What has the world come to when we have stories floating around like this:
From the AP via Fox News:
PITTSBURGH-A youth baseball coach paid one of his players to hurt an 8-year-old mentally disabled teammate so the boy wouldn’t be able to play in a game, state police said Friday. Mark R. Downs Jr., 27, of Dunbar, offered one of his players $25 to hit the boy in the head with a baseball, police said. Witnesses told police Downs didn’t want the boy to play in the T-ball game because of his disability. The solicited player hit the boy in the head and in the groin with a baseball just before a game, and the disabled boy didn’t play, police said…
…Downs was arrested and arraigned Friday on charges of criminal solicitation to commit aggravated assault, corruption of minors, criminal conspiracy to commit simple assault and recklessly endangering another person. He was released from jail on an unsecured bond.
So, let me get this straight: some jackass who was a coach of a T-ball team put a bounty out on a mentally disabled kid because he didn’t want him to play? Am I reading that right?
What the hell has youth sports devolved to, that we’ve now come to putting bounties out the heads of mentally-disabled children so that they can’t play a freaking t-ball game? Seriously, that was a joke, right? There’s no way that Downs paid some kid to pelt another kid with a baseball, all because he didn’t want “that retard” to play in a t-ball game, right?
I guess not, if dude is getting arrested for corruption of minors, and conspiracy to commit simple assault.
This clown is just another in a long line of recalcitrant adults who take what’s supposed to be a fun, learning experience for children, and making it into the adult’s gladiator ring of vicariousness. Look, Downs, you are (were) the coach of a T-Ball team. You are not managing the Yankees, you child. You’re supposed to be teaching the kids how to play the game and have fun, not committing felonious assault on your behalf. They’re not your hitmen; they’re kids. And furthermore, you put a bounty on a head of a mentally disabled kid because..Why? What, because he has a god-given right to play the game like all the other kids out there? What the hell was that about? And you paid you kids $25 to crack this kid in the dome and the nuts?
Let me be blunt: Mark Downs is a yellow, bush-league a-hole. Too yellow to stand and fight, as M.W. Straight would put it, Downs resorted to bush league tactics to eliminate a player from a game of which has zero significance in the status of the organized world. All because he thinks that the mentally disabled don’t have any place on a T-ball field with other kids. I don’t see Roger Clemens walking up to David Eckstein at batting practice before a Cardinals-Astros game hurling 98-mph heaters at his dome and his jewels, do you?
Part of me says that Downs did this for an attempt to be funny, and get laughs and giggles. This isn’t funny by a stretch. Nor is it the least bit humorous. Personally, I’d find it more funny if the police decided to haul his ass up to PNC Park, and have Dave Williams or any of their better pitchers fire a hard one at his package.
A Bunch of Bob Knight Wannabes
Youth sports has gotten too damn crazy. If it isn’t some parent, living vicariously through their kid, belittling a coach over playing time, it’s a coach acting like Bob Knight while pretending to coach 10 year olds. And girls at that.
If the parent isn’t belittling the coach, he’s attempting to kill the coach. If the coach isn’t shouting down a referee who’s volunteering his time to do that job, he’s trying to kill the referee. Or the parents are tying to kill each other. Or the coaches are trying to kill each other. That is, unless said coaches or parents aren’t taking the boys to Hooters.
I know that doesn’t happen everywhere, but people like this get press for a reason. It shouldn’t be this way. We shouldn’t have to talk about losers like Downs, but they will always pop up. They will never go away, not so long as we have parents who want to take all the credit for their kids success, adult coaches who operate under the axioms of “win at any cost” and “it’s not worth winnin’ if you can’t win big”, kids who have no regard for their opponents, and the lust to be the next big story on “SportsCenter”. But this was more than that. Worse than that. This was a concentrated, deliberate attack on a child,authorized by an adult in authority. Never mind the boy’s disability; the fact that a supposed grown adult authorized and bankrolled a physical assault on a child by another child should be more than enough. If what he has been accused of is true in the least, Mark Downs should never be allowed to coach again.
I, for one, find it hard to ask children to act like adults, when the adults left in their charge are acting like children themselves.
its a flippin’ T-ball game. It’s not about winning and losing, its about having fun… and possible overcoming those disabilities. What the hell people?
You might not know this, but I myself have a disability– was diagnosed in HS, and I still played three years of HS sports (hockey and soccer), two years of junior hockey, and two years of college hockey through it. I have also seen guys with worse disabilities than me play through them, and play better than me. And now, I’ve found out, I have another condition that makes the simple task of stopping a puck seem a lot tougher.
