Pope Baseball: Team Mom

The youth baseball team my sons had been playing on all spring had reached the championship game. There were two out in the bottom of the last inning. Our team was down by a run, but the bases were loaded. One of my sons, Taylor, was at the plate. It was a pressure-packed situation, but Taylor had been a clutch hitter all season long and was the team's leader in runs batted in. A walk would tie the game. A hit to the outfield might win it.

Ball one. Ball two. Ball three! One ball away from a base on balls that would win the game. Taylor swung and missed at the next two pitches. Full count.

The pitch was delivered. Seeing that it was low and out of the strike zone, Taylor stood motionless in the batter's box. The ball bounced a foot in front of home plate and skidded into the catcher's glove. Ball four! Tie game! Or so I thought.

But wait. The umpire's right harm came up. "Strike three!" he yelled. Game over! The Yankees were Triple A champs. They ran on to the field for the traditional pig pile celebration.

Some of the parents from our team began yelling at the umpire. "Who paid you off, ump?" one screamed. "You lousy piece of **##!" shouted another.

Taylor strode from home plate, head held high. Instead of tears or anger, he was smiling from ear to ear. "At least we made it to the finals! Nobody expected we would! We came in second in the entire league," he beamed.

It was one of my proudest moments as a sport parent. Taylor knew that the umpire had made a bad call. A terrible and unexplainable mistake. Yet Taylor rose above it and found the good in the most important game of the year.

Parents need to be models of good sportsmanship. We have all seen umpires make bad calls. How you handle your emotions when it happens will teach your child how to handle similar situations. Our proudest moments should come when our children handle tough calls with grace and dignity, not with cheap insults directed at volunteer referees, or "trash talk" aimed at opposing players. When they do the right thing, like Taylor did in walking to the bench instead of arguing with the umpire, we need to tell them how proud we are of the way they displayed "grace under fire."

Read more about this subject in Home Team Advantage: The Critical Role of Mothers in Youth Sports (Harper Collins) by Brooke de Lench. Brooke is also the founder and editor-in-chief of MomsTeam.com.