Coach has player, 8, hurt to keep him out of game
Friday, July 15, 2005
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A Little League coach in Fayette County arranged for one of his own players to be hurt so that he couldn’t play in a game, state police said.
Charges were filed today against Mark Reed Downs, Jr., 27, of Dunbar, in connection with the June 27 incident.
In a news release, police said an 8-year-old tee-ball player with a mental disability was warming up with another player before a game at the R.W. Clark Little League Field in North Union Township. Just before that, police said, Downs, the head coach, “approached the other member of the team and told him that he would give him $25 to hit the victim on his head with a baseball so the victim would not be able to play in the game.”
The other player hit the victim in the left ear and also in the groin, police said. The victim could not play that night.
Police said that interviews they conducted “revealed Downs did not want the victim to play due to his physical limitations.”
Downs was charged with criminal solicitation to commit aggravated assault, corruption of minors and reckless endangerment.
He was arraigned today and released on unsecured bond.
I don’t even know what to say about something like this.
Why do parents take sports so serious? That’s the main reason I quit reffing and coaching ice hockey, the parents of the 5 year old kids were pissed because their kid was better and didn’t get more ice time than the bad kids. I told them to fuck off, enjoy the game, and get out of my face. I wonder why i’m not a coach anymore.
with the money pros are making and the costs of college tuitions there so much at stake for a kid to do well in sports. What parents don’t realize is there is a 99.9% chance their kid isn’t gonna go pro. I would love to coach like colt league age because those are people thats are there cause they want to play and I would love to teach them finer points of the game. I don’t want to deal with parents thou. I had a challenged kid on my team in t-ball and i knew he was gonna K everytime up but i didn’t care cause my parents actaully taught me values.
listen to this… when my brother played Little League he played on tournament team… it was kind of like an honor to play on this team since they pick 13 kids out of the whole little league. So the head coach of tourney team also coached another team in the league. well my brothers team went up against his in the championship. So they had a double header tourney game then the championship. The coach made my brother pitch the tourney game, he was supposed to pitch the championship game that night! the guy was such a dousche bag, my parents were soooo angry. their is more to it with how he forced him into it, but its irrelevent… LL coaches are crazy
we always had our season over before the tourneys. I got drilled in the ribs by the fastes pitcher in the league in the championship and missed the first few tournament games. Tournaments were so much fun cause us poor city kids with mismatched uniforms would go out to brentwood, scott township, etc and clean up.
LL is way different now than when i played. some leagues use a softer ball, some use flak jackets and many have facemasks on the helmets. We even pitched when we were in tshirt league, none of this coaches pitch nonsense
seriously, its not even like it was a regular healthy kid, the kid was handicapped. like his life isn;t hard enough struggling to be a normal kid and you got an adult acting like a total piece of trash. That guy ruined his life cause there are plenty of people that are gonna take pride and teaching this guy some manners.