Some people just need to stop living through their kids– and set better examples. (I think I’m going back to AJ’s blog to repost this)
One key point I did not address in the column was that Downs has two daughters, both of whom play on his team. In a story posted in USA Today, his attorney claims that he didn’t do that. And yet in the same article, it is alleged that three days earlier, he argued with an umpire about some rule, and remarked to his team in jest that he’d give $25 to whoever would bean the umpire. Not exactly a clean defense, if you ask me.
Either way, if any of this is true, he ought to be booted from coaching immediately and without prejudice. It is an embarrasment unto itself, and no decent human being should tolerate that nonsense.
Mark Downs, Jr is a sick, evil piece of shit. I would say that he is an embarassment to humanity, except that no one who did what he did could possibly be human.
It’s been reported also that a few weeks before this incident that he beat his girlfriend and cut off all her hair.
For what he did to that autistic boy he should be shot with rubber bullets and bean bags for a few hours… just to get him softened up a little and to know what’s coming later. White-hot needles should then be placed under each of his finger and toenails.
He then should be disemboweled, then drawn & quartered.
Then, the bleeding should be staunched only so that he can remain alive long enough to then be fed to South American Army ants so that they can inflict the coup de grace. Afterwards, I would love to be there to piss and spit on his grave too.
Here’s someone who’s clearly not only a dangerous individual, but a scumbag of the highest order — yet he has two children, and is using this as a reason for claiming that he could never do what he had done to the autistic kid. Furthermore, he has insinuated himself into local little league as a coach so that he can practice his sickness on many other local area children. This slimeball Downs makes even child molesters almost look like good, decent people in comparison.
I just have to laugh when so-called “Christians” claim that gay people aren’t qualified to be parents, or are even dangerous around kids (and remember a couple years back all the incidents of parents going postal on one another at youth sporting events, usually due to umpire calls they disagreed with?). Mark Downs, Jr proves it’s the other way around. At the very least, heterosexual parents should undergo mental testing before being allowed to have or adopt children.
Wow.
Those are rather strong opinions there, but I see your point. Hopefully, in the past year since I’ve posted this piece, he’s been removed and barred from coaching any children anywhere, has gotten mental help, or has been fined or jailed.
As to the claim by the Religious Right that gays aren’t qualified to be parents–you could expand that to the “institution of marriage”, that which these same folks who are adamantly against gay marriage to protect said “institution” are more than willing to divorce and remarry. If we want to be biblically technical about it, if gay marriage is wrong, so is consistent and persistent divorces and remarriages (cc: Hollywood Marriages). Basically the premise itself is subjective, or in other words, bullshit.
Judge rejects appeal from baseball coach who offered player cash to bean teammate
UNIONTOWN, Pa. (AP) — A judge refused to reduce the sentence of a former youth baseball coach convicted of offering a player money to bean a 9-year-old autistic teammate.
Mark Downs Jr., 29, had argued in his appeal that his former attorney wasn’t effective. But Fayette County Judge Ralph Warman ruled Monday that Downs’ arguments were without merit. He let stand Downs’ one- to six-year prison sentence imposed last year.
Downs was convicted of corruption of minors and simple assault for offering $25 to an 8-year-old boy to hit his mildly autistic teammate with a ball while warming up before a June 2005 playoff game. The younger boy testified at trial that, on Downs’ instructions, he purposely threw a ball that hit his teammate in the groin, then threw another that hit him in the ear.
Prosecutors said Downs didn’t want the autistic boy in the game because he didn’t play as well as his teammates. League rules require each player to play at least three innings.
Downs remains free on bond while he continues an appeal to the Pennsylvania Superior Court.
Thanks for that, Woody!
Mark Downs Jr needs a good old fashion ass kicking. Beaning one of your own players, an autistic one no less, to win a bloody T-ball game. What the hell. If I was a parent of a player on that team Mr Downs would be residing in a hospital right now. I have an autistic nephew and I could not imagine this happening to him. I do not blame the boy who beaned the other boy, he was simply following orders.
Mr Downs really need a good ass whooping. He looks like a scrawny little wimp so it would be nice and easy to do.
Be thankful Mr Downs, I do not live in your city and I do not have a kid on your team. Jail would be an escape for what I would do to you.
Definately JACK ASS OF THE YEAR.