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(Excerpted from a study and analysis of the manager's role, responsibility and position of leadership in Little League by the late Dr. Arthur A.
Esslinger, Past President, American Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation. Dr. Esslinger served as a member of the Board of Directors of Little League Baseball.)
The heart of Little League Baseball is what happens between the manager and player. It is your manager more than any other single individual who makes your program a success or failure. He controls the situation in which players may be
benefited or harmed. We have all seen managers who exerted a wonderful influence upon their players - an influence which was as fine an educational experience as any youngster might undergo. Unfortunately, we have also observed a few managers who were a menace to children.
If Little League is to become qualitative, then we must do something positive about improving the quality of leadership in its day to day operation. This assignment is made more difficult by two factors. The first of these is that we lose many of our experience personnel every year. Many parents stay in the program as long as their children are in it. Then, when they have gained invaluable experience and acquired some of the ideas of the program we lose them. What would be the quality of teaching in our schools if our teachers turned over as rapidly as our managers?
The second handicapping factor is that many managers are untrained in youth leadership. Experienced youth leaders (in physical education or recreation) receive a four-year college program of preparation. There is a vast amount to be learned before one can become an excellent Little League manager. Just because an individual is willing to devote the time to managing is not enough of a criterion upon which to base a selection. Just because the adult knows something about baseball is likewise an inadequate basis for selection. Even a person of integrity, sincerity and high idealism needs other qualifications. All of these considerations are important, but there is far more involved in being a successful Little League manager. Your manager needs to know the purposes of the program and how to evaluate progress toward attaining them. He should be acquainted with the best ways of imparting to his players what he knows about baseball. Then, too, there is the critically important matter of understanding children and how to relate you and yourself to them most effectively. Finally, there is the matter of exemplifying all the desirable things in Little League.
My contention is that from the league president's point of view, your manager is the most important volunteer in the Little League program. A variety of reasons support this contention. A very important factor is that the youngster of Little League age wants to emancipate himself from his primary identification with his parent. Up to this time he has lived in submission and obedience to them. Although not in a state of hostile rebellion, he is nonetheless experiencing pangs of doubt about the all- encompassing wisdom of his parents. As doubts continue, he puts an increasing distance between himself and his parents and turns toward those of his own age as the ultimate determiners of his society.
The child now seeks for other persons to typify the ideals and virtues that once used to be represented by the parents. This is an age of hero worship. If a child chooses as a model an adult who represents the highest ideals of gentlemanly behavior and clean living, both the child and his parents are fortunate. Children of Little League age are strongly influenced by their peers. It is a tragic fact that peer standards frequently are antisocial, destructive and immoral.
Little League has had many managers of the finest caliber. It is often surprising that we have had as many excellent managers as we have had. But despite our good managers, we are all forced to admit that we have had too many poor ones. Many have done harm to their players and have given critics an opportunity to blast our program. They constitute the greatest threat to our program. Our procedures in regard to managers is the Achilles' Heel of Little League Baseball.
We have stimulated the imagination of millions of youngsters to come into this program. Yet for their leadership we have largely trusted to the luck of the draw - to mere accident. The least we can do for all these youngsters is to try to find them a good manager and once selected provide him with some indoctrination and in-service training. This, seems to me is a solemn obligation. The quality of leadership represents our biggest problem and until we solve it we can never realize the full potential we have.
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