Comedian Kathleen Madigan’s take on America’s youth sports insanity is dead on
She grew up when a girl playing sports was an outlier, so comedian Kathleen Madigan was never able to realize her full potential as a basketball player despite an achievement that said she may have been Caitlin Clark before Caitlin Clark.
A performer who has been a guest of Conan O’ Brien, David Letterman and Jay Leno, “had coffee” with Jerry Seinfeld, and a successful comic for 20-plus years has an athletic achievement listed on Wikipedia that is accurate.
In 1978, Kathleen Madigan won the Mid-Missouri Hoops Shoot Championship by making 14 of 15 attempts, all underhand.
“That is true. And then I retired,” Madigan said in a phone interview with the Star-Telegram. She is scheduled to play Will Rogers Memorial Coliseum on March 21 in Fort Worth.
“You have to remember, back then this was not some school-sponsored thing. This was through the Elks Lodge. This was some random thing my dad signed me up for, because he treated the girls like the boys. My dad was a lawyer, and he saw sports for girls as a dead end. The next round was in Kansas City, which is why I wanted to do it; we lived in St. Louis and I wanted to see Kansas City.
“There were seven kids in my family. There was no such thing as ‘travel sports’ back then. With my parents, it was, ‘If you can walk to the game, you can play, but we’re not driving you.’”
This conversation was not intended to delve into sports, but this innocent fact-check question led to her observation that all parents who have changed their entire lives to accommodate their child’s athletic career should heed.
Texas Rangers signed a 12-year-old; Yankees signed a 13-year-old
Unless you are a seamhead, you may have missed the news that the New York Yankees recently signed Albert Mejias of Venezuela to a contract that includes a $7 million signing bonus. He’s 13 years old.
Not 14. Not 15. Not 16. 13. That’s 13 as in “$7 million.”
By the looks of Mejias’ photo, if he’s 13 years old, I am Brad Pitt’s better-looking younger brother.
In the last week, the Texas Rangers reached a “pre-agreement” with prospect Andel Pérez with a signing bonus of but $4 million. Really lowballed him.
The unofficial consensus among college coaches is that to best evaluate a high school player you need to wait until they are roughly 16-ish. Ideally, you would wait until the person is done with puberty, but that timeline doesn’t work for colleges, or pro leagues.
Which is why you have pro baseball teams throwing cash at kids who are barely teenagers in the hope that in eight to 10 years he will be an asset to the big-league club. What could possibly change for a “13-year-old” in five years?
“I told my younger brother, ‘Hey, dude, there is a 13-year-old from (Venezuela) and the Yankees just signed him for $7 million,’” Madigan said. “I said to my brother, ‘He’s a cute kid, and this is a lesson to you and your friends — if your kid is exceptional, they will find them.
“You don’t need to fly anywhere, or drive to Des Moines to be seen. If they’re good enough, they are going to come to you every single time.”
The insanity of America’s youth sports has no end
Madigan has nieces and nephews who are doing the American youth sports thing; club this or select that, AAU, travel squad, or one of the great all-time marketing hooks, “Junior Olympic$.”
One of the latest developments to this madness is venues charging the price of admission to watch an event that the guardian/parent is paying to operate. You read that right. The parent/guardian has paid X plus Y = Crazy for the kid to play now, increasingly has to pay for parking and to enter the grounds to watch their future All-Star play in front of family and friends.
“I travel all the time because that’s my job, and I see this at the airport every week. These teams are flying?” Madigan asked.
Yes. To tournaments in, among other locations, Las Vegas and New Orleans. You can’t find two worse cities in America for kids, and yet there are youth sports tournaments in those respective locations all the time. Because the tournaments are now just as much for the parents as they are for the kid. The kid who probably is not going to play in college, and isn’t as good as the 12-year-old in the Dominican who plays on weed baseball fields with a glove that is fifth-generation.
“Look at the commitment to all of this money,” Madigan said. “My sister called me from a gym in Missouri, hung over, and she is just hoping and praying her kid would lose in the volleyball match that morning in some tournament so they could go home.
“I stay in Marriott Courtyards all the time, and I see the parents of the kids’ sports teams. They’re always just hanging out in the lobby, just drinking all the time.”
Kathleen Madigan is a professional comedian, and her observation about America’s youth sports scene is not part of her act, although it could be because it’s both funny and painfully accurate.
