In another hideous example of adults and men being absolute shit, the father of a New Hampshire youth baseball player says two coaches in his daughter’s league conspired to have her beaned so that she would quit the league, according to a Foster’s Daily Democrat report:
In an email to [Oyster River Youth Association] board of directors Chair Ben Genes, Dan Klein, of Madbury, alleges that two coaches said they would instruct a player to “bean” Klein’s daughter — strike her in the head with a baseball during practice — in order to intimidate her into leaving the baseball program. The conversation allegedly took place during a draft meeting to assign players to team rosters.
Klein’s 11-year-old daughter is reportedly the only girl in the ORYA baseball league, and was the last player selected in the player draft:
Klein said his daughter has played baseball and T-ball with ORYA since 2012 and has enjoyed it, mostly without incident. When she began playing, Klein said, she had several teammates who were girls, but that number dwindled over the years as many girls her age switched to softball.
Softball is a popular sport, but it’s also a different sport, and some girls love baseball and want to play it. This year Major League Baseball and USA Baseball started something called the Trailblazer Series, which is a girls-only baseball tournament, to be held in Los Angeles. Then there is the Breakthrough Series, a player development camp, that added a Girls Baseball series in 2018, to be held in Vero Beach, Florida. As much as these are designed to encourage girls to play baseball, they are also an overdue acknowledgement that girls already are playing baseball, where they are able, and that many would continue to play baseball if there were actual, you know, opportunities.
These programs are great, but they will be of limited value for a girl, like Dan Klein’s daughter, who wants to play baseball in her community, where there are apparently few other girls who’ve stuck with the sport, and where at least some of the men in charge of the local league might be violently opposed to her participation. An 11-year-old girl sticking with her favorite sport in an environment where she is surrounded by boys and men is a goddamn miracle; that a pair of men would decide the appropriate response to that courage and enthusiasm is to crush it with physical intimidation, as Klein is alleging, makes me absolutely fucking murderous.
Klein was reportedly warned about the substance of the conversation between the two unnamed coaches by another pair of coaches who were present at the meeting and were troubled by what they heard. One of the coaches who alerted Klein apparently also agreed to bring his daughter onto his team.
According to the report, ORYA Chair Ben Genes said his organization was “beginning a formal investigation into the incident as per our policies and procedures and will provide a summary followup to all our stakeholders.” Local police have reportedly been made aware of the situation, as well.
Correction (April 16, 2018, 11:44 a.m. ET): This post originally stated that the Oyster River Youth Association is part of Little League; it is in fact unaffiliated with the official Little League organization.