Sports are a kind of education

For many young people in my part of the world (suburban America), the first brush with organized athletics comes on a Saturday morning in early spring. The weather is getting warmer and the school year's end is imminent, and moms,house Inflatable Advertising sensing the approach of summer vacation and Too Much Free Time, pile us into the backs of minivans and drive us to our town's local sports and recreation center. In my hometown, Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, kids converge each year on the EHT Youth Organization Building, a cinderblock shack in the middle of a handful of baseball and football fields. There lines are waited in, forms filled out, birth certificates examined and photocopied, health insurance waivers furnished and signed. At the end of the morning, kids are signed up for little-league baseball and an instant summer schedule of activities has been created. Then it's time to go to Burger King.
For parents seeking productive ways to occupy their children's time, summer sports leagues offer a convenient and time-tested outlet for overabundant energy. In my case that meant baseball. America's pastime: nine weeks of pitched fastballs and sore elbows, grounders up the middle, digging it out to first base, shagging flies in the outfield and swatting mosquitoes in the infield. Then, after six innings, back to Burger King.
A couple of weeks after the signups at the cinderblock shack, we kids would be rounded up into teams and coached in the fundamentals of pitching, catching, hitting, and running bases. We'd be supplied with color-coded jerseys and mesh baseball caps, and then we would play a season's worth of games against one another. Playoffs would be held and champions crowned. At the end of the season an all-star team of the league's best players would be assembled to play against the best teams from neighboring towns.
Back and forth across the country this system repeats itself from town to town and sport to sport with little variation. Some leagues have storied pasts: baseball's Little League or football's Pop Warner League. Some are newer. In cities it is often the Policemen's Benevolent Association or the YMCA that assumes the sponsorship role. Always, though, there is the underlying idea that organized sport is a valuable and productive use of a young person's time. Sports, in short, are a kind of education, teaching important life skills that can't be learned in school.