details — the Rally Tally, the program book, the long list of kids who never missed a year — were how you showed people they mattered. This community was shaped by him, and the debt does not diminish with time.

I miss him every week.