ow is it possible that Jericho Scott is not some sort of hero?  In general, my interest in sports rapidly approaches zero.  But even I know enough to know that something has gone terribly wrong when the criticism of a 9-year old boy is that his pitching is too good, because his fastball simply cannot be hit.  He should be a veritable fount of inspiration rather than an occasion for despair.  I mean even I admire him; and I just manage to know about baseball to know that what Jericho Scott is doing is marvelously admirable.  First, I shall say something about the issue of encouraging excellence, especially among males.  Then I shall have some damning things to say about the parents. This I shall do about talking about the role of affirmation in the lives of children.

Part I. The ideal, I had always supposed, is that one person’s excellence inspires either the same or a different excellence on the part of others.  This is precisely what people used to mean by the American spirit.  And at the risk of sounding unbelievably sexist, this sort of competitiveness was once taken to be one of the defining features maleness.  What males did not do is cry when they were beaten squarely and fairly.  Rather, what they did was vow to come back stronger.  And parents, even as they understood their boy’s bruised ego, would encourage the latter.  And if not that, then they would encourage the child to do something different.  But the very idea of parents exhibiting any sort of consternation over the fact that their son had a competitor who was simply that good would have made no sense at all.

What is particularly disconcerting here is the role model that the parents of the community have set in allowing Jericho Scott to be treated in the way that has been treated. 

It borders on being unconscionable that parents inculcate in their children the attitude that the children entitled to complain when someone is substantially better than they are.  As a child I was noted for having a very impressive memory which resulted in my always getting a major part in school plays.  Good thing that this sort of thing happened back-in-the-day because nowadays, no doubt, parents would have complained about this excellence on my part. 

Nobody complained for more or less the obvious reason.  I was better than most at remembering things but not as good as others when it came to doing lots of other things.  And everyone understood that simple reality.  Indeed, I understood this reality no less than others.  It never crossed my mind to complain about the fact that many of my classmates could do things that I simply could not do.  Regardless of the sport, I wasn’t worth a damn on the field.  Everyone knew that.  I knew that.  And I never complained about that.  Rather, I expected that there would be a fight over how not to choose me as a team-member.

The more sublime point, of course, is that at every turn excellence was valorized.  And it was very nearly a conceptual impossibility to suppose that one might have grounds for complaining about the fact that someone was amazingly good.  That would have been rather like saying that rain causes things to get wet.  Duh !

Part II. Then there is the damage that the complaining parents have done to Jericho Scott.  And I mean precisely those words.  And you will have to forgive me for once again reaching for a moment that occurred back-in-the-day.  There must have been some adult who disliked the fact that I had a good memory.  But no one comes to mind.  Every adult who ever witnessed my ability to remember things did nothing but pay me compliments.  Of course, my parents did—and that, needless to say, is hardly trivial.  But it is also true that praise from other adults was in no way trivial.  We are social creatures; and our affirmation and sense of self does not come only from our parents.  And this is understandable because there is a very important respect in which our parents are rightly partial. 

I have brought tears to the eyes of the parents of this or that student by sharing with them a letter that I wrote for their child.  Did those parents have a high opinion of their daughter or son?  Absolutely.  But I brought to the moment a perspective and affirmation that was entirely independent of their will.  More precisely, they got to be witnesses to the affirmation of their child and not givers of that affirmation.  And that difference makes all the difference in the world to both the child and the parents. 

It is precisely this affirmation that the parents of the community have withheld from Scott—a young man of 9 years old.  Quite simply, this is none other than a form of cruelty.  It is cruelty masquerading as parental love.  Let me explain.

What seems to be the prevailing attitude these days is the warped view that parental love means elevating one’s child above all other children.  This is thought to convey in the child a sense of worth.  Well, it does that but the sense of worth in question is called narcissism.  And narcissism is unhealthy precisely because it constitutes a woefully distorted conception of the self vis-à-vis others.  Thinking well of oneself should never in any way be incompatible with acknowledging the excellences of others.  And parental love at its best enables the child to value herself or himself not because the child thinks that she or he is better than all others, but despite the fact that there are others who have talents than she or he does not have.  That is the real gift of parental love. 

The parents who rushed to protect their children from Jericho Scott did their children a profound disservice.  For there is no greater significance of parental love than having it bestowed in the face of all the talent in the world that other children might have. 

The parents than did a disservice to their children and they did a disservice to Jericho Scott.  Once upon a time, it would have been obvious to any reasonable adult that one finds away to affirm publicly a 9-year old child like Jericho Scott. 

In its perverted wisdom, modernity has chosen to discount the extraordinary of excellence displayed by Jericho Scott.  This presumably was done in the name of protecting the greater good.  The problem is that the greater good has transmogrified into a self-serving bottomless pit that is incapable of recognizing the good.  Indeed, it is too obvious for words that in this instance nothing good at all has come of what has been done to Jericho Scott.  Yet, no one is capable of seeing precisely that. 

Shame on the parents.  But then the possibility of shame already presupposes a modicum of decency.  And we already know that this is absent in the lives of the parents.