Parents of a young pitcher at an American Legion baseball game were worried that the way the sun shone right toward the pitcher’s mound could hurt their son’s eyes. The next thing you know they were talking about a future lawsuit and the risk managers swung into action. The upshot is that Northwestern University, owner of Rocky Miller Park in Evanston, have told the teams that they can no longer play their home games at the park. Head coach Frank Consiglio said, “When it comes to the sun, you could say that about any ballpark in the country at any time. … It’s unfortunate that one person can ruin this.” (Dennis Mahoney, “Lawsuit threat forces NU to ban evening Legion games”, Pioneer Local, Jun. 26 via Chronicle of Higher Education and Pero)
11 Comments
The parents of this pitcher should be publicly identified for ridicule.
There are many posts on this site that make my jaw drop but this one takes the cake for me. As a former baseball player and pitcher (not even close to anything professional), I’ve never heard of such bs.
Happy anniversary!
The aerial view in google maps (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=isabella+st,+evanston,+il&sll=42.05666,-87.68661&sspn=0.598528,1.374664&ie=UTF8&ll=42.067901,-87.691348&spn=0.004675,0.01074&t=h&z=17) seems to show the pitcher facing northwest.
Since the setting sun would be toward the Southwest, it should safely be well out of the pitcher’s view.
These parents should be identified. Public censure has a way of straightening folks out.
A more practical solution would be to bench the precious snowflake whenever they play at Rocky Miller Park or buy him a pair of sunglasses. He is probably trying to hide from the world right now anyway.
You know this kid is suffering a death of a thousand dirty looks and muttered epitaphs for having dumb jerks for parents.
Where’s Darwin when you really need him? Intelligent Design my hiney. There is nothing intelligent about these parents or the pansy risk managers.
Bumper, doctors (to their credit) plaintiff’s lawyers (to their discredit) and others have been fighting off the forces of natural selection for generations.
Also, there’s this: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/32456
I doubt those forces have any remaining purchase in civilized society, with the exception of the sorts of outliers who make the Darwin Awards.
Don’t you understand?!? This is all about protecting the children!!!
That’s why they wear gloves
I think the parents should be forced to watch Uwe Boll movies for a week straight as punishment for this kind of snowflakism.
If they cared so much, why not just buy their snowflake some ridiculously strong sunglasses, possibly of the goggle variety?
I don’t think they care about Precious Snowflake, I think they’re planning to retire off his MLB earnings.
Please don’t sue me if you pull a muscle laughing.
The other parents should sue the pitcher’s parents due to the increased risk of travelling for their games.
So let me get this straight: Because ONE set of parents threatens a lawsuit over a nonsensical notion, ALL of the other parents are now positioned to sue because their kids cannot play baseball at a convenient time.
Did anyone think of telling the kid, because his parents are idiots, he can’t play at all, never mind giving in to benching him during home games?
I could get behind a class action against Uwe Boll… He should also be mentioned in the Geneva Conventions 2.0.