Kids can have a lot of fun on a baseball team. Practice can be a lot of fun, playing is fun, sitting around in the dugout cracking jokes with your buddies is fun, getting all sweaty and dirty is fun, going out for pizza after the game (in uniform) is fun, and of course winning is fun.

Losing is no fun.

For this reason, some leagues go to extremes over winning and losing.

The first extreme is exemplified by Vince Lombardi's famous quote: "Winning isn't everything. Its the ONLY thing." This is fine for professional athletes, but not for kids. It creates an ultra-high pressure atmosphere where managers will do almost anything to win. This makes baseball a hassle for the kids that play it.

At the other extreme, everyone tries to tell the kids that the score doesn't matter as long as they "had fun."

Kids are hard to fool.
They are very perceptive. They know when you're trying to put something over on them.

They know who won, they know who lost, and losing is no fun.

When they show up in school the next day, the first thing they ask each other is "Did you win?"

Trying to pretend that winning doesn't matter undermines your credibility. It tells your kids that it's OK not to try too hard, as long as you go through the motions.

I once witnessed a good baseball game in a clean, safe, blue-collar section of a northeastern industrial city.

The kids and the umpires (older kids) took the field and began to play. The two "opposing" managers broke out a grill and started making hot dogs together. Someone was keeping score. Someone brought the beer. At least one kid hit a homer. Everybody on both sides cheered. No one got injured or upset. When the beer and the hot dogs ran out, everyone went home.