The Year In ... Parents Gone Wild

So, the next few days will be chock full of end-of-year retrospectives. We'll do our own as well. Today: Parents gone wild.

If there’s one thing I know about youth sports it’s this: Parents will not stop until they’ve squeezed every bit of fun out of the experience, and their children are left trembling, nervous wrecks. Why couldn’t they just let me stay home and watch cartoons?! Um, I mean, let them stay home. Here are some prime examples:

• Nine-year-old banned from his Little League because he pitches too hard. Naturally, lawsuits ensue.

• Miss your snack bar shift and feel the terrible wrath of the Freetown Youth Athletic Association.

• Your 7-year-old won't wear his Packers jersey? Get the masking tape.

• What would 2008 be without Mitch Williams being ejected from a girls youth basketball game for swearing at the refs?

• Now you can't even attend your 5-year-old daughter's soccer game while packing a Glock 26? Is this Russia?

• Where is the woman from the previous item when you need her?

• You're nine, you play Little League, and Dusty Baker is your coach. Hilarity ensues.

• Ten reasons the Little League World Series sucks.

• The fine art of racial profiling, when all the athletes in question are black.