I am losing faith in humanity.
Sure, there are good things about people and what they do in the world, but too often, the bad seem to outweigh the good.
A couple weeks ago a kid's football coach stormed the field in Stockton, California, bowling over a little kid who leveled his son after the whistle. Being a football player, sometimes you don't hear the whistle. Sometimes you're just a little amped up. Sometimes you're looking for a little payback when you were burned or leveled on a previous play.
But that is what the refs are for. They control the game. And when they fail, the parents can easily go to the refs or coaches of the other team and point it out. These games are on tape, they have numerous avenues to explore and take their issues down.
The field of play isn't one of them.
Fast forward to last summer.
A T-ball coach offered an 8-year old $25 to bean a fellow teammate so he wouldn't be able to play in a game.
Normally that is just awful, but it gets even worse:
The child he wanted him to bean is autistic and mildly retarded.
Just doing what his coach asked and paid him to do, the little 8 year old hit him not once, but twice. Once in the groin, and once in the ear.
I realize the kid could have known better, but I don't place blame on him. It is squarely on the shoulders of the coach. I am sure the little boy feels horrible for going through with it, especially after talking to his parents, but damnit, that is an awful situation to be in for a little kid.
I don't know if justice prevailed in this case. 29-year-old Mark R. Downs Jr. was convicted of corruption of minors and criminal solicitation to commit simple assault.Downs was acquitted of criminal solicitation to commit aggravated assault, and jurors said they were deadlocked on a charge of reckless endangerment. The judge declared a mistrial on the endangerment charge. I can't see how a jury would not have convicted him on child endangerment. What if the pitcher hit him in the temple and it killed him? What if it hit him in his eye socket and made him half blind? Are you telling me that isn't child endangerment? Not only that, but the mental issues that could accompany this pitcher now certainly should be constituted as child endangerment.
How low can you be on the totem pole of humanity? How deplorable of a person can you be? How can you look at yourself in the mirror?
I hope during the penalty phase of all of this the judge makes this guy pay in the wallet, as well in the form of performing some major community service, not allowed to coach youth sports ever again, and thrown in jail for at least a month.
Maybe people around the country would smarten up then.
Then again, I doubt it.
And that's what really worries me...
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