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Writer: Emphasis on winning 'insidious'Little League coach uses play to explore dynamics of youth sports
 Richard Dresser RELATEDYOUR E-MAIL ALERTS(CNN) -- Winning and losing, cheating and nurturing all come into play in Richard Dresser's "Rounding Third," a humorous look at Little League that has been produced off-Broadway and by regional theaters. Dresser, a Little League father and coach, based the play on his observations of adults and children in a sometimes sports-crazed, win-at-all-costs society. He talked recently with CNN's Kelly Wallace about the play and youth sports. WALLACE: What was the inspiration for the play? RICHARD DRESSER: My kid was playing Little League in Los Angeles, California. He was 10 years old, came home from practice, and said, "Dad, we have a new strategy for the playoffs. Certain kids, when they get on base, they get a sign [that] means when they get to the next base, they slide. But they don't just slide; they pretend to be injured. That way, we take out that player, put in a faster runner and maybe score a run." When I heard this, I was pretty horrified. ... I went crazy. But being a writer, I thought, "Hey, I can use this. I can use my child for my own personal self-aggrandizement." So I wrote this play ... about two coaches, one who wants to win at all costs and the other who just wants to nurture the kids. That's the conflict of the play, and I think a conflict, as a coach, that we face all the time. ... WALLACE: What did you learn about yourself as you started coaching? DRESSER: That the effort to win is actually much more important than actually winning. If you put out a maximum effort, you play to the best of your abilities; then when you walk off the field, win or lose, you can feel OK. WALLACE: You must have felt a sense of conflict between wanting to win and the sense of wanting everyone out there to give it his best, right? DRESSER: Deep conflicts. It's hard for all coaches, especially for kids this age. You want to protect them; in a way, you really do want them to have the simple joy of playing. But there is that other side of it. A lot of it is just about the society that we live in. There's such a huge emphasis on winning. Winners are celebrated, and everybody else is ignored. It's very insidious -- it gets inside all of us. WALLACE: How much do coaches and parents try to live vicariously through their children? DRESSER: There's a great deal of that. I think virtually every American man believes he could have played baseball professionally or knows more about baseball than anybody else. And a lot of people see their kids in very unrealistic lights. They look out on the field and see their kids as nobody else sees them -- that this kid is really, uniquely gifted. That's where, I think, a lot of the conflict comes between parents and coaches. The coaches may see the kid one way, and the parents see the kid another way. WALLACE: Do kids today face more pressures ... than when you were young? DRESSER: It's much more. The reason is that parents are much more involved than they used to be. ... I remember as a kid it was much more parents dropping off their kids and that was it. Parents tend to be very, very involved now. It can have a very positive effect; they know much more of what's going on in their kids' lives. But they can also interfere. PLAY DATES"Rounding Third" will be playing at the following U.S. theaters and dates this summer: -- Source: Dramatic Publishing WALLACE: How much do you see of parents screaming at players, umps or other parents? DRESSER: Most parents [are] great. But there is that other side of it, and a lot of it comes out of the personal frustrations that parents feel in their own lives. They want to see their own kids win. It's very easy to go over the line. WALLACE: What impact does that have on the game? DRESSER: It's harder for kids to play if their parents are too involved, because they disappoint their parents if they don't play well. There is something about sports that you really play best when you go out there confidently and you try to win, but you are not going out there trying to please somebody. And I think the kids who have the hardest time in sports ... have -- and this is usually the case -- an overly involved father, who just isn't satisfied with whatever the kid does. The people who do the best in sports are the ones who actually love the game. And you don't love the game if you are trying to measure up to some impossible standard. WALLACE: The win-at-all-costs coach: How prevalent is that? DRESSER: Part of it has always been there. I remember, growing up in Massachusetts, there was a coach who was consistently thrown out of Little League games. Sports does bring that out in a lot of people. Frankly, one of the great values of kids playing at this age is that you learn how to deal with both winning and losing. That's what life is: You deal with disappointment; things don't work out the way you want them to. Your life will be a lot better if you know how to deal with that. WALLACE: But there are still outrageous parents? DRESSER: They are the exceptions, but there are more and more of those exceptions. Look at the money athletes make. That [fuels] this pressure. And it's so expensive to go to college so that, if a kid gets a scholarship, that's a real value added to the family. So I feel the stakes are a lot higher than they used to be. It used to be that baseball players didn't make that much money; it was more this incredibly charmed thing to do. But now ... half the sports page is about money. I think it's very hard for some parents, when they see that their kid has ability, not to project into the future and think, "Wow, this kid ... could be really great." WALLACE: Any advice to parents to make sure they and their kids have fun? DRESSER: It is about having fun, and it is about finding a sport that your kid actually likes to do. I think kids sometimes get pushed into sports that they don't really care about. Kids who really love to play baseball -- they work on it, they play on their own, they play better. For parents, you have to take cues from the kid. Once your kid is on a team, take a few minutes and get to know the coach. That really makes a big difference. Get to know how the coach works. And make it a priority. If you sign up for a team, that's a commitment to take seriously. We have to do that in every aspect of our lives -- take it seriously but have fun with it. 
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