Betsy Ran For Her Life

Newsletter 2021-09-13

I’m a sports dad. I didn’t see that coming, which is weird since I’m the one who signed up my eleven-year-old, Betsy, for a sport. As you might recall from Bare Minimum Parenting: The Ultimate Guide to Not Quite Ruining Your Child (If you don’t recall, I just signed a new batch of them yesterday), I’m vehemently anti-sport. Well, vehemently anti-taking sports seriously. There’s virtually no return on investment for the blood, sweat, and tears you force your child to sacrifice on the altar of youth athletics. They won’t go pro, they won’t get a full-ride to college, and they won’t achieve eternal fame and glory for beating their hated rivals in the preschool World Series. Good luck landing a girl in the bar with that victory story. Even if your kid does get a college scholarship, the money won’t offset everything you spent over the years on sign-up fees, training camps, and traveling teams. Worse, when you calculate the time college athletes put into their “amateur” sports, the payout …