Kid got hurt, but jury right to clear coach who told kid to slide (Opinion)

In today’s episode of “how much money can I make from the judicial system today?” a 31-year-old middle school teacher was sued for telling a kid to slide into third base.

According to an article on NJ.com, John Suk was sued in a case languishing for years for making the call that caused a serious ankle injury to a middle school baseball player. Yes, you read that right. The kid sat in a courtroom (presumably with his parents) waiting to hear if they would win a seven-figure verdict against the coach because of injuries sustained during that slide, says the story.

It’s bad enough that parents get so emotionally involved in their kids' games that they cannot control their emotions and fly into tantrums when their child is not played long enough or when their child is the victim of a bad call, but this suit was ridiculous. Isn’t the risk of injury during sports part and parcel of sports? Isn’t “sliding” a fairly common activity in baseball?

As I like to say, there are some bad things that happen just because they do. And there’s no one to blame. A coach is there to make these types of judgements. And as Suk successfully proved in court, he thought it was the reasonable, logical thing to do in that particular situation. It’s not like he told someone to beat this kid over the head with a baseball bat. It’s amazing to me that this case even made it to court.

A subsequent article in The Blaze reports that Suk won his case. Thank God. But the fact that a judge was willing to even hear it is troublesome and a very slippery slope. If a big check is awarded to plaintiffs in the next case like this, it’s going to harm kids sports even more than it’s already been harmed.

Between over-padding kids, participation trophies, and trying to mitigate any potential harm that could come to our little precious mini-athletes, there’s practically no sport left to play. Soon, there’ll be no coaches left to coach. Why would anyone want to risk being hauled into court and held responsible anytime little Connor or Liam gets injured?

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