All-Purpose Pitching Machine Also Teaches Kids Not to Lie

We had this one really hard teacher in junior high. You know the type of teacher that thinks they're preparing you for the harsh realities of adulthood through tough love, including random screaming and no late papers and picking books about four grades higher than your class' skill set and wondering why no one finished them? Years later, though, you reflect back and acknowledge that the teacher may have actually taught you a lesson about the harsh realities of adulthood because you learned that some people are just mean and vindictive cusses who paper over their cruelty with mutterings about "life lessons". Which brings us, in what is surely an unrelated story, to the Bevill State Community College-Sumiton baseball coach and the pitching machine he uses to teach the kids about the horrors of lying. Shawn Rider blew off practice one day and then tried to fib about it to his coach, Ed Langham. Well, Coach Langham's out there to prepare these kids for a sport called life and you know what happens when you lie about where you've been in real life: your boss lines you up in front of the pitching machine in catcher's gear, cranks the machine to the "teach punkass kid a lesson" setting standard on most models, and fired away until Shawn was a bruised, battered mess that had to go to the hospital. Classy! No charges have been filed yet because the paperwork hasn't been done correctly by Shawn. (You mean the kid that blows off practice might have focus issues under pressure? Not guilty, then!) Also, the school's athletic department would like us all to know that "... (Coach LessonTeacher)'s been here 10 years and nothing has ever come up with him. He runs a pretty clean-cut program." You know, give-take a few book reports on The Last of the Mohicans. Seriously, eight pages on a falling leaf? Give us the pitching machine every time. Bevill State player says coach fired baseballs at him as punishment [Birmingham News] [ via SbB]