Bad enough that today’s mole children burrow into their dens and spend their best years out of the sun and the wind, engaged in electronic recreation.
But then, on those occasions when they do unclench the controller and stumble outdoors to play, chances are the game will be more organized than the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. For the benefit of parents who require entertainment and involvement, the children have been herded into leagues, dressed in uniforms and dropped onto manicured fields for brief periods of highly structured competition.
Believe it or not, there was a time when there was a lot more “Wheeee!” than Wii in play.
A time when rosy-cheeked youth called their own fouls or used grocery bags for bases or counted to five-Mississippi before they could rush the quarterback and always argued about the score because there was no adult keeping it.
We gather today to mourn the passing of beautiful, innocent, amorphous play. As the empty parcels of land disappeared, as travel ball and club sport rose to prominence, we left behind the simple joy of children finding their own way on weedy plots adorned by neither chalk lines nor boundary flags. Farewell dear sandlot, an ideal as antiquated as the eight-track tape.
Kind of feel sorry for kids — even my own son would be included here — who didn’t grow up stretching their imaginations as well as their legs, who served only one adult rule: Be home by the time the street lights come on.
An interview not long ago with former Georgia Bulldogs cornerback Scott Woerner, now an elementary-school phys-ed teacher in the Georgia mountains, took an unexpected detour into this subject. He said he was thinking about getting his doctorate. Already had the subject of his thesis in mind: The Disappearance of the Sandlot.
“It’s amazing kids don’t play at the sandlot anymore,” he said. “When I turn them loose in the gym and say go play a game, they can’t do it because they lost that ability to negotiate out a game and then peacefully solve any problem they would have.”
“I blame adults more than anything,” he said. “Everything kids do is controlled by adults. They will not allow them to function socially amongst themselves. Recess is probably the only chance they get to negotiate and solve their problems.”
I fear the social petri dish of the sandlot has all but vanished.
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